The morning of the twenty-first year brought a different kind of restlessness. I felt it in my bones before I opened my eyes. Something was shifting. Something was waiting. The garden was not content with what it had become. It wanted more.
Julian was already awake, standing at the edge of the grove and looking toward the eastern ridge. I joined him, still drowsy, and followed his gaze.
"There is movement out there," he said. "Not people. Something else. The land itself is moving."
I looked. The eastern ridge was visible in the early light, its slope covered in the deep green of mature growth. But there was something different about it. A shimmer, almost. A vibration that seemed to come from the ground itself.
"We should go look," I said.
The eastern ridge had always been the wildest
