First, he took up the hammer.

  Percival had cast the bundle onto the cot but a moment prior. It fell with a dull, grim thud, and the dust of the mattress rose up like a phantom.

  "The courier left it at the South Gate ere the sun fell," the Captain had said, a cheroot glowing amidst the shadows of his face.

  "No name given. He said only that it was for the rock-boy."

  August looked long upon the shroud of oilcloth. It carried the scent of deep earth and singed iron, the grim perfume of the Masons’ yard when the day’s labor is done.

  He peeled back the cloth.

  At first, his mind could not grasp the thing he beheld.

  It was a hammer, yet it lay there as a monstrosity of dark intent. The head was not the common cast-iron wedge of the Guild. It was a solid block of fold-wrought metal, dense as the heart of a collapsed star. It offered no shine to the room; rather, it swallowed the light, drinking the morning sun into a matte and charcoal void.

  The striking face was broad, scarred with diamond-dust that glittered like trapped frost, while the claw was hooked and serrated, fashioned not to draw nails, but to tear open the ribs of the world.

  The haft was of ironwood, ancient and turned to stone, clad in leather so old it had blackened with time. Along the neck, hewn deep into the metal, were runes. These were not the flowery scripts of the Artificers, but the hard, geometric angles of the Dweorg.

  August set his hand upon the grip.

  The balance was fierce. It yearned to swing. It pulled at his wrist, heavy and hungry.

  Who...?

  He ran his thumb over the cold iron, and there he felt a ridge. A flaw? Nay. A seam. It was where the outer skin of star-fallen iron had been folded over a core of something else. Something darker.

  Void-glass.

  The truth of it struck him like a blow to the chest. The breath fled his lungs in a sharp hiss.

  He knew this weight. He knew this heat.

  He remembered Borin’s voice, from years lost, speaking of such tools. The old master’s voice had dropped to that gravel-grind he used when he spoke of the elder kingdom, hiding the softness of memory behind a wall of coughing.

  "A liar is common steel," Borin had rasped, sliding a like ingot across the workbench. "It bends when the Aether bites. It trembles. This will not. Dweorg-forged. Folded over void-glass. If a hammer you must be, lad, be a heavy one."

  Borin.

  The old man had not merely exiled him. He had armed him.

  August’s sight grew dim. A hot, stinging pressure rose behind his eyes, and he blinked rapidly, beating it back.

  Regret tasted of ash in his mouth. He had left the yard with his head bowed low. He had not looked back. He had spoken no thanks. He had spoken no farewell.

  And Borin, that stubborn old stone-heart, had sent his own legacy to the barracks rather than speak it to his face.

  "Thank you," August whispered to the empty room.

  The words felt small against the doom-wrought weight in his hand.

  He wiped his eyes with a rough hand, angered by the moisture. He slotted the hammer into his belt. It dragged his trousers down a fraction, feeling less like a tool and more like an anchor for a ship in a storm.

  The stone songbird went into his pocket, a jagged comfort against his hip.

  He patted the brass dome of the cleaning automaton one last time. "Keep the rust off, Barnaby."

  The stable door groaned open. The morning light was harsh, glaring off the pools of water in the courtyard.

  He had not waited for the quartermaster to grant him a squad of fresh recruits. He had bypassed the roster entire, slamming Percival’s warrant onto the dispatcher’s desk.

  The Captain’s seal was fresh, granting the bearer rights of requisition, and August had used it to force the runners out.

  The Historian. The Artificer.

  He walked to the South Gate.

  The compound of the Wardens was rousing from sleep. Men in heavy plate drilled in the mud, and their shouts were rhythmic and hollow. They ceased when they saw him. The 'Instrument'. The Rock-Witch.

  August did not look at them. He watched the ground. Stone. Dirt. Mud.

  They awaited him at the transport.

  It was a flatbed wain, scarred and unpainted, hitched to a mule that seemed hewn from spite and old leather.

  Valerius stood beside the beast, clutching a notebook like a shield. He was clad in a coat that cost more than August’s life, wool, tailored, pristine. He looked wrathful.

  "I was deep within the tally of the years," Valerius snapped as August drew near.

  "A most delicate cross-reference of shards from the Third Era. And then a runner arrives, breathless, claiming the 'Instrument' requires my wisdom on... what was it? Sylvan whispers?"

  "I need eyes that know what they see," August said. "Not just soldiers."

  "Flattery is a crude coin, 'Master' August. But I shall accept it."

  Valerius turned his disdain to the mule, poking its flank with a gloved finger.

  "Though I question the transport. This creature is a dead end of life. A testament to nature’s lack of ambition. Do not look at me with those teeth."

  "Let the beast be, Valerius," Bella called from the bed of the wain.

  She wrestled with the 'Arachne' unit, binding the heavy brass housing against the sideboard.

  "He has a name. I asked the master of the stables."

  "And what name does a beast of such plain malice possess?"

  "Proctor," Bella said, grunting as she pulled tight a leather strap. "For he is stubborn, smells of old parchment, and refuses to labor until you shout at him."

  "A jest," Valerius sighed. "Proctor. It is fitting. He possesses the visage of a bureaucrat."

  August halted at the rail.

  "Elmsworth let you go?"

  It was the first question he had asked, for in all the month of August’s dwelling in the stables, the High Artificer had kept Bella locked in the workshop like a prize hen.

  Bella tightened a strap, and the leather groaned under her grip.

  "I reminded her that her current Aether-cage has a fourteen percent chance of rupture without my harmonic keys. She decided that risking my exposure to 'The Instrument' was preferable to the destruction of the East Wing. She signed the pass."

  She patted the brass housing of the device.

  "And she granted the gear," Bella added, a grim smile touching her lips.

  "I told her the Silence-Coils required testing in the field. She was too burdened by fear of the dampener to argue."

  She looked up then. She did not smile. She scanned him. Her eyes tracked from the heavy boots to the Dweorg-forged hammer at his hip, up to the white streak in his hair.

  "That hammer," she said. "It is Borin’s?"

  "Aye." August’s hand drifted to the haft. He did not trust his voice to say more.

  "It is well. Common steel would shatter where we go." She tapped the Arachne unit.

  "The signs from the Depths are wild. If you begin to glow, speak. I have no wish to scrape you from the padding."

  "A comfort indeed," Valerius muttered, climbing onto the bench seat with the grace of a cripple.

  "Shall we proceed? Or do we await a written invitation from the trees?"

  August climbed up. He took the reins. The leather was cold.

  "Walk," he said.

  The mule snorted, weighed the merits of treason, and then lurched forward.

  They left the city behind. The cobblestones gave way to gravel, and then to deep ruts. The smoke of the stacks faded, replaced by the scent of damp earth and rot.

  The journey out of the city’s throat was slow. Antheia did not release her children easily; the sprawl of shanties and refuse heaps clung to the road for leagues, a festering ring of timber and despair that eventually surrendered to the encroaching wild.

  Valerius spent the first hour lamenting the carriage.

  "There is no suspension," Bella corrected him, adjusting the tension on a coil of copper wire.

  "It is but an axle bolted to wood. You feel the road because you are meant to."

  "I am meant to be in a lecture hall," Valerius said, clutching the railing as the wheel found a pit of particular depth.

  "I should be discussing the theoretical weight of Aether, not suffering the practical application of spinal ruin."

  August said nothing. He drove.

  The silence of the open road was a relief after the constant, grinding pressure of the Guild. But as they moved further from the outpost, the quality of that silence changed.

  The birds, usually a constant chatter in the hedgerows, grew few. The wind died. The air grew heavy, pressing against the skin like a wet wool blanket.

  By the time the wheels ground to a halt at the edge of the Veridian Depths, the light had failed. The sun was a pale, strangled disc behind a canopy that felt less like a ceiling and more like a lid.

  Frost had dusted the fields they passed, but here, the cold vanished.

  The Veridian Depths defied the season.

  The air radiating from the tree line was humid, smelling of wet loam and summer rot, a furnace that kept the winter at bay.

  It sat on the horizon like a green wound in the white landscape.

  Proctor planted his hooves in the muck. He did not shy, nor did he bray. He simply turned to stone.

  "Proctor. Walk." August slapped the reins. Leather hit hide with a wet sound.

  The mule refused to blink. His ears were pinned back so flat against his skull they looked like felt patches sewn to the bone.

  "He is done," August said.

  He tied the reins off on the brake lever, the leather stiff with cold.

  "He will not cross the threshold."

  Valerius shifted on the bench seat, his coat pulled tight against the damp. He had a notebook open on his lap, the pages fluttering in a wind that had not yet touched the trees.

  "Fear is hardly a philosophical constant, Chattel. Apply the crop. The beast has ceased its function."

  "Look at his skin."

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  Valerius looked. The mule’s flank shivered. The muscles rolled under the hide like water boiling in a pot.

  "Instinct," Bella said.

  She jumped down from the back of the cart, her boots sinking two inches into the loam. She adjusted the heavy brass housing of the Arachne unit strapped to her back.

  The brass joints sang a small, insect-song, a sound too loud in the sudden quiet.

  "Beasts sense the weight of the air before we do. Or they sense predators."

  "There are no predators here," Valerius said, climbing down with significantly less grace.

  He wiped a smudge of mud from his trousers, inspecting the fabric with disdain.

  "The Registry lists the Veridian Depths as a 'Resource Zone, Second Mark.' Timber. Sap. Perhaps a few territorial bore-worms. Nothing that would frighten a war-bred mule."

  August swung down. The ground felt wrong. Soft. Sponge-like. In the city, the earth was packed hard, beaten into submission by boots and wheels. Here, the earth pushed back.

  He rested his hand on the Dweorg hammer at his hip. The weight was a comfort. A heavy anchor in a world that felt as if it were drifting. He touched his pocket. The stone songbird was there. Cold. Solid.

  "The Registry is wrong," August said.

  He walked to the tree line.

  It was not merely trees. It was a fortification. Pines the width of cathedral pillars crowded together, their branches interlocked like the fingers of a nervous man. Briars thick as a wrist wove through the gaps, armed with thorns that dripped black sap.

  "Smell that?" August asked.

  Bella sniffed. She wrinkled her nose.

  "Pine. Rot. And... turpentine?"

  "Aggression," August said. "It smells like a cornered dog."

  "You mistake wood for flesh," Valerius muttered, pulling a brass compass from his vest.

  He frowned. The needle spun lazily.

  "Compass-madness. A high gathering of Aether. Likely a ley-line convergence. That would explain the quick growth."

  "The map claims there is a logging road," Bella said.

  She tapped the glass face of her wrist-gauge. The needle jumped, then settled.

  "The list claims twenty men. Two steam-wains. A fire-saw. One cannot hide so much iron under a bush."

  August pointed with the hammer.

  "You can, if the bush is hungry."

  He stepped up to the wall of green. There was a gap, barely wide enough for a man, where the briars had been hacked away recently. The cuts were fresh, weeping amber sap, but new shoots were already curling over the wounds, white and soft as maggots.

  "The road is not gone," August said. "It was eaten. The roots grew through the ruts."

  He stepped across the line.

  The sound died.

  It was a guillotine drop. One moment, the wheeze of the mule and the distant, grinding hum of the city were present; the next, nothing. The air inside the grove was still. Dead still. The kind of silence that rings in the ears after a gunshot.

  Bella stepped through behind him, then Valerius.

  "Fascinating," Valerius whispered. He did not mean to whisper. The silence demanded it.

  "Sound absorption. The foliage drinks the noise. It swallows the echo ere it is born."

  "It is not absorption," August said. He gripped the hammer tighter. The leather of the handle creaked.

  "It is holding its breath."

  They walked.

  The light filtering down through the canopy was green and bruised, the color of old bottle glass. It distorted depth. Ferns looked like pits; roots looked like snakes.

  The air grew heavy, pressing against the ears, tasting of copper and crushed needles. Every step was a violation. The mulch squelched, a wet, sucking sound that seemed to echo for leagues.

  August kept his eyes moving. High. Low. The canopy. The roots.

  Master Borin had taught him to read stone. Look for the stress lines. Look for the cracks. Wood was different. Stone waited; wood watched.

  They found the camp ten minutes in.

  The clearing was a tomb.

  A steam-wain, a massive beast of iron and brass that should have weighed four tons, sat in the center. It was tilted on its side.

  Thick vines, muscular, corded things with bark like rough iron, had wrapped around the boiler, the pistons, the wheels. They had not merely grown over it; they had constricted. The brass pipes were crushed flat. The iron stack was bent double, choked off.

  There was no rust. The metal gleamed dully under the moss. This had not happened over years. It had happened while the boiler was hot.

  "Look at the taps," Bella said.

  She walked to the machine, pulling a caliper from her belt. She did not touch the vines.

  "The steam-vent is fused. The firebox... the door is buckled inward."

  "Crushing inward?" Valerius asked, keeping a respectful distance from a patch of purple mushrooms that pulsed with a faint, sickly light.

  "Squeezing," Bella corrected.

  "The vine squeezed the fire out of it. It choked the engine before it could blow."

  August ignored the machine. He looked at the tents.

  They were canvas, standard Guild issue. They were standing upright, but they were fuzzy. A coat of grey-green lichen, thick as velvet, covered every inch of fabric.

  He walked to the nearest one and used the head of his hammer to push the flap aside.

  Empty.

  A cot, covered in the same grey moss. A table. A plate of food.

  He leaned in. The food was a lump of grey dust. A spoon stood upright in what had been stew, held fast by mold.

  "Where are the men?" August asked.

  His voice sounded flat, absorbed instantly by the moss. "No blood. No fight. The axes are stacked by the fire pit."

  Valerius poked a boot at a pile of tools.

  "Perhaps they fled? Panic spread through the ranks? A contagion?"

  "A raid takes the tools," Bella said, moving to the second wain. "Steel is worth more than timber. A raid burns the tents. This was not a raid."

  "An eviction?" Valerius suggested.

  "A burial," August said.

  He turned in a slow circle. The trees around the clearing were massive, ancient pines, their bark scaled like dragon hide. They loomed inward, leaning over the camp like elders judging a crime.

  "Quiet," August said.

  "I did not speak," Valerius snapped.

  "The wind. It stopped."

  "There is no wind, August. We are in a hollow protected by—"

  "No," August cut him off. He took a glove off, exposing his scarred hand. He held it out, palm down. "The trees. They stopped breathing."

  The vibration started in the soles of his boots.

  Low. Beneath hearing. It bypassed the ears and went straight to the stomach, a nausea of motion.

  "Tremors?" Bella looked at her wrist-gauge. "The needle is thrashing. But the rock is still. It is Aetheric. The thickness is off the measure. It is drowning the dial."

  "The roots," Valerius said. His voice pitched up. "Look at the roots."

  The ground around the steam-wain rippled. The soil churned as if something large swam just beneath the surface.

  Then the trees opened.

  They did not split. They bloomed.

  Figures detached themselves from the rough bark of the giant pines surrounding the camp. They were not flesh.

  They were made of the wood itself, twisting, knotted fibers that formed the shape of women, but elongated, faceless, terrifyingly tall. Their limbs were branches, their hair was hanging moss, and in the center of their chests, a knot of amber light pulsed like a slow, dying heart.

  Dryads.

  August stepped in front of Bella, raising the hammer.

  "Don't move," he hissed.

  Valerius scrambled back, tripping over a root and landing hard in the mulch.

  "Resplendent. Terrifying. Note the lack of facial features. They do not need detector organs. They are the forest."

  "They guard something," Bella said. She had her magnification monocle down, staring not at the Dryads, but at the trees from which they had emerged.

  "Look. In the trunks."

  August risked a glance.

  The bark of the pines was translucent in patches, stretched thin like skin over a blister. Beneath the wood, shapes were visible. Human shapes.

  Men.

  They were embedded in the trees, sunk into the wood like flies in amber. Their faces were pressed against the inner surface of the bark, eyes closed, mouths open in silent slack-jawed sleep. Their chests moved. Slow. Painfully slow.

  "They are alive," Bella whispered.

  "Twenty men. The crew. They are not dead. They have been... claimed."

  "Preserved," Valerius corrected, scrambling to his feet and hiding behind August’s bulk.

  "Like sap in winter. They are in stasis."

  The nearest Dryad drifted forward. It did not walk; the roots that formed its feet flowed over the ground. It raised a hand, a bundle of sharpened twigs, and pointed at the steam-wain.

  A sound tore from its wooden throat. The sound of a tree snapping in a storm. Crr-aaack.

  "It attacks," Bella said. Her hand went to the Arachne unit on her back.

  "They defend the territory. I have a ward."

  "Bella, wait," August said. The air around the Dryad vibrated. It was not merely magic; it was wrath.

  "They are not attacking. They are warning."

  "They have twenty men hostage in the sap-wood," Bella said, her voice turning to that cold, clipped lecture tone she used when the fear took hold.

  "That is an act of war."

  She cranked a lever on the side of the brass housing. A coil on her shoulder began to spin, glowing blue.

  "Deploying Silence-Field. Three. Two."

  "Don't!" August yelled.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The device did not loose a bullet. It shrieked. A wave of distortion, visible as a ripple in the air, slammed into the Dryads.

  It was meant to disrupt the Aetheric bonds holding their forms together. It was meant to unknit the magic.

  It failed.

  The wave hit the Dryads and shattered.

  The amber light in their chests flared from dull orange to blinding white. The forest roared. Not a metaphor. The ground heaved upward, roots exploding from the soil like breaching whales.

  SCREEEECH.

  The backlash from the dampener slammed Bella backward. Sparks showered from the brass housing. She hit the mud, gasping.

  "The call!" she yelled, scrambling at the controls.

  "It strikes back! It is too thick! They feed on the clash!"

  "Turn it off!" August roared. He swung the hammer, smashing a root that whipped toward Valerius. Wood splintered, hard as stone.

  "I cannot! The loop is melted!"

  The Dryads were glowing now, vibrating with such intensity that the moss on the ground began to smoke.

  The sound was unbearable, a high, drilling whine that bored into the teeth.

  "They hate the noise!" August realized.

  He looked at the steam engine. The crushed pipes. The silenced valves.

  He looked at the men in the trees. Asleep. Silent.

  "The hammer," Valerius screamed, cowering under his arms.

  "Hit them, boy! Break the timber!"

  August looked at the hammer in his hand. The iron head was heavy. Deadly. It was a tool of breaking. Of noise.

  Clang. Clang. Clang. The rhythm of the yard. The rhythm of the city.

  The forest was screaming at the noise.

  "No," August said.

  He dropped the hammer.

  It hit the mud with a wet thud.

  "August!" Bella screamed, struggling to her knees. "Do not surrender! They will mulch you!"

  "Shut up," August said. He did not shout. He said it with a sudden, terrifying calm.

  "Shut up, Bella. Shut up, Valerius."

  He reached up and tore the heavy leather glove from his right hand. The scar, the white circle of the Aether-burn, pulsed.

  He walked toward the lead Dryad.

  "August!"

  "Quiet!"

  He closed his eyes.

  He ceased listening with his ears. He listened with the bone.

  The Song.

  Usually, in the city, the song of the stone was a chaotic mess. A thousand different notes of granite, limestone, slate, and mortar, all shouting over each other. It was a headache.

  This was different.

  This was wood. It was slower. Deeper. It lacked the rigid structure of crystal lattices, replaced by the fluid, pumping rhythm of water moving through capillaries.

  But over the top of it, the pain.

  It hit him.

  SCREAM.

  The bite of the saw. The chug-chug-chug of the steam engine. The ringing of axes. To the forest, it was not industry. It was torture. It was a constant, grating shriek that tore at the peace of the Aether.

  They had not trapped the men to eat them. They had trapped them to silence them.

  August opened his eyes. The Dryad was three feet away. It towered over him, a construct of rage and old growth. The twig-fingers were raised to strike.

  August did not flinch. He did not look at the monster. He looked through it, at the flow of energy binding the roots together.

  He opened his mouth.

  He did not speak. He hummed.

  A low, gravelly note. Deep in the chest.

  Hhmmmmmm.

  He found the resonance of the forest’s anger, that high, sharp spike of irritation, and he pushed a low, flat wave of stillness against it.

  Resonance.

  The air rippled.

  The Dryad froze. The twig-hand paused in mid-air.

  August stepped closer. He placed his bare hand on the rough bark of the Dryad’s "chest," right over the glowing amber heart.

  "August..." Bella’s voice was a whisper now. Terrified.

  "Hush," August murmured.

  He pushed the feeling into the wood.

  Stillness. Cold iron growing warm. The fire going out. The noise fading.

  He projected the image of the steam engine cold and silent. He projected the image of the axes rusting in the earth.

  We are leaving.

  He pushed the concept of departure.

  The noise goes with us.

  The vibration in the ground slowed. The high-pitched whine of the Dryads dropped, changing from a shriek to a confused murmur. The blinding white light faded back to a soft, pulsing amber.

  The Dryad lowered its arm. The twisted wood of its face seemed to tilt, listening.

  "We hear you," August whispered. His nose began to bleed, a warm trickle running over his lip. Resonance took a toll. It burned energy like a furnace.

  "The iron is heavy. It hurts. We will take it away."

  He pressed his forehead against the wood.

  Release.

  The grove shuddered. A sound like a deep exhale rushed through the canopy.

  Cr-crack. Squelch.

  Behind the Dryads, the great pines split open.

  It was not violent. It was a disgorging. The bark peeled back like wet lips.

  Men tumbled out.

  They hit the mulch, gasping, coughing up thick, clear slime. They were covered in sap, their skin pale and wrinkled like they had been in a bath for a week.

  "Air..." one of them croaked. "The green... the light..."

  The lead Dryad did not retreat. It drifted closer, the scent of turpentine and old grave-soil rolling off its form in waves. It loomed over Valerius, who squeaked and tried to burrow backward into the ferns.

  The creature ignored him. It turned its eyeless face to August.

  The voice did not come from a throat. It was the sound of a bow drawn across a viol of dead wood, a dry, resonant creak that shaped itself into words.

  "Stone-Kin," it rasped.

  August stood his ground, though his blood ran cold.

  "I keep the bargain," he said.

  "The bargain stands," the Dryad answered, and now the voice was a chorus, echoing from the throats of the others fading into the bark.

  "The Iron-Beasts sleep. But the Grey Breath spreads, Son of the Mountain. It eats the silence. We grant you passage, but heed the roots."

  It leaned down, a branch-finger brushing the hammer at August's belt.

  "The World-Wound festers. When next we meet, there shall be no words. Only the axe and the thorn."

  The Dryads began to dissolve. They did not vanish; they simply sank back into the trees, their forms losing definition until they were but knots in the wood again.

  The silence returned. But it was not heavy anymore. It was just quiet.

  August pulled his hand back. He staggered, his knees buckling.

  He sat down hard in the mud.

  "August!" Bella was there in a second. She dropped the ruined dampener and grabbed his face. Her hands were shaking.

  "Your eyes. They are dilated. The pulse is thready."

  "I'm fine," August wheezed. He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "Hungry."

  Valerius crawled out from behind a fern, brushing pine needles from his coat. He looked at the gasping loggers, then at the trees, then at August.

  "You spoke to it," Valerius said.

  He sounded offended.

  "That is not possible. Wood is not stone. Earth-craft applies to crystal forms. Plant is—"

  "It's all the same," August said. "It's all just weight. And vibration."

  "You apologized," Bella said. She was staring at him. Looking at him. "I saw the readings. You did not dampen the field. You... sang with it. You turned their anger."

  "I told them we were leaving," August said. "They just wanted the quiet back."

  The logger foreman, a burly man with a beard matted with sap, dragged himself upright. He looked at the steam engine, strangled by the vines.

  "My rig," he coughed. "The company... that’s five thousand crowns of gear."

  "Leave it," August said.

  "But—"

  "Leave it," August said, louder. He looked at the man. His eyes were hard. "That was the price. The iron stays. The noise stays. You walk away with your skin."

  The foreman looked at the trees. He looked at the dark, hollow spaces between the roots. He shivered.

  "Right," the foreman said. "Right. Lads! Up! Move!"

  The loggers scrambled. They did not grab their boots. They did not grab their coats. They stumbled toward the road, supporting each other, running from the silence.

  Bella helped August stand. She kept her hand on his arm, even after he was steady.

  "That was not mechanics," she said softly. "That was bargaining. With a vegetable."

  "It was just listening," August said. He picked up his glove. He picked up his hammer. It felt heavier than before.

  "Fascinating," Valerius said, scribbling furiously in his notebook. "A shared harmony. The meanings for the High Law of Aether are... well, staggering. But purely academic if we drown."

  "Drown?" August looked up.

  He had not noticed the sky.

  Above the canopy, the light had changed. The bruised green was gone, replaced by a dark, angry purple. The air temperature had dropped twenty degrees in a minute.

  Rumble.

  Thunder. Not the sound of trees breaking. The sound of the sky tearing open.

  "That is a Thunderhead," Valerius said, pointing a shaking finger upward. "And it is not natural. The air-drop... that storm has been building since we crossed the line. The Dryads' anger... it pulled the weather down."

  A drop of rain hit August’s cheek. It was cold as ice. Heavy as lead.

  "We are three miles from the outpost," Bella said. She looked at the sky, then at the mud, then at August. "The road is washed out."

  "Run," August said.

  The heavens opened.

  It was a deluge. A sheet of water, freezing and violent, hammered into the canopy, turning the world into a blur of grey noise and mud.

  They ran.