They reached the outpost near dusk. The hunters were given water and a quiet place to sit.
Their stories matched: they had followed a sound like distant singing, found the stone, and then the world had gone soft and gray until someone pulled them free.
Both mentioned the feeling of water rising around their ankles even though the ground had been dry.
That night Elara sat with the elderly woman again. The woman listened to the new account without surprise.
"The land is testing the edges," she said. "It seems that it remembers floods that covered more than this valley. It remembers people who stayed and people who left. The mark grows because something is listening now. And it is growing at a very concerning rate."
She simply grinned and nodded.
