The deeper they went, the less the woods felt like a place and more of a weird dream.

  Sound stayed dampened. Even when Audree stepped on a snapped branch, the crack came out soft, swallowed before it could echo. The air pressed close, wet and heavy, and the plants seemed too awake. Leaves turned toward them. Vines leaned like they were listening.

  Lief tried not to panic.

  He had learned to breathe through the pull. He had learned to make the forest’s voice manageable. But this was not a whisper anymore. It was a crowd.

  It started as fragments.

  Not words. Not sentences. Impressions.

  Pain.

  Confusion.

  Fear that did not feel like an animal.

  Lief’s stomach tightened. Verdancy was supposed to let him sense life. Plants. Growth. Living systems. It was not supposed to carry the shape of something dead.

  And yet the impressions felt like they were coming from a spirit. Something that should not be alive anymore. Something that should not have a voice at all.

  Lief’s hand tightened on Velra’s staff. The wood felt colder than it should. He tried to push Verdancy outward in a slow, careful wave, like a hand smoothing the surface of water.

  The forest answered with a shudder.

  The impressions got louder.

  A sharp twist of pain hit Lief behind the eyes. He staggered and caught himself on a tree trunk. Bark pressed into his palm, wet and rough.

  Audree turned immediately. “Hey. Talk to me. What are you feeling?”

  Lief swallowed. He didn’t want to admit how bad it was. He didn’t want to make Audree worry and start doing something reckless. But Audree’s eyes were already scanning him, tense and alert.

  “It’s… not normal,” Lief managed. “It’s pain. Confusion. Fear. But not animal fear.”

  Audree’s looked around the trees like he expected something to jump out.

  Lief hated how weak he felt. He hated how the forest was turning his own senses into a weapon against him.

  Audree opened his bag and pulled out a small vial.

  The liquid inside was dull grey-blue, not pretty like his usual potions. It looked practical. Heavy.

  He held it out to Lief.

  Lief blinked. “What is that.”

  “A dampener,” Audree said, voice stiff. “It’s supposed to reduce outside effects on your mind for a little while.”

  Lief stared at the vial. “You’re giving me that?”

  Audree’s hand hesitated. Just for a second. Lief saw it. Saw how hard it was for him to let go of something rare and carefully made.

  Audree exhaled through his nose like he was annoyed at himself. “Yes. I was saving it.”

  “For you,” Lief said quietly.

  Audree’s mouth twitched. “Obviously.”

  Lief felt a strange warmth in his chest, even through the pain.

  Audree shoved the vial closer. “Drink it before you collapse.”

  Lief took it with shaking fingers. He tried to hide the way his hand trembled. The potion smelled faintly like bitter mint and smoke. He swallowed it in one go.

  The effect was not immediate like Audree’s healing potion. It was slower. Like someone pulling thick curtains over a window.

  The forest’s impressions did not vanish, but they dulled. The pain eased. The fear quieted from a scream to a grim hum.

  Lief breathed out.

  Audree looked relieved and annoyed at the same time. “Better?”

  Lief nodded. Then he laughed because he could not help it. “You looked like that hurt you more than me.”

  Audree scowled. “Shut up.”

  Lief’s grin tugged at his mouth despite the sweat on his forehead. He reached out and squeezed Audree’s wrist briefly, careful of the wrapped arm.

  “Thanks,” Lief said. “I know you’re trying.”

  Audree’s expression softened for half a second. Then he looked away like that was embarrassing.

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  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Well. I can't have the powerhouse of the team useless if something happens.”

  They both grinned and kept moving.

  The woods guided them again, not with force, but with subtle shifts. A branch leaning one way. A fern wall thickening in another. Each time they tried to steer off course, the path became unpleasant. Thorns. Mud. Tangled roots that snagged boots. Then when they returned to the “right” direction, the ground smoothed.

  Lief did not like being guided.

  But he liked being lost even less.

  After another long stretch of damp quiet, the trees opened into an unnatural clearing.

  Ruins.

  Not a full building, but enough to make Lief’s skin prickle. Stone slabs half-swallowed by roots. A broken arch collapsed sideways into the earth. Old steps that led nowhere. The remains of a shrine, maybe, or some kind of small temple.

  The plants here were worse.

  Not dying. Not withered.

  Too healthy.

  Thick vines wrapped around the stone like they were strangling it lovingly. Moss grew layered. Pale flowers bloomed from cracks that should have held only dirt.

  Lief stepped forward carefully, staff raised.

  The impressions shifted.

  Confusion sharpened. Fear pressed closer. Pain spread through the clearing like fog.

  Audree crouched near the base of a cracked pillar. “Someone’s been here.”

  Lief stared. “Recently?”

  Audree shook his head slowly. “Not fresh. But not ancient either.”

  He pointed.

  Marks on the stone. Rings of scorched earth that had been grown over, but not fully erased. Melted wax, long hardened, trapped under a thin skin of moss. Bits of wire threaded through roots like someone had tried to weave metal into the living ground.

  Ritual remnants.

  Lief swallowed hard. “That doesn’t look like normal magic.”

  “It’s not,” Audree said.

  Then Audree did something that always made Lief nervous.

  He loosened his focus and let his eyes shift.

  The purple-green-gold swirl flickered faintly across his pupils.

  Audree stared at the ruins, and his face tightened like he was looking at something disgusting.

  Lief watched his shoulders tense. Watched his stomach lurch.

  Audree forced himself to keep looking anyway.

  “What do you see?” Lief asked.

  Audree swallowed. “Too much.”

  He stepped closer to a mess of wires and carved circles embedded into the stone. The circles weren’t just runes. They were layered. Spliced. Meanings forced together that did not belong.

  Audree’s voice went quiet. “This is way beyond anything I’ve read.”

  He touched the air above the circle without touching the stone.

  “Whoever did this understands runes in a way I don’t,” Audree said. “This isn’t a spell. It’s a machine.”

  Lief’s skin prickled. “A machine?”

  “Yeah, but even this isn't like any machine I've read about. Things made of metal gears and stuff. Normally as a way to close the gap between those with and without magic.” Audree’s eyes narrowed, swirl intensifying. “But these runes mixing with it is… almost beautiful in a way.”

  Lief stared blankly.

  Audree noticed the strange look and cleared his throat, ”All i can tell is it’s doing something to the mana.”

  He straightened slowly, gaze distant.

  “There’s circulation here,” Audree said.

  Lief frowned. “Circulation.”

  Audree nodded. “Like something is pumping it. Not letting it settle naturally.”

  Lief felt it too, once Audree said it. The air had a rhythm. A faint pulse in the ground. Like the forest was breathing through an artificial lung.

  That thought made Lief’s stomach turn.

  He stepped back and forced himself to breathe again, steadying the dampener’s fading calm.

  Audree moved along the edge of the ruin, scanning the ground with the sharp attention of a scavenger. Then he stopped.

  “Found something,” he said.

  Lief followed.

  A snake lay coiled under a flat stone, half-asleep, its scales dull green with faint gold striping. Not big, not monstrous. But its fangs were long enough to matter.

  Audree’s eyes lit with practical satisfaction. “Viper,” he murmured. “I need the venom.”

  Lief blinked. “Now?”

  Audree shrugged. “We’re here. It’s on the list.”

  He moved carefully, hands steady. He had a small kit for this, of course he did. A vial. A cloth. A clamp.

  Lief watched him work. It was controlled and fast, like he was back at the testing grounds. Like he was doing something he understood in a place that wanted them terrified.

  The snake hissed as Audree handled it, but it did not strike. Not yet.

  Audree filled the vial with venom, then eased the snake back down and released it.

  “Let it go,” Lief said.

  “It’s a snake,” Audree replied. “It will be fine.”

  The snake did try to fight once freed. It snapped toward Audree’s boot, angry and startled.

  Before either of them could react, Bubbles shot out of Audree’s bag like a tiny cannonball.

  The slime landed in front of the snake and puffed up, wobbling large and threatening. It made a wet, angry sound that was almost comedic.

  The snake froze.

  Then it slithered back as fast as it could and vanished into the undergrowth.

  Bubbles stayed puffed up for another second, then turned proudly in a slow circle as if expecting applause.

  Lief stared.

  Audree stared too.

  Then Audree let out a short laugh, surprised by it. “You little menace.”

  Bubbles wobbled smugly and hopped back into the bag.

  Lief felt his chest loosen slightly. The moment was small, ridiculous, and exactly what they needed.

  Even in the middle of something wrong.

  Even in the middle of a ruin that pulsed like a wound.

  Lief looked back at the collapsed shrine, at the wires threaded through roots, at the rune circles that felt like a hand pressing down on the forest’s throat.

  The dampener kept the worst of the screaming away, but the impressions were still there.

  Pain.

  Confusion.

  Fear.

  Lief tightened his grip on the staff.

  “Whatever this is,” he whispered, “it’s not just the woods.”

  They stood there a moment longer, letting the dread settle into something useful.

  Then they moved deeper, following the pulse.