The grove is quiet when I enter it again, not the charged stillness of the ritual of rebirth, but something steadier, something patient. Alive in a way that does not demand constant attention.

  I step beneath the canopy and the air changes almost instantly. The light softens as it filters through interwoven branches, no longer harsh or fragmented. Leaves stir gently above me, brushing against one another with sound like a distant rain. The ground beneath my boots is cool and dark, the soil rich with moisture and scent. It smells of loam, bark and the faint sweetness of sap that only a druid could recognize.

  I lower myself to the earth and sit with my palms resting against the ground. I do not draw from the grove; I do not command but simply listen.

  The grove answers, not in words and not all at once. A slow pulse moves through the roots, subtle but unmistakable, rising into my hands and settling into my chest. The young trees are stronger than they were few days ago. Their trunks have thickened by fractions, their leaves darker, broader, their branches stretching just a little farther towards one another. This is growth without violence, without theft or sacrifice, slower no doubt, but truer.

  I breathe in and let the rhythmic breathing of the grove guide my own. This time, I do not offer any sacrifice, I do not pull life force from one place to use it to grow another. The ritual of rebirth demanded swiftness and urgency, but now, now I let the balance hold. I let the energy flow exchange naturally. The trees drink from the soil. The soil feeds from what decays. The air moves and the leaves answers. Just the way it is meant to be.

  A small change catches my attention. One of the saplings near the edge of the grove has unfurled a new branch overnight, thin and pale, reaching outward rather than upward. It brushes against another and the two settle together, not entwined but close enough that their leaves touch when the breeze passes through.

  I smile. There are so many lessons that nature offers for the ones who are willing to look, just like these two saplings, sharing a connection, not dominance.

  I let my awareness sink deeper. Beneath the roots, water shifts through the earth, slow and heavy, carrying traces of stone and mineral. I follow it only briefly before pulling back. There is something wrong in that flow far from here. A disturbance I cannot yet name, but can feel all the same. The same pressure that has followed me since long before Blackthorn. The same unease that Nemain answers with its low, displeased hum.

  The sword is quiet now; its presence muted beneath living vines. It does not like the grove or perhaps it does and resents it all the same.

  I open my eyes. The grove has changed again but only to the eyes of a druid. A few leaves glisten as if freshly washed, though no rain has fallen. The canopy feels denser, not darker but more complete. The space beneath it holds warmth even as the morning air cools beyond the walls.

  I breathe in again. This will be enough. Not to end what is eventually coming, but to start preparing for it. It will be enough to end the problem the city is facing right now.

  My concentration breaks when I hear footsteps approach from behind me, measured and familiar. I rise as Garrick enters my field of vision, through the narrow gap between stone and vine. He pauses for a moment when he sees the grove, his expression shifting just slightly. He does not comment, he never does and that restraint has earned my respect.

  “They’re settled,” he says instead. “Aibell has already found a place she likes. Ciara and the children too.”

  I nod. I do not need to see it right know. They are harmless and vulnerable. The grove would not have welcomed them otherwise.

  “They’ll be safe here.” I speak.

  “As safe as anyone gets these days.” Garrick replies. He glances back towards the city, then returns his attention to me.

  “Preparations are finishes. Soldiers are waiting, healers are on hand, priests have already begun their chanting and the river clergies arrived an hour ago. They keep mostly to themselves but I must admit, they know the currents better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  I reply “Good. We will need that.”

  He studies me for a moment, then adds, “You should know, the men are uneasy, not fearful, just…. aware.”

  “They should be,” I answer. “I would be more worried if they weren’t.”

  Garrick nods once. “Then we’re ready.”

  I take one last look at the grove before stepping away. The trees stand quietly, their leaves stirring in acknowledgement and understanding not in farewell.

  As we leave the garden and head towards the waterworks, the hum beneath my skin sharpens slightly. The pressure I have learned not to ignore presses closer, like something turning its attention towards our motion. I keep my hand as far from Nemain as possible. This time I will not fail, this time I will save everyone because this time I will not be alone.

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  We do not descend immediately. The first lie that people tell themselves about danger is that it announces itself with urgency, that it demands haste. Real danger waits; it watches you prepare and then revel in tearing that preparation apart.

  The waterworks sit at the eastern spine of Fallowspire, half-swallowed by stone and half-forgotten by the living. From the street above, it looks harmless enough; an iron-gated mouth set into the slope, worn smooth by centuries of runoff and boots. Lanterns hang on hooks driven into the rocks, their light pooling weakly against damp stone. The air smells of moss and cold water, but beneath it there is something else. A faint bitterness of something old and wrong.

  Garrick pauses behind me; helm tucked beneath his arm. He studies the entrance the way a veteran study a battlefield, not for what it shows, but for what it hides.

  “They sealed the lower channels decades ago,” he says quietly. “After a cave-in took five lives. Only maintenance crews go down now and even they don’t go far.”

  The river-clergy was quick to reply.

  “Water remembers every path it ever takes,”

  The other clergy finished his sentence.

  “Even when men wall it in.”

  Garrick glances at me and then nods once. “That is what I was afraid they might say.”

  Behind us, the others wait. A small force, by design; four soldiers from city watch, armor dull and practical, two healers in layered cloaks, their hands already marked with salves and binding strips. A pair of priests carrying iron-bound reliquaries etched with old sigils, faces tight with restrained unease and lastly, standing slightly apart, two figures in river blue, hooded, barefoot despite the cold stone, palms stained dark from constant contact with water and silt, the river clergy.

  They do not look at me directly, the river clergy rarely do, but I feel their attention on me all the same. Similar to a current tugging at the edge of my awareness. Preparation finish in silence; lanterns are checked; ropes coiled; steel tested and retested; more for reassurance than necessity. I feel Nemain at my hip, quiet but alert, its presence a constant weight, like a predator lurking in the bushes waiting for a sign of weakness. I try to keep my hand away from the hilt. There will be no drawing it today, if I can help it.

  Garrick steps in closer once more, lowering his voice. “If this goes poorly, we fall back to the gate. No heroics.”

  I reply. “I don’t do heroics. I do endings.”

  That earns me a tight smile. He gestures towards the descent. “Then let’s make this a clean one.”

  We descend without ceremony. The iron gate groans behind us, its echo rolling down the stone throat of the waterworks until it thins into nothing. Lanternlight shrinks, pressed tight by the damp walls that sweat with age. The air grows colder with every step, not the honest cold of the night wind but the stagnant chill of places long denied the sun, like the stone remembers the neglect.

  The channel ahead narrows, guiding the river into disciplined lines carved centuries ago by hands that believed order could tame anything, even water. For a time, it almost worked. The flow is steady, controlled, murmuring against stone like a thing trained to obedience. Almost.

  I kneel near the edge and dip my fingers into the current. The water recoils. Not visibly and certainly not enough for the others to notice, but I feel it. A subtle resistance, like skin pulling away from a blade that has not yet cut. The grove’s echo in my chest tightens in response, a low warning pulse, slow and deliberate.

  “This far down, it should be cleaner.” I say quietly.

  Garrick nods. “That’s what the masons swore. Gravity does the work for us. Filth flows away.”

  “It’s not flowing away,” I reply. “It’s being fed.”

  The words settle badly among the group. One of the guards shifts his grip on his spear. The river clergy do not look surprised. They stand barefoot at the edge of the channel, eyes unfocused, listening to something beneath the sound of water.

  “This river is… tired,” one of them murmurs at last. “It has been made to carry too much without rest.”

  “That’s not how rivers work,” Garrick says, though without any heat behind it.

  The priest inclines his head. “But that is how they end.”

  We continue moving deeper as the architecture changes gradually. Squared stone giving way to older curves, channels branching like veins rather than streets. Moss thickens along the walls, dark and slick, fed by more than moisture alone. My lantern throws light ahead but the shadows feel reluctant to retreat, clinging to corners as though waiting to be called back.

  Nemain is quiet, a little too quiet. The sword rests against my back like a held breath, one not born of hunger or whisper but attention. The kind of attention that does not need to announce itself.

  I pull my hand away from the hilt, as I hear something drip ahead. The sound is wrong, it isn’t water, it’s thicker, slower followed by a faint wet echo that suggests depth where there should be none. The channel widens into a holding basin, once used to regulate pressure during floods. Now the surface of the water there barely flows, filmed with a dull sheen that swallows lanternlight instead of reflecting it.

  I stop at the basin’s edge. The corruption is unmistakable now. It is not rot or poison in the simple sense. It is intent. Something has taught the water to want.

  “Nothing’s moving,” one of the guard mutters. “But I swear I can hear breathing… coming from ahead of us.”

  I close my eyes and let my awareness sink, carefully, the way one lowers a hand towards an animal that might bite. Below the basin, far below, the earth opens like a wound. Water is being pulled downward, not by gravity but by hunger shaped into patience. Whatever lies beneath is not rushing or panicking. It is drinking slowly, confidently, like it has all the time in the world.

  This was never meant to kill quickly; this was meant to spread. I straighten, heart heavy in my chest.

  “The basin isn’t a source,” I say. “It’s a mouthpiece.”

  Garrick’s jaw tightens. “Then where does it lead?”

  I look toward the dark channel spilling from the basin’s far side, where the stonework collapses into something older, rougher, gnawed open as if by years of subtle pressure rather than force.

  “Down,” I answer. “Where the city stopped listening to its water.”

  The river clergy step back as one, palms dark with silt, expressions grim.

  “This place was sealed for a reason,” one of them says. “If we go further, the river will remember us.”

  I meet Garrick’s eyes.

  “We’re already remembered,” I say. “This was only the warning.”

  Behind us the water ripples, once. As if something below has noticed that we are standing at the edge and has finally turned its attention upward.