Aria’s POV
The mint came up before the bark did.
Morning light hit the soil where we’d marked the knife. Where roots, cloth, and stones still made their circle.
And right at the center, pushing through dirt that had held steel for ten years: mint.
Not a sprout. A whole small patch. Green and sharp and smelling like the ridge exhaling again.
No one spoke. Ridah just knelt. Didn’t touch the leaves. Touched the dirt around them.
“We don’t forget what made us,” she said. “And now the ridge doesn’t either. It’s covering it with what heals instead.”
Coren the Warden knelt too. Put his palm flat near the mint. Not on it.
“The ground’s warm,” he said again. “I thought steel would kill everything. But the ridge is growing over it.”
Mara crushed one leaf between her fingers. Let the
