The forest changed after the flame took root in her chest.
It wasn't immediate. The trees still towered, silent and ancient, their branches woven like the ribs of giants. The air still smelled of loam and ash. But the feeling—the sense of something watching—deepened with each step they took.
Birds did not return.
Torren kept to the lead, blade drawn low, ears tuned for movement. His face was drawn, eyes dark from nights with too little sleep. He didn't speak much anymore, not since the clearing. Not since she'd shattered that Echoed beast with a touch.
Evelyn couldn't blame him. She didn't understand it either.
The core—what remained of it—rested behind her heart like a seed lodged between bone and breath. It pulsed now and then, not painfully, but insistently. When she closed her eyes, she saw light through blood. And when she breathed too deeply, the air shimmered, like it bent around her heat.
It wasn't natural.
But it was hers.
They made camp beside a narrow spring, nestled in a half-fallen grove of silverleaves. The trees here were old enough to remember the first wardings, their bark carved with protection glyphs from ages past—faded, but not dead.
Evelyn ran her fingers along one as Torren lit their fire.
"These marks," she murmured. "They're elder-style. Pre-Guild."
Torren looked over, then glanced away. "You sound like your mother."
Evelyn stilled.
"I dreamed of her last night," she said after a while. "She was holding her journal. Whispering names I didn't recognize."
"Was it… one of those dreams again?" His voice was cautious, not mocking—afraid.
She nodded.
"The woman with the silver eyes was there too. She said I was a 'woken kindling'—whatever that means. And she showed me a tree with no leaves… but it was burning from the inside. Like the fire was its heart."
Torren poked the fire too hard. Sparks jumped.
"None of this makes sense. People don't fuse with cores. Not without the ritual. Not without binding stones or a Circle."
"I didn't choose it."
"I know," he said quickly. Too quickly. Then quieter: "But it still happened."
The silence between them stretched like drawn bowstring.
From the treeline came a fluttering.
Both turned. Torren gripped his sword. Evelyn rose.
But it was only a moth—large, black-winged, its body etched with faint silver lines. It landed on Evelyn's shoulder and pulsed once, like a second heartbeat. She didn't flinch.
Then it crumbled—not died, but dispersed—into ash and ember that drifted into her skin.
Torren stepped back. "That's not a moth."
"No," she agreed. "It's a sign."
A low hum stirred the branches above.
Then the wind shifted—and the scent of rot and iron bled into the clearing.
Torren hissed. "Echoed. They're nearby."
Evelyn stood taller. "They're following the core."
"Then we keep moving. Fast."
They packed what little they had and slipped into the dark.
Behind them, the ashes of the moth curled in the firelight like sigils burning into memory.
And the forest watched.