Old Harrow did not notice the forest had changed.
That was not unusual. He had spent most of his life not noticing things other people found alarming. Sounds others called whispers were, to him, only thoughts that had slipped loose. Shapes that moved when no one else saw them were just the forest stretching its limbs.
He had come to the Greenwake young—young enough that no one quite remembered why he stayed, only that he never left. Some said grief. Others said debt. Most agreed that Harrow had already been half-mad when the trees finally claimed the rest of him.
He lived where the paths thinned and the forest forgot to warn travelers away.
His shelter was a lean-to of bark and scavenged timber, patched and repatched until no original piece remained. Smoke stains marked the stones of an old fire ring. Bones—rabbit, bird, the occasional deer—hung drying from lines he'd knotted with care no one else would have bothered with.
Harrow knew the forest.
Not like hunters did. Not by signs or seasons or sensible boundaries. He knew it the way one knows an argument that never quite ends—by rhythm, by repetition, by what returned no matter how often you tried to leave it behind.
When the pestilence reached his part of the Greenwake, it did not announce itself.
It simply fit.
The moss thickened around his shelter first. Harrow noticed that. He prodded it with a stick and frowned.
"Too soft," he muttered. "Too wet."
The moss did not pull away. It did not recoil from his touch the way some growth did. It yielded, then slowly swelled back into shape, leaving a faint residue on the stick that shimmered briefly before sinking into the wood.
Harrow sniffed it.
"Still moss," he decided.
He had always trusted his nose.
The animals changed next.
A fox he'd seen for years—mangy, clever, missing half an ear—stopped running when Harrow approached. It sat instead, head tilted, eyes reflecting too much light in the gloom.
"Lost your fear, have you?" Harrow asked.
The fox did not blink.
It took a step closer.
Harrow chuckled nervously and waved it off. "Go on. I don't have scraps today."
The fox obeyed.
But it did not leave.
It lingered at the edge of Harrow's vision for hours, pacing slow circles that never quite crossed into his camp. When it finally vanished, Harrow felt—not relief—but absence.
That unsettled him.
The air grew heavy in the following days. Breathing felt like pulling damp cloth through his lungs. His joints ached in ways weather could not explain. Still, Harrow stayed.
He always did.
On the seventh morning after the moss thickened, Harrow woke coughing.
Something wet coated his tongue. He spat and stared at the ground as dark flecks soaked into the dirt, absorbed too quickly.
"That's new," he rasped.
He stood slowly, leaning on his staff—a crooked thing he'd cut years ago because it felt right, though he could no longer remember why. The wood beneath his hand felt warmer than usual. Almost alive.
The forest leaned toward him.
Harrow staggered, suddenly dizzy. The ground beneath his feet shifted—not collapsing, not opening—but welcoming. Roots pressed upward, cradling his boots, steadying him.
"That's… kind," he whispered, confused.
Pain bloomed next.
Not sharp. Not cruel.
Expansive.
It started in his chest, a pressure like a breath held too long, then spread outward through muscle and bone. His spine arched as something inside him adjusted, joints popping wetly as ligaments thickened and tightened.
Harrow screamed.
The sound did not carry far.
The forest absorbed it.
His skin darkened in patches, veins standing out like vines beneath bark. Fingers stiffened, nails lengthening and hardening into horn-like ridges. His eyes flooded with light—too much, too clear—until the world fractured into layers of motion and scent and growth.
He fell to his knees.
The ground rose to meet him.
Roots pierced his trousers, then his skin, not tearing but merging. Pain flared again, then dulled as sensation rewrote itself. His thoughts scattered, memories dissolving into impressions—hunger, shelter, warmth, belonging.
The pestilence worked patiently.
It did not kill Harrow.
It kept him.
By dusk, nothing recognizably human remained at the center of the clearing.
A thick-limbed thing knelt there, fused to the forest floor, chest rising and falling with a breath that carried spores instead of air. Its face had smoothed into something mask-like, features pulled outward and repurposed. Eyes watched the forest from sockets rimmed with fibrous growth, unblinking and aware.
Where Harrow had once spoken to the trees, this new thing listened.
The Greenwake shifted around it, adjusting paths, redirecting roots, accommodating its presence as it had always accommodated injury.
The pestilence had learned from its first human host.
And it was satisfied.
For now.
_____
A week passed.
Nothing happened.
That, more than anything else, unsettled Rowan Hale.
The days unfolded as they always had—chores done, fences mended, stores checked and rechecked. Caelan rose early, worked steadily, spoke little more or less than usual. He laughed with his friends when they came by. He ate well. He slept.
And yet.
Rowan noticed the small things. He always had.
The south fence—old, warped, prone to sagging—had straightened after Caelan replaced a single post that should not have borne the load it now carried. Rowan tested it himself, pushing with his shoulder until the wood creaked in protest but did not fail.
"Huh," he murmured.
The creek that liked to flood its banks after heavy rain… didn't. The water spread, slowed, then cut a cleaner channel through loose stone as if it had been guided there. The field below dried faster than it should have.
Beneficial.
Explainable.
Uncomfortable.
Rowan said nothing.
Caelan, for his part, seemed… calmer. Not happier, exactly—but more settled in his skin when he was outdoors. The staff never left his reach now. It leaned against walls when he worked, rested across his shoulders when he walked, fit into his movements as if it had always been there.
"You don't need that for splitting kindling," Rowan said once, not sharply.
Caelan glanced at the staff, then back at his father. "I know."
"Then why carry it?"
Caelan considered the question longer than it deserved. "Feels wrong not to."
Rowan grunted, accepting that answer for what it was: incomplete, but honest.
The odd moments continued.
A cracked axle on the cart held together long enough to reach the far pasture—then snapped cleanly the moment the load was off it, sparing both mule and man. A loose stone in the foundation shifted back into place after Caelan pressed it once, palm flat, as if feeling for a pulse.
Even the animals behaved differently around him.
The old hound followed Caelan more closely now, choosing his shadow over Rowan's for the first time in years. Chickens scattered less when he moved through the yard. A skittish mare allowed him to approach without the usual snort and sidestep.
"Something about you," Mireth said one afternoon, half-joking as she watched him calm the mare with a hand on her neck. "You smell like rain before it falls."
Caelan snorted. "You're imagining things."
"Am I?" she asked, smiling—but her eyes lingered.
Elowen wrote more often when she visited, recording yields that exceeded expectations by small, irritating margins. Tarin complained that games were no longer fair. Brannik watched in silence, gaze sharp and unblinking whenever Caelan thought no one was looking.
None of it was bad.
That was the problem.
Rowan felt it most clearly in the evenings, when the work was done and the light softened. Caelan would sit outside longer than before, staff across his knees, eyes drifting toward the tree line. Not yearning. Not restless.
Attentive.
Once, Rowan joined him without speaking. They sat side by side, listening to the Greenwake breathe.
"You all right?" Rowan asked eventually.
Caelan nodded. "Yeah."
After a moment, he added, "Better, I think."
Rowan studied his son's profile—the familiar line of his jaw, the steadiness of his breathing. He saw no sickness there. No danger. No strain.
Only alignment.
"That so," Rowan said.
"Feels like things fit better," Caelan went on, choosing his words carefully. "Like when you finally set a beam straight and everything else stops complaining."
Rowan smiled faintly at that. "You always did have a way with bad metaphors."
Caelan grinned.
They sat in silence again.
The forest watched.
And far away—though neither of them could know it—the Greenwake bore a wound that had learned to think. The balance Caelan unknowingly restored in small, human ways pulled at that wound like a thread under tension.
Nothing broke.
Nothing flared.
But the space between what was and what should be narrowed, day by quiet day.
And the world, already strained, took note.