POV: Lyra
She keeps watch while wolves sleep and gods hover.
We made camp in the first clearing wide enough to fit all of us, maybe a quarter mile from the ruins. Far enough that I stopped being able to hear the sounds of the structure still settling into its new configuration, the distant groans and shifts of old stone finding its rest. Close enough that I kept glancing back at the tree line for the first hour like I expected something to come out of it after us, something with patience, something that had been waiting inside those walls for longer than any of us had been alive.
Nothing did. Whatever the ruins wanted from us, they finished wanting it when the floor opened up and we climbed out of the dark and walked away. The forest received us without comment, indifferent and dark and smelling of pine resin and damp earth, and I was grateful for the indifference in a way I hadn't expected to be.
