As they turned back toward the village, the sunlight strengthened, burning mist off the low water in slow unraveling threads. From a distance, the place looked unchanged.
Up close, Rhys could still feel it—the faint misalignment. Like a floorboard that had shifted half a finger's width. Not enough to trip on.
Enough to notice.
Halfway to the fields, he paused.
Caria did not ask why.
The metallic sweetness in the air had thinned everywhere else.
Except here.
He looked down.
At first, it seemed like ordinary dew clinging to flattened grass. Then the light shifted.
The droplets were not round.
They were faceted.
Not sharply—subtly. Each bead catching light at angles too precise to be natural. For a brief second, one of them refracted the sky into something that was not sky.
Rhys crouched.
He did not touch it immediately.
"Does it feel… warm?" Caria asked.
"Yes."
Not heat as from flame.
Heat as from friction. As if two unseen surfaces had brushed too close together.
