Ash moved before the sun did.
No fire. No sound. Just the crisp edge of cold air brushing his neck.
Behind him, Elira slept tangled in the cloak he'd thrown over her — still snoring, somehow.
The ground was damp from last night's fog, but dry enough to hold prints.
He crouched low near the treeline, checking the lines he'd scuffed into the dirt.
Still intact. Nothing had stepped through. Either the forest was asleep, or whatever lived in it knew how to avoid a perimeter.
He stood slowly and scanned the underbrush. Sloped terrain. Sparse animal noise. No birdsong yet, which wasn't ideal. In his experience, birds went quiet before the wrong kind of movement.
Ash walked thirty steps northeast and found a narrow game trail — just enough to show wear. He knelt. Two sets of prints. Hoof pattern, light pressure. Deer? Or something built like one. But the third mark…
Different.
Three digits. Broad claw base. Toes spaced wrong. The soil compressed too deep for something that small.
He followed.
The trail led him into a shallow gully lined with thick moss and dead branches. It reeked faintly of something fermented — rot and fungal oil.
Ash spotted the creature five meters ahead.
Low to the ground. Ratlike, but off.Jaw flexed — thin tendrils twitching like feelers. Not for biting. For sensing.Skin looked dense. Bark-textured. Maybe armored.
One eye, side-set. Faint glow.
Bad angle for ambush. Good for tracking.It didn't see him yet.
Ash crouched and checked his grip on the stick — sharpened with a flint shard and hardened in last night's fire heat. Primitive, but pointed. He shifted his footing, tested a stone under his boot. Stable.
The thing moved — not in a straight line, but in small, circling patterns. It was searching. For food, maybe. Or territory.
Ash didn't charge.
He waited. Observed.
Three rotations. Paused near a fallen log.
He moved. Quietly. One step left, three forward. He kicked a loose pebble across the gully mouth.
The creature snapped its head toward the sound.
Bait worked.
It scuttled fast — too fast — toward the noise, and Ash moved to intercept. Not straight-on. Side angle. Downhill.
As it passed the fallen log, he swung.
The stick caught it behind the skull — not a clean kill, but enough to stagger. It shrieked, twisted, and lunged blindly.
Ash stepped inside the reach, dropped the stick, and drove a jagged rock into its neck.
It thrashed once.
Then stilled.
Blood seeped into the moss — dark, almost green, with a sticky consistency like sap. The vine-like teeth twitched once more, then went limp.
Ash stayed crouched for another five seconds. No second threat. No movement.
Then he stood. Wiped the rock clean on his sleeve. Picked up the stick again.
"Not fast. But not stupid, either."
He didn't smile. Just scanned the edge of the gully and moved to the corpse.
Still twitching.
Ash crouched beside the creature's corpse. Blood seeped slow, thick and dark, into the moss. He poked its hide with the sharp end of the stick. Skin like bark. Muscle dense and layered. Tail had spines — maybe for climbing or defense.
A twig snapped behind him.
He didn't move.
"Elira," he said flatly.
"Oh thank the stars. I thought you got—" She stopped. "Oh."
Ash stood and stepped aside.
She stared at the body. "Did you kill that thing with a rock?"
"And a stick."
She looked at the blood, then at the rock in his hand."Why is there sap in its veins?"
Ash shrugged. "Didn't ask."
Elira stepped closer cautiously, robes trailing in the dirt. She crouched beside it — not gracefully — and poked its root-tendrils with a stick of her own.
"This is a branchgnawer," she muttered. "They usually cling to leyline-heavy groves. Feed on ambient flow. This one's not supposed to be up here."
Ash didn't answer. He was already wiping the blood off his fingers with moss.
Elira blinked at him.
"…How are you not freaking out right now?"
He glanced at her. "You're the one who claims to be a goddess. Shouldn't you be the one freaking out?"
"Excuse me?"
Ash stood again, calm. "You lost your Divine Card. You can't use powers. You're stuck in a wild zone with broken infrastructure. I'm just a guy with a rock."
He paused. "You've got more to lose."
Elira opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Oh gods. You're right."
Here it came.
"My channel's severed. I can't access backflow metrics. I didn't file a post-reincarnation report. What if the Bureau sends a thread audit and I'm not in the system anymore? What if I'm already decaying into a belief echo?!"
Ash said nothing.
She waved her arms. "Do you know how rare that is?! I could end up as a myth fragment — stuck in a ditch as some farmer's lucky footnote!"
He kicked dirt over the blood pool.
"I'm wearing mud," she hissed.
Ash didn't respond. He was already moving.
Elira stood there in the dirt, robe tangled, breathing hard.
The branchgnawer twitched once. She yelped.
Ash didn't even look back.
Ash moved uphill, eyes scanning the treeline. No sound behind him. No comment. Just the faint squelch of Elira's bare feet in damp soil as she caught up.
She was quiet for once.
The forest opened slightly at the ridge. Sunlight filtered through a break in the canopy — thin and cold. Moss clung to every surface. No birds. No insects. Just stillness.
Ash crouched near a downed trunk and studied the gully below. "No tracks leading out. It was alone."
Elira nodded slowly, arms crossed. Her hair was a mess. Mud on one knee. She didn't look divine at all — just tired.
"That's not right," she murmured. "Branchgnawers don't operate solo. They swarm. Gnaw, spread, nest. The only time they move alone is if…"
She trailed off.
Ash didn't move. "If what."
"…if something stronger moved into their grove."
She looked at him. "These things feed on ambient magic. They only come north if the leylines in their native zone go unstable. If that's happening, it's not just one creature on the move."
Ash glanced downslope again. Still nothing.
"How unstable?"
Elira exhaled. "Leyline pushback. Thread drift. Spatial pressure. Any of it could trigger a collapse. Could be relic activity. Could be a corrupted sigil point. Could be—"
She stopped herself.
He looked at her sideways. "Could be what."
Elira hesitated. Then, quietly: "Could be The Hollow Faith."
Ash didn't respond. Just stood slowly, hands relaxed at his sides, stick still stained.
"Elira."
She flinched. "Yes?"
"Why didn't the forest react when it died?"
She blinked.
He looked back at the gully. So did she.
No rustle. No birds scattering. No shift in wind. Not even a birdcall.
Like the trees were holding their breath.
Like something was listening.
Ash scanned the canopy. Still no movement. No insects. No birdsong.
Just weight in the air — thick and unnatural.
Not hostile. Not yet.
Just… waiting.
He didn't like that kind of silence.
He turned. "Pack your moss. We're not staying here."
Elira blinked. "But the camp—"
"If something pushed that thing this far out, it's still moving. And I want to be three valleys away before we find out why."
She didn't argue.
They started walking.
And behind them, somewhere past the trees, something big took one slow, deliberate step.