Aria’s POV
The leaves fell at dusk.
No wind. No warning. Just the staff’s new green deciding it was time to move.
One by one. Soft as mint had been when the ridge exhaled it weeks ago. They didn’t drop to the dirt. They caught the air, turned, and drifted downriver.
Keth caught one mid-air. Didn’t crush it. Held it like the carved leaf he’d made.
“They’re going,” he said. Not sad. Just watching.
Mara knelt at the bank. Let the current take the next leaf from her fingers.
“It grows without asking,” she said. “And now it goes without being told.”
Coren the Warden who sat for a bowl stood too. Watched his own stone sit in the circle above the buried knife. Watched the leaves leave.
“I came with a question,” he said.
“Looks like the ridge is sending answers downstream.”
Rid
