Sun warmed the garden beds.
The air smelled of damp soil, mint, and thin smoke from cooking fires.
On the surface, it was a peaceful day.
Elowen knelt with her hands buried in the earth.
The soil was cool and alive.
It hummed under her skin.
She brushed a root with her fingertips.
Thirst. A small, quiet fear of drying out.
The plant's need pressed into her chest like a tiny hand.
"It's all right," she whispered. "You're not alone."
The herb didn't speak.
But its feeling was clear.
Her heart answered, warm and steady.
Empathy was normal in Thrakwhisper.
People cared for crops, for trees, for neighbors.
Feeling everything this sharply was not.
That part was hers.
"Talking to the plants again?" Thalor Rootwhisper rumbled from the path.
She looked up.
He stood under a great oak, staff in hand.
His deep green eyes held the usual mix of pride and worry.
"They talk first," she said, wiping soil from her wrists.
"I just listen."
Thalor stepped closer and lowered himself to the ground beside her.
The earth seemed to lean toward him.
Roots trusted him.
"Listening is dangerous," he said.
His voice was gentle.
"Especially now."
A tightness tugged under her ribs.
"Because of the raids?" she asked.
The word fell like a stone.
Raids.
Most people avoided it.
It tasted like ashes and iron.
It tasted like fear.
Thalor stared toward the distant tree line.
The oaks ringed their valley like old guardians.
Beyond them lay the Hungering Lands.
"Because of beastmen," he answered.
Her shoulders tensed.
That word turned the warm air cold.
She had never seen one up close.
Only claw marks on bark higher than a man's head.
Stories did the rest.
"They hunt far from here," she said too quickly.
"Traders like to scare us so we'll feed them more."
Thalor didn't smile.
He pressed his broad hand into the dirt.
"The last trader who passed through had fresh scars," he said.
"Bite marks."
Elowen swallowed.
She remembered the limping man.
The jokes that sounded forced. The way he flinched when someone laughed.
"He said he tripped," she whispered.
"He lied," Thalor replied.
"I've seen falls. Those weren't from any fall."
He turned his gaze on her.
"And you felt it."
She had.
Under his jokes sat a deep, animal shame.
A crawly feeling, like hands that didn't stop touching even when they left.
"I didn't want to," she murmured.
"He didn't want me to see. So I… looked away."
"Empathy doesn't care what people want," Thalor said quietly.
"It shows you what is buried."
He tapped her chest with two fingers.
"Especially here."
She hated how true that felt.
Elowen had never seen the dens from the stories.
Pits where human girls were kept as "night-warmers" for beastmen.
Collars at throats. Chains at wrists. Fur against skin.
She had never seen them.
But when Eldra told those stories by the fire,
Elowen woke shaking, wrists burning with phantom weight.
Shame.
Fear.
A hollow where safety should be.
"Maybe they won't come here," she said now.
She clung to the words like a root.
"The oaks are strong. Our valley is small."
"Raids don't come because roots are weak," Thalor said.
"They come because hunger walks on two legs and thinks it has the right."
He turned a clump of soil in his palm.
"Beastmen want three things from humans, child. Work. Warmth. Wounds."
"Work," she echoed.
"Hands in mines. Backs in pits," he said.
"They like human bodies to break before theirs."
"Warmth," she whispered.
His jaw clenched.
"Girls taken to dens. Boys too, if no one stops them."
His eyes darkened. "Bodies turned into blankets for nights that never end."
A cold sickness curled low in her gut.
Her skin crawled.
"And wounds?" she forced out.
"They enjoy fear," he said simply.
"They enjoy choosing who keeps a name…"
His voice roughened. "…and who becomes just 'thing.'"
The word made her stomach twist.
"Why do we live near such monsters?" she burst out.
"Why don't we move the village?"
"Because roots are stubborn," he said.
"And because running doesn't stop hunger. It only makes the chase longer."
He faced her fully now.
"That's why we prepare," he added.
"Why we keep watch. Why we don't pretend peace is the same as safety."
A small wind slid through the garden.
It should have been soft.
It wasn't.
It carried ash. Wet fur. Faint metal.
Her skin pebbled.
Something rough brushed the edge of her mind.
It wasn't plant-root quiet.
It wasn't human worry.
It was coarse awareness. Hungry. Curious.
It felt her.
It liked that she trembled.
"Thalor," she whispered. "The wind feels… wrong."
His eyes had already gone back to the trees.
His hand tightened on his staff.
"I feel it," he said.
He didn't try to soothe her.
Behind them, children laughed near the well.
The sound was bright and foolish against the heavy air.
Eldra's voice drifted over the herbs.
"Inside soon! There's a storm coming!"
The sky remained clear.
Near the well, elders clustered with water buckets.
Their talk was low.
Their eyes slid again and again toward the trees.
"What are they whispering about?" Elowen asked.
"Same thing everyone whispers about when they think the young aren't listening," Thalor said.
"Last month, three valleys east, a village lost twelve people in one night."
"Twelve?" she choked.
"Ten girls," he said. "Two boys."
Her hands went numb.
"How do you know?"
"Because one got away," he said.
"Half-starved, half-mad. Reached a border outpost."
Thalor's mouth tightened. "He talked before he died."
She didn't want to ask.
She had to.
"What did he say?"
"That they came laughing," Thalor murmured.
"That they chained the strongest for mines.
And they kept the prettiest for dens."
His gaze was distant.
"He said the worst part wasn't the pain. It was how they made him beg to live… as a thing."
Elowen felt the world tilt.
Faces from the village flashed in her mind—
Mirael's quick smile, the baker's shy daughter, Eldra's tired eyes.
"It isn't fair," she whispered.
"Fairness is a bedtime story," Thalor said.
"Truth is less kind."
He watched her closely.
"Tell me what you feel."
"Scared," she answered.
"Angry. Sick. Small."
"And?" he pressed.
She swallowed.
"And ashamed," she whispered. "Because a part of me thinks… better them than me."
The words scraped her throat raw.
Thalor didn't flinch.
"That is honesty," he said. "Not cruelty."
His hand settled heavy on her shoulder.
Warm. Steady.
"Listen, Elowen," he said.
"Empathy will cut you open in a world like this."
His voice softened. "But it's the only thing that keeps you human when others try to make you a thing."
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
"What good is feeling their pain if I can't stop it?" she asked.
"It just hurts. All the time."
"Pain is a warning," he said.
"Yours and theirs. You feel when a storm hits the roots long before a branch breaks."
He tilted his head toward the trees.
"And today," he added, "the wind shouldn't whisper like that."
The breeze slid over her skin again.
Now that he'd named it, she couldn't pretend.
Hunger rode on it. Anticipation.
"They're close," she breathed.
"Maybe," he said.
"Or maybe they are only passing. Wolves don't howl at every door they break."
His calm words couldn't hide the spike of worry she felt from him.
She looked back at the village.
Smoke rose from hearths.
Children chased each other.
Someone argued over the price of carrots.
They didn't feel the wind.
They didn't feel the rough, distant minds brushing the valley's edge.
"Do we tell them?" she asked.
"We stay ready," Thalor said.
"We strengthen the roots."
He met her eyes. "And we listen, even when we're afraid of what we'll hear."
Fear throbbed in her chest.
But something else rose with it.
Resolve. Thin, but real.
"I'll listen," she said.
He nodded once.
"Then you'll hear them sooner than most," he murmured.
"Beasts. Storms. Chains."
Chains.
Cold iron. Rough hands. Names stripped away.
The image burned behind her eyes.
The wind curled through the oaks one last time.
This time it carried a faint, distant sound.
Not thunder.
Not birds.
A horn.
Low. Far. Hungry.
No one in the square stopped.
No one turned.
Elowen did.
Her skin went cold.
That coarse awareness brushed her mind again.
Excitement. Calculation.
"They're thinking about us," she whispered.
Thalor's knuckles whitened on his staff.
"Then we think about them," he said.
His voice was steady.
"But we don't call them 'stories' anymore."
The horn faded.
Laughter and clatter rushed back in.
The wind went still, as if it had never spoken.
But Elowen knew better.
Storms didn't start with thunder.
They started with a change in the air only roots could feel.
And today, the wind that shouldn't whisper had carried hunger straight through her bones.