The Bloodroot Wilds changed shape past the Weftmother's clearing, and none of the nine walking through it needed telling twice that they'd crossed into something new.
The wrong-jointed trees thinned out entirely within an hour, replaced by open ground the color of old scar tissue, cracked and healed and cracked again in overlapping rings that spread out toward a horizon none of them could properly see the end of.
"It's healing," Kayla said, crouching to press a palm against ground still faintly warm. "Or it was, a long time ago. Something keeps reopening it."
"Reopening it from where?" Noah asked.
Maya's Farsight Loom answered before anyone else could guess, threads of second sight stretching out across the scarred plain and finding, at the very edge of her range, a single dark point pulling at everything around it the way a wound pulls at healing skin.
