I press a finger against the rock beside it, avoiding the vein itself. The surrounding temperature is different — warmer than it should be this far underground, the heat concentrated. We follow it, and it branches twice more before fading into discoloration across the stone. I crouch and hold my light close.The damage isn't surface-deep. Whatever is driving this runs beneath the tunnel itself.
"Does Draekir know?"
"He knows they're here. He doesn't yet know what they're carrying."
I stand, and look down the wall. In the lamplight the network is visible all at once — weirdly glowing and reacting to my light. We bring what we've found up to the herb room, spreading the specimens alongside the collection already laid out. The afternoon light has thinned to something pale and directionless by the time I take the oldest samples — those pulled from closest to the ritual site — and hold them under the window.
The traces are not residue. Not something applied to the exterior, not something absorbed through soil contact. Whatever the magic left behind traveled through the plant, embedding itself. The tissue has been permanently rewritten. That tells me it's ritual magic.
I set the stem down and reach for a second one from a different location. Same depth. Same internal signature. A third — fainter, but structured identically. Contamination disperses. This doesn't disperse. It transmits. The trace weakens with distance, but the structure remains identical. Whoever designed this understood enough about herbalism to hide the evidence inside the plant itself.
"There should be older samples," I murmur, scanning the labels again. "The ones from the first breach."
Nyssara's expression tightens.
"There were."
"Where are they?"
"Gone. Not misplaced. Not spoiled. Removed from the drying racks, the ledgers scraped clean, the jars washed and returned as if they had never been used."
Cold slips beneath my skin. Hiding magic inside living tissue is one thing. Erasing every earlier trace of it is another. This has not only been done carefully. It has been cleaned up carefully.
I think about every patch location I've documented. Every route I walk on collection days. Every attack I've traced has originated from or cut through those exact zones. And the zone with the strongest imprint of all sits closest to the outer wall, here.
I don't say it aloud. Nyssara is staring, and I hold the thought where it is. The attacks haven't been moving outward. They've been moving inward. Each one closer than the last, the creatures are more coordinated, the breach points more specific. Whoever is causing it is closing the distance, week by week, and what started in the forest is no longer contained to it.
I need to take my mind off this, and put everything down and move to the medical room. It could do with cleaning after the attack. As I clean, I hear the door, and Draekir stands with green blood stains on his coat. He searches for a person.
"Nyssara—"
"Tunnels." I nod toward the instrument table. "Sit."
He doesn't straight away. His back stays against the doorframe, because he can't immediately do anything he's been asked to do.
"Sit," I repeat. "Shoulder or ribs?"
"Both."
He settles on the corner table and I take the coat from his shoulders, undoing the fastenings at the collar first. The fabric has stiffened where it's dried against the wound, and when I ease it back from the joint he flinches — once, contained immediately, his jaw tightening and releasing before his expression resettles into composure.
The wound tracks from the shoulder joint downward, closed badly from being left unattended. I soak a cloth and press itagainst the damaged edge. His chest expands once, controlled, and holds.
"Hours ago, this needed attention." I speak with an even tone.
"There were other priorities."
I trace carefully around the older scar tissue near the wound, and his breathing shifts beneath the touch. I move to his ribs, and he lifts his arm as I press along the lower section. The sound he makes is brief and involuntary.
"Where does the name the Black Stag come from?" I try to take his mind off everything.
"The name Black Stag. Well, it didn't come from the noble houses."
I don't respond, hoping he will just talk.
"The previous lord of Mournhold held the territory for sixty years before me. When he died without an heir the estate fell into dispute — four houses moved on it simultaneously within a season. I was twenty-three years into my rank. None of them considered me a serious claimant. I held the boundary for eleven months. Alone, mostly. When it resolved, the houses that had moved on it had each lost something they couldn't recover, and I had the estate with a name I didn't choose."
"Because of how you hunted them," I assume.
