Listening took time.
Not hours.
Not days.
Generations.
Elara felt it the moment Isera said the word—not as a door opening, but as a thinning of walls that had been carefully, lovingly built. The bond didn’t rush in. It did not flood the clearing or wrap itself around the stone at its center.
It waited.
That restraint mattered more than anything else.
The people of the forest did not gather in a circle. They didn’t kneel or reach or chant. They stayed where they were—some closer, some farther back, some half-hidden among roots and trunks as if unsure whether being seen was safe yet.
Choice, Elara realized, was not dramatic.
It was quiet.
Isera gestured for them to follow her deeper into the basin. Not toward the stone, but past it, along a narrow path Elara hadn’t noticed at first
