The hollow of mist gives way to rising ground before noon, and with every step upward the forest resumes its habit of rearranging certainty into inconvenience. Trunks crowd closer, then spread without reason. Moss glows on one side of stones and then, several paces later, on the opposite side as though direction itself has grown bored.
Water can be heard to our left for nearly an hour without ever becoming visible. The air carries cedar, wet bark, and the faint metallic tang that often precedes one of Aeryn’s episodes, though today another scent threads beneath it, wariness sharpened into resolve.
She changed after the last vision.
The alteration is subtle enough that a careless observer would call it fatigue. I am not careless. She now chooses pauses a fraction earlier when I near her blind side. She answers with truths trimmed thinner than before. Her gaze lands on my hands more often than my face, then leaves quickly, as if touch itself has become part of some equation she dislikes. Whatever she saw in that singular vision remains between her ribs like concealed steel.
I dislike concealed steel when pointed in my direction.
We reach a shelf of dark stone overlooking a shallow basin choked with pale reeds. Wind moves across the basin in visible lines, flattening one patch after another. The movement reveals no animals, no water source, no obvious route forward. Yet something in the timing feels wrong.
I stop. Aeryn takes two more steps before noticing the silence behind her. She turns, hair lifting in the breeze, eyes bright and guarded.
“Why are we halting?”
“Because your last three directions share a flaw.”
“How flattering. I have patterns now.”
“You always had patterns. You merely preferred believing they were invisible.”
I crouch and study the basin. Reeds bend in alternating waves that break around a central strip left strangely untouched. Beneath the wind’s rhythm lies another pulse, slower, regular, mechanical enough to offend the landscape.
“You guided us here quickly,” I continue. “Too quickly for someone uncertain.”
“Perhaps I’m improving.”
“Perhaps you’re compensating.”
Her jaw shifts almost imperceptibly.
There.
I rise. “Immediate answer. Hazard ahead.”
She glances toward the basin, then to me. “You’ve become fond of dramatic phrasing.”
“Hazard,” I repeat. “Now.”
No time for theatre. No time to curate omissions. Pressure reveals the seam between instinct and strategy. Her eyes narrow. She looks once across the reeds.
“Loose ground,” she says. “The left side sinks first. But we are getting closer to the artifact. So you should be happy.”
Observable evidence suggests otherwise. The left side bears scrub growth heavy enough to imply firmer soil. The untouched strip in the center interests me far more.
I nod as though convinced and begin descending directly toward the central route. She does not move. Then she follows. No correction. No protest. No warning sharpened by urgency. Useful.
Halfway down the slope the air cools abruptly. Mud darkens beneath my boots. Reeds hiss against my legs. I keep pace, senses wide, waiting for the moment she decides silence costs too much.
It arrives three steps before danger.
“Stop.”
The word cuts through the wind cleanly. I halt on instinct. The ground ahead shivers once, then collapses inward with a wet gulp, exposing black water beneath a crust of woven roots thin as paper. The sink pocket widens where my next step would have landed, swallowing reeds in a circling drag.
Behind me, Aeryn breathes hard.
“You waited,” I say without turning.