The next move came three days later.
Not at the quarry.
At the eastern field.
Just before dawn, one of the night guards knocked on Rhys's door.
"The ground shifted," he said. "Near the old root line."
Rhys dressed and went with Caria to the field.
A narrow line of disturbed soil cut across the edge of the farmland. Not deep. Not violent. Just a clean split in the earth, no wider than a hand.
It stopped exactly at the boundary stones that marked the village land.
Beyond the stones, the grass lay flat.
Inside the stones, nothing was touched.
Caria crouched and pressed her palm to the soil. "It pushed up from below," she said. "Not from the side."
Rhys looked back toward the quarry ridge in the distance.
"It shifted position," he said. "Not gone. Just moving under a different point."
They measured the split. Marked it. Did not fill it.
"Same rule?" Caria asked.
"Same rule," Rhys replied. "Observe. No escalation."
That evening, they went to the quarry as usual.
