The world does not announce when rest becomes impossible.
It simply keeps asking.
⸻
The first night no one truly sleeps, Zane feels it in his bones.
Not the sharp warning of attack.
Not the pull of imbalance.
The slow, grinding pressure of a world that has learned to lean.
He stands on the ridge before dawn, watching wolves settle into shallow rest across the valley. Bodies curl. Eyes close.
But no one fully lets go.
Because the land does not.
⸻
Jason confirms it at sunrise.
He doesn’t need instruments this time. He can hear it in the way the air refuses to fully quiet.
“The cycle is holding,” he says carefully, “but it’s tightening.”
Zane doesn’t look away from the valley.
“Tightening how?”
Jason swallows.
“The world is adapting to guardianship faster than the guardians c
