The trees didn’t part so much as lean. As if they’d been waiting for someone to pass, then thought better of it halfway through. Caelum stepped beneath the arch of twisted limbs and ducked a branch that wasn’t there the second before. The moss was soft underfoot, damp with morning, and every few steps the ground gave just enough to feel like it might swallow his boots whole.

  “Feels like walking through someone’s lungs,” Jonas muttered, brushing condensation from his collar. “Wet ones.”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” Caelum said.

  “I’m not. I’m descriptive.”

  A low trill echoed in the underbrush, half-bird, half-something else. They paused. Caelum let his hand hover just above the hilt of his staff. Jonas unsnapped the button on the strap holding his sidearm in place. The sound didn't come again.

  Orrin, trailing behind them and speaking softly to a beetle on his sleeve, caught up without looking concerned.

  “Not dangerous,” he said. “Just listening.”

  Jonas gave him a look. “You always say that before something tries to eat us.”

  “Not always.”

  They crested a small rise and the trees opened just enough to reveal the edge of something that wasn’t forest. Stone jutted up through the soil like broken bones. Wall fragments. Pillars half-devoured by vines. The remains of something built when gods still meant something to the people who named them.

  They stood on the threshold of a ruined shrine.

  Most of it was gone. Just four columns remained upright, slick with moss, leaning like old drunks at the edge of collapse. Glass littered the earth in shimmering pieces—reds and greens, pale blues, a fragment of amber bright enough to catch Caelum’s breath. It looked like fire frozen in sand.

  Orrin stepped into the ruin first. He tilted his head. “Selanai,” he whispered. “She was fond of places like this.”

  Caelum followed him in. The moment his foot crossed where the threshold had once been, the air changed. He couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t warmer, or colder, or heavier. Just… aware.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  There were no sounds. No birds. No insects. Even the breeze gave the place a wide berth.

  Jonas hung back. “You two go on ahead. I’ll just stay here and make sure the trees don’t start whispering poetry or something.”

  “They don’t speak poetry,” Orrin said, not looking back. “They speak warning.”

  Caelum crouched near the glass shards. His hand hovered over them. They pulsed, faintly, like breath caught in amber.

  He touched one.

  The pulse stopped.

  And something settled in his chest like a new rhythm — not his heartbeat, but something next to it. A soft thread, almost musical. It didn’t hurt. It just rewrote the silence.

  You have entered a Sanctuary of the Wild.

  Resonance with primal ley-thread detected.

  Ley-Touched II: Stabilized.

  Echo Tolerance (Unstable): Now active within natural bounds.

  → You are now capable of interacting with ancient mana structures. Environmental memory will respond to your presence.

  The light through the canopy angled differently now. Or maybe the canopy had moved. Caelum looked up and saw that one of the columns had begun to shed vines. Not falling—letting go.

  The base of the column was wrapped around what looked like a root-wrapped altar. Something had once stood there, maybe a statue. All that remained was a crumbling foot, and the impression of leaves carved into its hem.

  Caelum stepped closer. His hand hovered near the stone.

  Behind him, Jonas cleared his throat. “You guys seeing what I’m seeing, or did I breathe in a spore cloud?”

  “I don’t think you’re hallucinating,” Caelum said. “But I don’t think this place wants you to understand it, either.”

  Orrin sat down beside a vine-covered chunk of wall and began humming tunelessly. “She used to walk in places like this,” he said. “Not her temple. Just her steps. You can still feel them. If you’re quiet.”

  Caelum lowered himself beside the broken altar. He didn’t pray. He didn’t know how. But the silence felt expectant, so he listened.

  A breeze passed through—not around, not above, through. And with it came the scent of green things too old to name. The kind of plants that grow in stories, not forests. For a moment, he imagined he could hear voices—not speaking, just layered. Like memories echoing through leaves.

  “Is this what it was like?” he asked.

  Orrin didn’t answer. He was crying quietly, hands in his lap, head tilted to the wind like it was singing a song only he remembered.

  Jonas sat down hard on a rock just outside the broken threshold. He pulled out his canteen and stared at the shrine like it had asked him a personal question.

  Caelum stayed there for a long while. Not speaking. Not moving. The pressure in his chest hadn’t gone away, but it had changed shape—less intrusive, more… grounding. Like someone had reached through the world and given him a string to hold onto.

  Eventually, the colors in the glass began to fade, and the silence returned to simple quiet.

  Caelum stood. He didn’t feel taller. But he felt older.

  They left the shrine in silence.

  The trees didn’t move this time. They just watched.