Evelyn scrubbed the tunic with slow, practiced circles, the stream's cold bite numbing her fingers despite the summer sun overhead. The soaproot stung her scraped knuckles. She didn't mind. Pain was honest. Clean. Unlike the questions that clawed at the edges of her thoughts lately—about her mother's glyphs, the strange silence in the woods, and the heartbeat she sometimes felt in her throat when she dreamed of fire.
Across the clearing, her father hummed as he carved. His tune rose and fell like the wind through pine needles—soft, old, and weathered. It had no name that Evelyn knew, though he swore it was about a fox and a bridge and a riddle that no man had ever answered.
"You hum that one when you're uneasy," she said, still focused on her work.
"No. I hum it when the wood lies," he replied. "Cedar's cleverer than it looks."
Evelyn smirked. "It's wood, Father."
"That's what the fool told the firekeeper. Didn't end well for the fool."
That was how her father taught: riddles and parables, mostly half-true. It made sense. He was one of the last old wardwrights in the five kingdoms—a dying craft, passed through smoke and memory rather than ink. The kind of knowledge that came with cost.
He sat beneath the standing wardstone, an obelisk weathered by time and glyph-burned at the base. Around it, the grass grew a little taller, greener, never faded by frost even in the harsher moons. It pulsed gently in Evelyn's peripheral vision—faint, like heat shimmer. If you stared too long, your head ached and your teeth itched.
Most villagers never looked too closely.
The ward-posts he shaped would join the perimeter line by highmelt. Just another layer between Isenhold and the things in the dark.
Evelyn looked up toward the ridge path, where laughter and clacking wood echoed down. The village boys were sparring again.
Torren was in the ring, moving like a thought half-spoken—direct, quick, sharp. His opponents danced and shouted, but he was quiet. Deliberate. He knocked one boy flat with a hook under the ribs, then stepped aside as another swung too wide. His eyes flicked up and caught Evelyn watching.
She looked away quickly, heart ticking a beat too fast. Not because she liked him—not like that—but because Torren saw things. Saw her, sometimes more clearly than she liked. And in Isenhold, being seen too clearly was dangerous.
She gathered the wrung tunic, tucked it in the basket, and started home.
Isenhold was a crooked necklace of cottages and thatched roofs nestled between the elderwood trees. Smoke curled from mossy chimneys. Hens darted beneath fencelines. At the well, someone laughed—a child, probably Jeni from the west field, trying to trap songbeetles again.
They said Isenhold was built on old stone—first kingdom, maybe even pre-surge. Evelyn didn't know if she believed that. But she knew the bones of the land felt deep, and the trees remembered. Some of them bore scars no axe made.
By the time she reached the family cottage, the sun had settled low, shadows long. She ducked under the splitwood lintel and into the familiar glow of hearthlight. The scent of birchsmoke and sage wrapped around her like a cloak.
Her mother sat by the window, ink-stained fingers flitting across parchment, candlelight catching in her pale braid. A sealed journal lay beside her—bound in leather, clasped in ironwire, tied with a copper knot that hissed if touched barehanded.
Evelyn had learned that lesson the hard way.
"You're later than I like," her mother said without looking up.
"Father's wards took longer than usual. And I kept an eye on Torren."
That earned a brief flicker of attention. "He fights like someone who's seen the Hollow."
Evelyn frowned. "You don't think—?"
"No. But he listens to silence too well." Her mother's gaze drifted. "That's where it begins."
The journal on the table seemed to pulse faintly in the firelight. Evelyn shifted, suddenly uncomfortable.
"You haven't touched it," her mother said, eyes back on the page.
"No," Evelyn replied, quieter than she meant.
"Good." The word landed flat. Not praise. Not relief. Just... fact. "It's not for now. It's for when after begins."
"What does that mean?" Evelyn asked before she could stop herself.
Her mother paused, the quill hovering. "It means not all knowledge heals. Some burns. Some changes shape before you can name it."
Outside, the breeze turned colder. A wind from the northeast—wrong for this time of year.
"I think something's coming," Evelyn said, voice small.
Her mother finally looked up, eyes tired but sharp. "Something is always coming, child. That's why we carve wards, tell riddles, and keep our books closed."
Evelyn stood in the flicker of hearthlight, the weight of unsaid truths pressing in from every wall.
Tomorrow would be the same.
It had to be.