The narrow path opens into a glade of black moss and pale roots, where the Whispering Woods press close under a low, green dusk. Megan Le Fey reaches the center of it with the bowl of ash steady against her chest.
Ahead stands a ring of thornbent stones, half-swallowed by bramble. At its heart lies a shallow sink of earth, ringed with silver-veined leaves that tremble without wind.
The Old Hermit
This is the place. She has found it.
Megan lifts the bowl slightly. The ash stirs, and the thorn-rune answers with a faint, hungry glimmer.
From beyond the stones, something small and quick shifts in the brush, then stops. The woods go quiet around the glade, as if waiting to hear her next move.
The blackened leaf in the ash turns its silver veins toward the ring, pointing the way in.