CHAPTER 748: THE ELDER OF RETURN (1)

North line sentries facing out. Breaths steady. One at the cook tent is reading the bottom of a pot for omens; harmless. Avoid the lip. Cross between tents two and three where the ground dips.

He moved. Not like a thief. Like a person who could not dance and didn’t care. Ugly stepping, off-beat. Heel, small drag, toe kiss, pause. Two, three, five. His body wanted to fall into a pretty walk; he refused it. Prime-step saved lives. He let it.

He slipped between tents two and three. Someone had hung mittens on a line there, four in a row like fat birds. He ducked under them. A junior in the nearest tent snored with tiny squeaks on the inhale. The sound made him think of mice and the warm middle of winter bread. He felt his mouth soften. He hardened it again.

At the cook tent, the guard sat with a pot bottom held at an angle to catch star shine. The man squinted like he was trying to read the future in old burn marks. Mikhailis felt a ridiculous fondness. If it keeps your hands off a drum beat, read the pot, friend.

He kept his hand close to the pack as he passed the lift lip, resisting the urge to look down. The Echo liked curiosity. He gave it none.

They crossed the perimeter line. He could feel it, not see it—like stepping through a cold cobweb. The forest took over, sound changing from camp hush to night spread. The wind lifted and set down the tips of pines in a rhythm that was almost a rhythm and then wasn’t. Good wind. Polite wind.

Necro-ants marked a path that threaded between the sentry cones. He felt each small safe choice before he saw it—the ground a little darker where moss kept memory, the faint slouch in a patch of needles that said feet had liked to stop here in daylight and shouldn’t now. He avoided those.

They reached the first rot smear. Dead moth wings lay in drifts, like a tiny snow no one had ordered. He crouched. The wings were thin as what you think love feels like in a letter. He touched one with the back of his knuckle. It stuck a little, then let go. The light of the world had been stolen here, one small attention at a time.

"Don’t pocket it," he whispered to himself. He wanted a sample. He wanted to show Elowen the exact look of this kind of theft. He wanted to pin a wing in a book and write a note that said, This is how necromancy feeds—by changing what you look at. He did not. He turned the wing over with a breath and left it.

He set one prime stone at the edge of a thin place in the ground, not on it. A pebble nudge to misalign a hungry thought. He counted to five, rude and uneven, then picked it up again. He felt the narrow sigh under his boots as a trap forgot itself.

A fox barked once somewhere down-slope, then decided not to explain. Farther off, an owl made the short sound of a question mark. Branches clacked with their small talk. He let the forest pour through him without catching on his ribs.

I recommend a thirty-seven-second hold, the voice in his head said. Wind shift in eleven seconds. It will carry camp scent away from your back trail.

He pressed two fingers to a pine trunk and rested there. The bark printed small lines into his skin. Sap smell lifted—sharp, sweet, clean. He counted with his pulse, not with his mouth. Thirty-seven arrived like a door opening.

He moved again, angling a little left to use a shallow swale. Frost glittered along the lip. He tested the frost with the side edge of his boot. It crisped, but didn’t sing. Good. Singing frost is a drum for echoes.

A depression in the ground shifted the air ahead. He dropped one pebble into it without sound and waited. The world considered the offering and did not answer. He walked past.

He reached a place where the rock under soil changed—he could always feel that, even in shoes. The mineral tang got stronger, like wet iron held under the tongue. Magic chewing the bedrock, he thought. Impatient teeth.

He paused beside a cedar. The bark here had scars—claw marks, old and silvered. A bear, long ago. He set his palm against one scar and let memory wash. He liked places that kept their own records in wood rather than in gossip.

I am re-evaluating wind vectors, the voice noted. Sentry at north line turned his head. Not at you. At a sneeze he swallowed. Resume.

He smiled, small. Even bravery has a nose. He went on.

The ground began to show more of the rot’s signs. Patches where the air tugged at his hair though the wind stayed quiet. Small stones that had arranged themselves in a curve without a hand’s help. He broke the curve with his boot and scattered the stones with a toe. He didn’t kick—no rhythm.

He found a thin stick and used it to draw a little line through a dune of bone-colored dust gathered in a root hollow. The dust barely rose. Heavy stuff. It settled like tired snow. He didn’t touch it with skin.

Dead needles here seemed to point in one direction. He looked the other way. He picked up a pine cone that had landed wrong and set it upright, not because it mattered but because tidying chaos sometimes made lies uncomfortable.

A nervous bird gave him three alarm clicks and shut up. He waited until the silence around that shutting up stopped being loud. He moved. He liked to leave the world the same or better than he found it. Necromancy liked to rearrange furniture and call it art.

I have updated the path to avoid two shallow breath-pockets, came the cool line. Step long over the next root. Do not brush it. It is listening.

He set his foot long and rude. His calf complained a little. Complain later. Praise now. He praised his own leg in his head like a fool and found that it helped.

They skirted a depression where frost had formed little starbursts. Pretty. Dangerous. He did not step on any star. He refused to make that pattern sing.

The ring’s tug grew clearer, like a draft under a door. Each rot point they passed made a small tugboat wake in the air. He imagined a hand drawing energy out of the ring with a crooked straw. He imagined that hand shaking, not from weakness but from greed.

He ducked under a low branch. Old man’s beard lichen caught his hood and clung. He freed it with careful fingers, then left the lichen unbroken. Old things that hang on deserve respect.

A scatter of mouse tracks crossed the path like punctuation. The little claws had written a sentence only mice read. He stepped over the sentence. He did not smudge it.

He checked his pack again with one tap. Sap. Stones. Cloth. Tokens. His thumb found the token edges. He let go.

I am suppressing your scent trail one part in five by altering surface currents, the voice said, almost bored. It will be sufficient unless someone starts licking the ground.

He snorted once. The sound was small and disappeared into his scarf.

They curved along the ring until the pull angled sideways. The soil darkened as if someone had breathed on it with a sick mouth. He tasted bitterness behind his tongue.

He angled his steps to stay cross-grain to the tug. If he followed it, he would start to walk in a rhythm it wanted. He cut it instead. His legs felt wrong for a few steps, then right.

A patch of needles ahead lay too smooth. He crouched and blew lightly across them. A line revealed itself—someone had brushed a path with a broom made of lies. He destroyed the line with his hand. He used his knuckles, not his palm.

He touched the ground beside the line and felt heat, very faint. He held his hand longer than comfortable. The heat had a pulse that was not his pulse. He removed his hand.

I have a visual of three more nodes running clockwise. Their interference patterns overlap. Residue concentration increases, the voice said, precise and unruffled.

He nodded and stood up slowly to keep his knees from complaining too loudly. He looked ahead and saw, finally, the faintest suggestion of a open place in the trees where darkness had a different texture.

He checked his stones again. Two in pocket, warm. He rolled one and then stilled it. He let his breath go ugly.

He thought of Talatha again, of her neat knots, of her eyes when she chose duty over softness and somehow made that choice feel like generosity. He felt a small ache behind his ribs that was half pride and half something he had no word for. He moved anyway.

He adjusted his cloak so the resin seam lay flat. He palmed a cloth strip in case a Scry-Hook waited underleaf.

His boots found a scuffed place beside a root and stepped past it without touching. He left no applause behind him, only the rude steps of a man who would not be a drum.

Residue thickening. Two hours old.

The grove appeared all at once, the way groves do when they have decided you’re allowed to see them: six stones half‑sunk like bad teeth; a shallow basin; a thornbush with strips of bark pinned under its claws, each with neat handwriting and loops on the long strokes. The loops were the kind tired, careful hands made to convince themselves they were still young.

He planted anchors—pebbles not in a triangle, prime‑distanced. Anti‑glamor nets whispered down to make lies work harder. He took the shadow at the edge of the stones and made it his coat.

Breath slow. No rhythm. No answers to invisible songs.

Footsteps slid through the pines. Too neat for a hunter, too soft for a recruit. The figure that stepped into the basin wore a young face the way people wear a borrowed coat—well, but not long.

A clear gaze. A quick smile that didn’t reach the eyes. Hands that already knew where everything in the grove belonged.

"Good evening, Elder,"