It started with a mistake that Riku was certain he hadn't made.
At first light, Kael arrived with mud on his boots and confusion on his face. "You need to come see this," he said, voice low, tight. "It's not the slope. It's the corridor."
Riku followed him out past the eastern watchline. They crossed the morning-frosted stones, boots soft against the hardening earth, passing the storage pits and the glider frames under tarp. Beyond the outer forge scaffolding lay the dry runes of the eastern corridor—a dead stretch of land they hadn't touched since the last Blood Moon.
He remembered it well: hard-packed basalt, wind-worn gravel, no trace of fertility.
But now, it bloomed.
Fire-root. Hundreds of them. Short stalks, red and silver-veined, glinting faintly in the haze. They curled outward from the soil in a perfect ring.
A perfect ring.
Riku stepped forward, boots crunching against flake-dust. He stopped exactly at the edge of the growth and stared down. The formation wasn't random. It mirrored the ward-circle—Blackridge's inner protection array, which he'd drawn by hand and never once shared outside the vault.
Kael swallowed hard. "Did you...?"
"No," Riku said immediately.
They stood in silence.
Each stalk curved outward with the same geometry as his hand-drawn runes. Same spacing, same triangulation of defense lines. And at the center of it all, a deeper soil depression. Something had nested there—or fed. The marks weren't paw prints or claw gouges, but drag-lines. Soft, brushing scoops that curled in and out like something had laid in the center to rest. Or drink.
Riku crouched, brushing his fingers against the earth. It was still warm.
"How did these bloom overnight?" Kael asked. "We haven't planted in this corridor for months."
"We haven't watered it for months," Riku corrected. "There's no spring here."
He reached out and touched the stem of one fire-root bloom.
The stalk shivered beneath his fingers. Not from breeze or tremor. From him.
It pulsed once—then, slowly, from the tip, a droplet of water formed. It slid down the stalk and struck the ground with a tiny sound too sharp for a root system. Like a breath returning.
Kael inhaled through his teeth. "What the hell is that?"
"It's not irrigation. It's memory," Riku murmured. "The land's remembering something. But wrong."
They mapped the entire bloom field. Sira brought two recorders to trace the soil pattern and log the bloom depths. A few stalks had already withered, as if drained. Mahl—still recovering from the patrol—reported a migraine as soon as he stepped near the ring. He was sent back without argument.
By midday, Riku had counted twenty-seven stalks. Twenty-seven—an exact match to the number of defensive emitters Blackridge had placed during the first Blood Moon siege.
"This isn't mimicry," he told Kael. "It's repetition. Not copying. Reenacting."
Kael knelt and began slicing one of the thicker stalks with a bone-saw. As it parted, the root inside was crystallized. Not burned, not dry—mineralized, like it had been underground for decades. But the cut had no ring lines, no growth signs. Just a single smooth interior.
Like it had been made whole in an instant.
That night, Riku stayed in the vault chamber beneath his forge. The obsidian walls soaked heat and pulsed faintly in response to his presence. He traced the ancient schematic again, comparing each bloom's position to his master circle.
A thought had started to form—but he hated it. It clawed at something deep and wordless.
By second watch, he closed the schematics and climbed the forge steps to the open-air level above. The sky was clear, red moons low. The wind was soft. Kael had left two sentries posted, but the night was quiet.
Then Riku saw it.
Outside the walls of his personal forge, where no seed had ever been placed—where not even Sira had clearance to walk alone—six fire-root sprouts had broken the soil.
They were small, newly emerged.
But already in a perfect arc.
He crouched, slowly. The air was warmer here than it should've been. The soil moist.
He didn't touch them.
Not this time.
Instead, he turned and looked toward the sky. The stars overhead flickered—not dimmed, but moved. For half a second, it looked as though a constellation had shifted, ever so slightly, from its usual perch.
Just enough to make a mapmaker nervous.
Just enough to make a monarch hold his breath.