"Whatever's behind us doesn't want to catch us. It wants to guide us. Like a butcher guiding a sheep that won't bolt."
Mokko's voice was low, dry.
The wind shifted again—this time toward them.
The moment it touched Lucy's surface, she recoiled with a squelch so sharp it sounded like tearing silk. Her body flared gold, then green, then a sickly lavender. She let out a soft chiming whimper that didn't belong to any sound Marron had ever heard from her before. Not fear. Not pain. Recognition.
"Lucy?" Marron stepped forward.
But Lucy oozed backward from the trail ahead, flattening herself across Marron's boots as though trying to bar her path. Her aurora-light trembled violently across the leaf mulch, painting flickers of heatless color against the undergrowth.
"I think she smells something," Mokko murmured.
"No," Marron said, crouching, palm out. "She remembers something."
Then Marron caught it, too.
Something sharp and sweet. A spice with a backbite. Familiar—but wrong. It was like biting into a childhood dish and tasting someone else's mouth.
She whipped her pack off her shoulder. A jar—amber-stoppered, sealed with wax thread—was warm against her palm. It shouldn't have been warm. Not after three days on the trail, and no fire since morning.
"Did you open this?" she asked, without looking up.
Mokko didn't answer. He was scanning the trees now, his nose tilted slightly upward, nostrils flaring.
"No. I would've smelled that."
Marron stared at the jar's seal. It looked intact. Her fingers hesitated on the string, then pulled.
Click. The wax gave way with a dry pop. A thread of steam coiled upward—not hot, not physical. An emotional scent—wet paper, waiting, and something else.
Something watching.
Marron stared at the amber jar, her hands beginning to shake. She didn't remember packing it. She remembered every ingredient, every tool, every spare pot—but not this. When had it appeared in her supplies?
Mokko growled. "Close it."
She did.
Lucy had gone completely still, her surface now black-violet, her lights dimmed into a pulse. The forest ahead of them was utterly silent.
Then Marron saw it: the path changed.
Roots spread outward in a radial fan. Moss thinned in crisp lines. The rocks had shifted—no, not shifted. Arranged. There were no leaves in the center of the circle. No animal scat. No insects. Like the earth was holding its breath.
"We're not in the trail anymore," Mokko said softly.
Marron scanned the glade. Her gaze landed on a cluster of leaves that had arranged themselves into a spiral—tight, clean, and too deliberate.
"Do you see that pattern?"
Mokko held up a hand. "Don't move your foot."
She froze.
His voice dropped. "You're standing in a pack-scent threshold."
"What does that mean?"
"It means this place has a nose. And it already smelled you."
Lucy made a tiny tremble and pressed tighter against Marron's boots.
Mokko leaned close, sniffed the air again. "These glyphs don't just stop people. They read them."
Marron swallowed. "What does it read?"
He looked at her, truly grim. "Everything you've cooked in the last day. Everything that cooked through you."
The jar in her pack seemed heavier now. She felt its warmth radiating along her spine.
The wind changed again.
And something clicked beneath her.
Lines of faint light snapped into place in the roots below her boot. They weren't visible a second ago—now they threaded outward like veins in flame. The light spread along the soil, tracing up trees, coiling through bark and moss.
Glyphs. Hundreds of them. Activated.
Marron stood frozen.
Lucy whimpered.
Mokko cursed.
And high above, in the canopy—something moved. A footstep. Then another. Heavy. Deliberate.
They weren't alone anymore.
The footsteps didn't hurry. Whoever—or whatever—was above them moved with the pace of a creature already in control. Not threatening. Not cautious. Just present.
A second pair joined it, softer, but broader in step. Then a low thump. Bark scattered. A body dropped from the canopy like it had poured out of the branches.
He was beastkin—tall, lean-shouldered, wearing layered scent-cloaks that looked stitched from moss, fur, and old cloth. His face was streaked with dark mud in careful patterns. He landed silently, crouched low, his nostrils flaring the moment his feet touched soil.
A second followed—female, shorter, bearing a staff woven from bone-piped wood and feathers dipped in some black resin that gleamed like tar.
Neither drew weapons.
But both of them looked straight at Lucy.
"That one's leaking," the woman said, her voice flat as scraped stone.
Lucy trembled.
The tall male stepped forward slowly, sniffing. Then he tilted his head at Marron. "Who cooked last?"
"I did," Marron said. Her voice sounded smaller than she wanted it to.
He sniffed again, longer this time. "That's a trail-soup scent," he said. "Panic in the starch. Regret under the salt. But this—" He sniffed Lucy now, visibly recoiling. "This is feral echo. Unaged. Unbound. Carried wrong."
"She's not dangerous," Marron said quickly. "She's—"
"Slime kin aren't allowed into Whisperwind unless they pass cleanse-fire," the woman cut in. "Or unless their echo has been spoken for."
"She didn't cook," Mokko said, stepping forward. "Marron did. I was present."
The female sentry's eyes snapped to him, sharp with reproach. "Ghostmane-born should know better. When your claws dull from too much reminiscing about cooking techniques, the shadows will see, and they will squeeze through. Your ward stands in a scent-trap and you're wool-gathering."
Mokko's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
The two beastkin shifted their attention to him now. The male sniffed once—recognition clicked in his eyes.
"Bloodpack?"
"Born-bonded. Ghostmane line."
"Your scent's real."
Mokko jerked his chin toward Marron. "She's under my watch."
The woman narrowed her eyes at Marron. "And her signature?"
"Blurred," said the male, circling her now. "There's masking spice on her—too clever. Path-cooked. Traveler's weave. But something else in there."
He moved behind Marron. She froze. She could feel him inhaling near her neck.
"There's a question in her. It hasn't been answered yet."
The woman's gaze snapped to Mokko. "You vouch for that?"
"I do."
A third thump echoed from above. Another beastkin dropped down—this one broader, with scars across his forearms and hunter's marks carved into his leather bracers. He approached Lucy with professional interest rather than suspicion.
"Your slime is stressed," he said matter-of-factly, crouching near Lucy without getting too close. "Memory-stink happens when they're forced to hold too many emotional imprints without release. Like a pot boiling over." He glanced at Marron with mild disdain. "Humans' sense of smell is lacking for things like this. You probably think she's just tired."
Marron's stomach dropped. "I... I didn't know she was in pain."
"She's not in pain," the hunter said. "She's drowning. In your emotions. Every meal you cook, every feeling you pour into it—she absorbs it. Slimes need to discharge that buildup, or it festers."
Lucy's surface rippled weakly, as if responding to being understood.
The two original sentries exchanged a silent look. Then the male made a small noise in his throat—half chirp, half grunt.
The glyph-light in the trees flickered once—acknowledgment.
The woman stepped forward and pressed something cold and wet to Marron's wrist. A mark bloomed across her skin—faintly glowing orange. A sigil shaped like a bowl with a crack down the center.
"Provisional bond granted," she said. "Watch-fire tier. If she spoils the scent of a ring, she burns."
The male turned his attention back to Lucy.
"That one needs containment. Or purge."
"No," Marron said. Too fast. Too sharp.
He paused.
Mokko said nothing.
Lucy let out a slow, whimpering shimmer—her colors dull, but steady now.
"Then keep it covered," the hunter said, pulling a woven cloth from his pack. It looked like moss and spider silk. "She's flooding the trees with memory-stink. Something's going to smell that and answer back."
He draped the cloth gently over Lucy. She didn't resist, but her light dimmed further.
The male sentry turned and leapt back into the trees.
The woman gave Marron one last stare. Her eyes were the color of birch sap.
"No fire without eyes," she said. "No food without name."
The hunter remained a moment longer. "Learn her needs quickly, human. The pack won't tolerate carelessness twice."
And then they all followed into the canopy, vanishing like smoke.