The new contract wasn’t on the board.

  It arrived folded beneath Aerin’s door sometime after midnight.

  He noticed it because Liora woke him.

  Someone has been here.

  Aerin sat up immediately.

  The small room was unchanged. Window closed. Door still latched from the inside.

  But the parchment lay on the floor beside his boots.

  He picked it up.

  No guild seal. No handwriting he recognized.

  Just a simple line burned faintly into the paper:

  “You noticed the first relay.

  Come find the second.”

  Below it sat a crude map.

  Aerin studied it in silence.

  “That’s not funny,” he said.

  It was not meant to be, Liora replied.

  The map pointed north of Mossmere—into terrain that the guild maps labeled simply unrecorded forest.

  Which meant one of two things.

  Either no one had explored it.

  Or everyone who had… stopped reporting.

  Aerin swung his legs off the bed.

  “Well,” he muttered, reaching for his cloak, “whoever left this already knows I won’t ignore it.”

  Yes, Liora said softly.

  That is the problem.

  The forest changed as he moved deeper.

  Not visibly at first.

  Trees grew closer together. Moss thickened along the roots. The usual background hum of life-aspected mana faded into uneven patches.

  Then Bloom Sense stirred.

  Aerin slowed.

  “What do you see?” he whispered.

  Nothing.

  He frowned. “That’s not possible.”

  Bloom Sense normally showed faint strands everywhere—life threading through soil and bark and leaf.

  Here—

  There were holes.

  Not corruption. Not decay.

  Just absence.

  The ground ahead dipped into a narrow valley where fog clung stubbornly between crooked stone pillars. At first glance it looked like ordinary ruins.

  But Bloom Sense refused to touch it.

  The ability recoiled.

  Aerin stopped at the edge.

  “…That’s new.”

  The land here does not wish to be remembered, Liora said quietly.

  “How does land forget itself?”

  By being told to.

  Aerin stepped closer.

  The fog shifted.

  Not drifting—adjusting.

  Like something making room.

  He exhaled slowly.

  “This wasn’t on the map.”

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  Because maps require agreement, Liora said.

  He glanced back.

  The path behind him had already blurred, trees leaning together in ways he didn’t remember.

  Aerin turned back toward the valley.

  “Then I guess someone disagrees.”

  He stepped forward.

  Bloom Sense vanished.

  The moment his boot crossed the valley line, the ability went completely silent—as if a door had slammed shut inside his mind.

  Aerin felt suddenly blind.

  “…Liora?”

  I am still here.

  Her voice sounded thinner, stretched.

  But whatever sleeps here does not like witnesses.

  The fog parted just enough for him to see the center of the valley.

  A single structure stood there.

  Not a tower.

  Not a ruin.

  A marker.

  Tall stone, carved with spiraling patterns eerily similar to the relay he had awakened in the lowlands—but this one was broken down the middle.

  Split.

  The air around it felt wrong.

  Not hostile.

  Not welcoming.

  Just deeply, stubbornly unwilling.

  Aerin approached slowly.

  The moment he stepped within ten paces of the stone, the ground trembled.

  Not violently.

  Just enough to wake something.

  A line of text flickered faintly across his vision.

  Unrecognized Verdant Structure Detected

  Classification: Suppressed Relay

  Status: Incomplete

  Aerin stared.

  “Suppressed?”

  Someone stopped it, Liora whispered.

  Then the fog behind him shifted again.

  This time—

  Footsteps.

  Aerin turned.

  Two figures emerged slowly from the mist, cloaked in dark travel gear. Not guild colors. No badges.

  They stopped when they saw him standing beside the stone.

  One of them sighed.

  “…Well,” the taller one said calmly, “looks like we were right.”

  The second figure rested a hand on the hilt of a curved blade.

  “The relay noticed him.”

  The first man looked directly at Aerin.

  “That means we can’t leave you alive.”

  Aerin blinked.

  “…That escalated fast.”

  Inside his chest, Liora’s voice hardened for the first time since they met.

  This place was never meant to wake.

  The broken stone behind him pulsed faintly.

  And for the first time—

  Aerin realized the relay might not be the only thing buried here.