Jones Mountain Wizards Contracting Inc.

The sheriff did not like meeting beneath the old stones.

He liked halls with guards outside the door. He liked fires, wine, heavy chairs, and men who lowered their eyes when he entered. He liked the sound of his own boots crossing a wooden floor, because that sound reminded others who held power.

He did not like old Roman tunnels under abandoned ground where the air smelled of wet stone, old dirt, and something colder than winter.

Sheriff William de Harcourt held his lantern higher and watched the flame bend though no wind touched it.

The passage ahead sloped downward beneath the broken remains of a Roman wall. Roots had split the stone in places, and water ran in thin silver lines between the blocks. Some of the markings carved into the walls were Latin. Some were older. Those older marks troubled him most.

They were not crosses.

They were not letters.

They were circles split by crooked lines, with smaller cuts branching away like roads on a map.

He had seen the same mark three times now. Once on a buried stone near the old road. Once in a ruined chapel wall. And once on the small bronze plate the stranger carried wrapped in black cloth.

The sheriff hated that mark.

But he had also come to understand that hatred and usefulness often walked together.

At the bottom of the passage, the tunnel opened into a round chamber half-buried beneath centuries of fallen earth. Roman stonework formed the lower walls, but the ceiling above was older, made of great dark slabs fitted together with a care no village mason could have managed. In the center stood a low stone table.

No altar, the sheriff told himself.

A table.

Just a table.

A dozen candles burned upon it, though he did not remember seeing the stranger light them.

“You are late,” said the voice from the far side of the chamber.

The sheriff stepped inside and lowered the lantern.

The stranger stood in the candlelight, hood drawn low, hands folded before him. His robe was plain enough to belong to a monk, but no monk William had ever met wore gloves of black leather or carried himself like a man waiting for kings to kneel.

“I came when it was safe,” the sheriff said.

The stranger turned slightly.

“When it is safe, Sheriff, there is rarely anything worth doing.”

William’s mouth tightened, but he did not answer. He had learned enough to know that anger pleased the stranger more than obedience.

“The villages are quiet?” the stranger asked.

“Quiet enough.”

“And Gault?”

“Rafe Gault keeps the village as instructed. He collects rents, watches the old road, and reports any stranger passing near the stones.”

“He is greedy.”

“He is useful.”

“Greed is useful only while it is fed.”

William set the lantern on the edge of the stone table. “You did not call me below ground to speak of a bailiff.”

“No.”

The stranger reached into his robe and withdrew the bronze plate.

Even in the weak candlelight, the carved symbol seemed to catch more light than it should have. A circle. A broken line. Three cuts branching from one side.

William looked away first.

“The mark has appeared again,” the stranger said.

“Where?”

“Near the village.”

William frowned. “Eldergate?”

“So they call it now.”

“That place is mud, thatch, and thin cattle. It has nothing worth your concern.”

“Rome thought otherwise.”

The sheriff looked around the chamber. “Rome is dust.”

“Rome built roads men still use. Walls men still hide behind. Drains that still carry water. Bridges that still bear carts. Do not mistake absence for ignorance.”

William disliked lectures almost as much as he disliked the chamber.

“If Rome knew so much, why did it leave?”

“For the same reason all empires leave eventually.” The stranger traced one gloved finger over the bronze plate. “They learned that some roads ask more than coin and blood.”

The candles flickered.

The sheriff heard something then.

Not a voice exactly.

Not words.

A low sound beneath the stone, like a wheel turning far away.

He put one hand on the hilt of his sword.

The stranger noticed and smiled.

“You will find no enemy to cut here.”

“What is it?”

“A door remembering that it was once opened.”

William did not like that answer.

“You said the next sign would come near the old stones.”

“It will. But lesser signs wake first. Wells. Roads. Buried markers. Places where stone, water, and sky were once taught to speak to one another.”

The sheriff stared at him. “You speak like a mad priest.”

“I speak like a man who reads what other men forgot.”

The sound under the stone faded.

William forced his hand away from his sword.

“Tell me plainly what you want.”

“At last,” the stranger said. “A useful question.”

He laid the bronze plate on the stone table and turned it so the sheriff could see the mark.

“The old works beneath Renard’s lands are beginning to stir. A season is coming when sky-fire will walk paths it has not walked in centuries. When that happens, the road beneath years may open.”

William looked at him.

The words were simple enough. Their meaning was not.

“The road beneath years,” he repeated.

“A name. One of many.”

“And if it opens?”

“Then a man standing in the correct place, with the correct key, may reach farther than any king’s army.”

The sheriff felt something move through him. Not fear this time.

Hunger.

Power had always made more sense to him than faith. Land could be measured. Silver counted. Men threatened, bribed, hanged, or raised. But this was different. This was the kind of power that made even a sheriff feel like a boy staring through the window of a locked hall.

“And this key?” he asked.

The stranger’s gloved finger tapped the bronze plate.

“Not a key as you understand it. Not iron teeth in a lock. A place. A bloodline. A timing. A choice.”

“Speak sense.”

“I am.”

The sheriff took a slow breath.

“What does Renard know?”

“Less than he should. More than I would like.”

That troubled William.

Lord Renard was not a cruel man, which made him difficult in ways cruel men were not. Cruel men could be bought. Cowardly men could be pushed. Greedy men could be baited.

Renard was neither cowardly nor greedy.

He was fair when he judged, generous when it cost him little, stern when insulted, and annoyingly inclined to believe that men in service to him carried out their duties with honor.

That made him useful.

It also made him dangerous if truth ever reached him whole.

“Renard is no fool,” the sheriff said.

“No,” the stranger answered. “That is what makes him useful. A wicked man suspects wickedness everywhere. A good man looks first for honor.”

The sheriff’s mouth tightened. “He loves his daughter.”

“At last,” the stranger said softly, “you begin to understand the shape of the key.”

William looked toward the chamber entrance, though no one stood there.

Lord Ranard’s Daughter was known even beyond her father’s hall. Men spoke first of her beauty, because men were fools and liked simple things, but William had watched her closely enough to know beauty was the least dangerous part of her. She listened when men thought she was only present. She asked questions no daughter needed to ask. She knew her father’s moods, his habits, and the names of servants most nobles forgot existed.

If Renard had a weakness, it was not softness.

It was love.

The sheriff looked back at the stranger. “You would use the girl?”

“I would use whatever opens the door.”

“Renard would burn the county before letting harm come to her.”

“Then we will not threaten harm.”

The stranger lifted the bronze plate. Candlelight slid across its surface.

“We will offer safety.”

William studied him.

“You mean to frighten him.”

“I mean to guide him.”

“That is a gentler word.”

“Gentle words move good men more easily.”

The sheriff began to understand, and the understanding settled coldly in his stomach.

If Lord Renard believed his daughter stood near danger, he would act. If he believed the sheriff offered protection, he would grant authority. If the danger appeared tied to old ruins, strange signs, or unrest among the villages, then William could move men, seize land, search homes, arrest travelers, and do it all beneath the lord’s own seal.

The stranger did not need Renard dead.

Not yet.

He needed Renard blind.

“What of the village?” William asked.

The stranger turned the bronze plate over and wrapped it again in black cloth.

“Let Gault keep squeezing it.”

“The villagers complain.”

“Villagers always complain.”

“Sickness spreads.”

“Then fear spreads with it.”

William watched him carefully.

“And fear is useful.”

The stranger inclined his head.

“More useful than loyalty. More honest than love. Fear makes men show where they hide their gods.”

The sheriff did not care for peasants. He cared even less for their wells, fevers, and muddy little griefs. But he knew unrest could travel faster than rumor if left alone too long.

“If the village breaks,” he said, “Renard may hear more than we wish him to hear.”

“Then make sure he hears the proper version.”

“Gault’s version?”

“Your version.”

The sheriff nodded slowly.

Strangers on the road could be blamed. Old sins. Bad prayers. A witch mark found near the well. A dead animal dropped in secret. Any lie would serve if it reached the hall before the truth did.

Above them, something rumbled.

Dust fell from the ceiling in a thin gray veil.

The candles leaned toward the center of the table.

For a moment, the carved lines in the stone seemed to darken. The old mark appeared there too, half-hidden under moss and dirt, larger than the one on the bronze plate.

William had not noticed it before.

The stranger had.

He smiled.

“The first turning,” he whispered.

The sheriff took a step back. “What does that mean?”

“It means the sky has begun its work.”

Far above the buried chamber, beyond the ruined wall and dark fields and sleeping villages, ancient stones stood silent beneath the clouded night.

Then a pale green shimmer passed between them.

It lasted no longer than a breath.

Long enough for owls to fall quiet.

Long enough for cattle to lift their heads in distant barns.

Long enough for a barefoot boy in Eldergate to wake from a dream of thunder and stare toward the woods without knowing why.

The stranger closed his gloved hand around the bronze plate.

“Send word to Gault,” he said. “No strangers near the old road. No digging near the well. No wandering close to the stones.”

“And if strangers come?”

The candle flames steadied.

The chamber returned to shadow and damp silence.

The stranger looked at the sheriff.

“Then we learn whether the road has sent us enemies…”

He paused.

“...or tools.”

William de Harcourt picked up his lantern.

This time, when he looked at the old mark carved into the stone table, he did not look away.

Above them, the first gate began to wake.

By three-thirty in the afternoon, Rylan had convinced Mrs. Hollenbach that the crooked porch step was not crooked because of shoddy carpentry, cheap lumber, poor measuring, or the natural settling of a century-old farmhouse.

No, according to Rylan, the step had character.

“See, ma’am,” he said, crouched on one knee in the June heat, tapping the edge of the board with the end of his pencil like he was explaining something delicate and important. “A house this old, it don’t want everything perfect. You square one thing up too much, the rest of the place gets offended.”

Mrs. Hollenbach stood on the porch above him with her arms folded and her glasses sliding down her nose.

“The house gets offended?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Rylan nodded gravely. “Old houses are prideful.”

From the yard, Kaelex snorted so hard he nearly dropped the bundle of scrap wood under his arm.

Gradyn, who was standing by the trailer with a clipboard in one hand and a half-finished gas station coffee in the other, closed his eyes for one long second.

Camden looked up from coiling an extension cord. “You know, I actually believe that. This house has been rude to me all day.”

Teagan, who was halfway under the porch retrieving a dropped drill bit, called out, “That’s because you shocked yourself on your own wire tester.”

“It bit me,” Camden said. “There’s a difference.”

Mrs. Hollenbach was not smiling yet, but Rylan could see the corner of her mouth trying to betray her.

Rylan was twenty-eight, the oldest of five brothers, a carpenter by trade, a storyteller by habit, and the sort of man who could walk into a room full of strangers and leave knowing three birthdays, two family feuds, and where the best fishing whole was in the area. He was not the biggest of the brothers, nor the loudest, but he had a way of talking that made people lean closer even when they knew better.

He ran his hand along the new porch rail they had installed that morning. “Now, the rail is true. The posts are solid. The step is safe. But if I shave that board any more, it’ll look like one perfect tooth in a mouth full of old ones.”

“That,” Camden said, pointing a finger at him, “is disgusting and somehow persuasive.”

“It is not disgusting,” Rylan said. “It is craftsmanship.”

“It is bull,” Kaelex said.

Rylan looked wounded. “It’s true.”

Mrs. Hollenbach finally laughed.

That meant they were safe.

Gradyn opened his eyes again and wrote something on the clipboard, though what he wrote was mostly a hard line through the word “callback.” As the middle brother, twenty-two years old and somehow born tired of everyone’s nonsense, Gradyn had learned that leadership in a family business did not mean giving orders.

It meant knowing when to let Rylan talk.

It meant knowing when to stop Kaelex from talking.

It meant knowing Camden had already done something he should not have done and figuring out what it was before the customer did.

And it meant remembering Teagan was not twelve anymore, even if all four older brothers still treated him like he might wander into traffic with a nail gun.

“Mrs. Hollenbach,” Gradyn said, stepping forward with his calm work voice, “everything’s finished. Porch rail, step repair, trim on the side door, and the gutter patch above the kitchen. I’ll email the invoice tonight when we get back.”

“You boys did good work,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Gradyn said.

“Even if some of you talk too much.”

All five brothers looked at Camden.

Camden put a hand to his chest. “I’m sorry, are we pretending Ry didn’t just diagnose your porch with emotions?”

Mrs. Hollenbach laughed again and waved them off. “Go on, get out of here before I find something else.”

Kaelex was already carrying tools toward the enclosed construction trailer parked along the gravel drive. He was twenty-six, broad through the shoulders, strong in a way that made other strong men glance twice, and blessed with the patience of a cinder block. He was a plumber and HVAC specialist, which meant he could make water run uphill, heat move sideways, and customers understand absolutely nothing except the final bill.

He slapped the side of the trailer. “Gray, tell me why we brought half the shop for porch work.”

“Because when I don’t bring something,” Gradyn said, “you ask me why I didn’t bring it.”

“Fair.”

The trailer was black once, before mud, sawdust, job-site dust, handprints, rain streaks, and years of hard use turned it into a rolling record of every job they had ever survived. On the side, faded black lettering read:

**GHOST CREEK CONTRACTING**

**Carpentry • Plumbing • Electrical • HVAC • Remodels**

Underneath, in smaller vinyl letters that Camden had insisted on adding as a joke, it said:

**If We Can’t Fix It, It’s Probably Haunted**

Gradyn hated that line.

Customers loved it.

Camden had never let him forget either fact.

“Teag,” Gradyn called, “you got all the bits?”

Teagan slid out from beneath the porch on his back like a mechanic coming out from under a truck. He was eighteen, lean, quick, and covered in dirt from his boots to his hair. He held up one drill bit, two screws, and a dead beetle.

“Found the bit,” he said. “Found these screws KK dropped. Also found this guy.”

Kaelex frowned. “I didn’t drop screws.”

“You always drop screws.”

“I do not.”

Camden walked past with a coil of cord over his shoulder. “KK, last week you dropped a whole box of screws into fresh concrete.”

“That was one time.”

Teagan flicked the dead beetle toward Camden, who dodged like he had been attacked by a hornet.

The five of them loaded the trailer with the practiced rhythm of men who had done it a thousand times and argued through at least nine hundred of them. Saws slid into racks. Drills went into cases. Extension cords got hung, then rehung because Camden’s idea of coiling cords offended Gray’s soul. Buckets of fittings, boxes of screws, clamps, levels, pry bars, tarps, a small compressor, a wet-dry vac, ladders, straps, and enough odds and ends to rebuild half a farmhouse disappeared into their places.

Near the front of the trailer sat the heavier equipment. A 7000-watt generator. A miter saw. A table saw. A small welder. Battery chargers. Work lights. Toolboxes. Plumbing parts. Electrical parts. A few lengths of pipe. A roll of heavy plastic. Rope. Chain. A come-along. Jack stands. A first aid kit that had seen more use than any of them admitted.

And in the truck, packed safely behind the back seat and in locked cases, was the other reason they were all eager to finish early.

Target shooting.

“Before anybody says anything,” Gradyn said, pointing at Camden before Camden had even opened his mouth, “we are not stopping for food until after we shoot.”

Camden froze with one finger raised.

“I’m Starving.”

“Your always starving,” Teagan said.

Kaelex came around the side of the truck, wiping his hands on a rag. “I could eat.”

“You can always eat,” Gradyn said.

“I’m a growing boy.”

“You’re twenty-six.”

“And still growing.”

Kaelex shut the trailer door and latched it. “We going to the old strip mine or up past Jones Mountain?”

“Jones Mountain,” Teagan said immediately.

The four older brothers looked at him.

“What?” Teag said. “maybe we will see some deer.”

“the dirt road makes so much dust,” Kaelex said.

“It’s peaceful.”

“It’s farther.”

“It’s not that much farther.”

Gradyn checked the sky. The day had turned strange in the west. Not storm-dark, exactly. The clouds had a bruised color under them, purple-gray with bright seams of light where the sun broke through. Heat shimmered above the fields beyond Mrs. Hollenbach’s place, and the air felt thick enough to chew.

“Weather’s weird,” Gradyn said.

Camden pulled out his phone. “Solar storm alert earlier.”

Kaelex gave him a look. “A what?”

“A solar storm. Big flare or something. There were alerts online. Radio interference. GPS weirdness. Northern lights might be visible farther south tonight.”

Rylan leaned against the truck. “Northern lights in Pennsylvania?”

“Maybe,” Camden said. “Might be able to see them from the lookout up on the mountain tonight.”

Teagan’s eyes brightened. “That’d be awesome.”

Mrs. Hollenbach came down the porch steps with a plastic grocery bag in one hand. “Before you boys go, take these.”

Rylan accepted the bag and peeked inside. “Cookies?”

“Oatmeal raisin.”

Camden recoiled. “That’s not a cookie. That’s a health warning disguised as dessert.”

Mrs. Hollenbach narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want any?”

Camden smiled instantly. “I love fiber.”

“Good boy.”

Rylan grinned and climbed into the passenger seat. Kaelex drove. Gradyn took the rear driver-side seat, Teagan the middle, and Camden the rear passenger side.

The truck groaned a little as the trailer rolled behind them down the gravel lane. Mrs. Hollenbach waved from her porch.

Rylan waved back with two cookies in his hand.

“You already ate one?” Gradyn asked.

“Quality control.”

Camden leaned forward between the seats. “Gray, lets pick some black raspberries along the mountain road since you won’t let us get some real food before we shoot?”

“No.”

“As a stakeholder in this company—”

“We don’t have much time to shoot before the sun goes down.”

“We’ll be able to see from the glow of the northern lights.”

“Not likely.”

“Well I’m still hungry”, Camden said as he patted his pockets looking for his phone charger. Then he checked the seat.

“Looking for this,” Teagan slowly held up Camden’s charger.

“Why do you have that?”

“Because you left it plugged into Mrs. Hollenbach’s porch outlet.”

Camden took it. “I knew that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Teagan said.

Kaelex turned onto the main road, heading toward the long ridges that rose blue-green beyond the farms. Central Pennsylvania rolled around them in familiar pieces: cornfields, barns, white farmhouses, tree lines, creeks flashing silver under small bridges, and roads that seemed to know every hill by name.

For a while, they settled into the comfortable noise of brothers who did not need quiet but did not need polite conversation either. Rylan hummed along to an old Hank Jr.song coming from the radio. Gradyn scrolled through messages from a parts supplier and muttered dark things about backordered fittings. Camden opened his phone and tapped through some app he had been tinkering with for weeks. Teagan ate two oatmeal raisin cookies and pretended not to like them.

Kaelex drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the shifter, thinking through the next day’s schedule. They had a bathroom rough-in in the morning, a electric panel issue Camden wanted to inspect, and a shower replacment estimate Friday that Ry swore would be “easy money,” which usually meant hard work for little money for a hot homeowner.

“You still messing with that fake robot brain?” Kaelex asked Camden.

“It’s not fake,” Camden said without looking up. “It’s a local language model.”

“It talks?”

“It responds.”

“So does Ry. Don’t mean it’s smart.”

Rylan turned around. “Shut-up.”

Camden held up his phone. “It’s like any AI but this runs without internet. Offline. Ask it stuff, it answers from the local model on the phone.”

Teag leaned over. “Ask it who the best wrestler in this truck is.”

Camden typed. The truck was silent for three seconds.

“What’s it say?” Rylan asked.

Camden cleared his throat. “Based on available evidence, the best wrestler is likely the individual who is most technically skilled, physically conditioned, and mentally disciplined.”

Kaelex nodded. “So me.”

“Absolutely not,” Teag said.

Rylan reached over and shoved Kaelex’s knee. “You got your butt kicked at districts your senior year.”

“Yeah to an oger.”

“You were the same weight.”

“Maybe, but definitely not the same size.”

Camden typed again. “I’m asking it to rank us.”

“Don’t,” Gradyn said.

Too late.

Camden read, “Without reliable data, it is impossible to rank you all objectively.”

“Coward,” Teag said.

“However,” Camden continued reading, “the middle sibling may possess superior conflict-resolution skills due to—”

Gradyn pointed at the phone. “See? Finally, intelligence.”

Rylan laughed and turned the radio up.

An old country song filled the cab, one from Gray’s downloaded playlist playing through the truck because cell service had already started to fade out near the mountain.

Rylan sang one line badly.

Kaelex sang the next one worse.

Camden joined in with dramatic feeling and no accuracy whatsoever.

Teag tried to harmonize, failed, and kept going louder.

Gradyn pretended not to enjoy it.

The road began to climb.

Jones Mountain rose ahead, dark with summer leaves and shadow. The late afternoon light turned strange again. It flashed gold across the windshield, then dimmed, then flashed once more so brightly that Gradyn blinked.

“What the heck?” he said.

Camden looked up from his phone. “Whoa.”

The radio crackled. The song warped low and slow, like the singer had dropped into a well, then snapped back into place.

Rylan reached for the volume. “Was that the solar whatever you were talking about?”

“Maybe,” Camden said. “Phones are acting weird too.”

“My screen just went black,” Teagan said.

Gradyn held up his own phone. “Mine says it’s charging.”

“It’s not plugged in,” Rylan said.

“I know that.”

Kaelex glanced at the dashboard. The compass spun once. The GPS map froze, then shifted, showing the truck somewhere in the middle of a blank green square with no roads.

“That’s new,” he said.

Camden leaned forward between the seats again, excitement waking up in his face. “This is actually kind of cool.”

“No,” Gradyn said immediately. “We are not doing cool. We are towing six tons of trailer up a mountain road.”

“It’s probably electromagnetic interference.”

The sky over the ridge pulsed.

Not quite like lightning

A curtain of pale green light shimmered above the treetops, faint at first, then brighter. It rippled like the northern lights Camden had mentioned, except it was still daylight, and the color seemed too close, as if it were hanging between the trees instead of far above the earth.

Teagan pressed his face near the window. “That is sick.”

Gradyn grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him into the seat. “Seat belt.”

“It is on.”

“Then sit back.”

The truck climbed another bend. The trailer followed heavy behind them, tires humming, hitch creaking over the uneven road.

Kaelex slowed.

The air changed.

Every brother felt it.

It was pressure first, like driving into deep water. Then came the smell, sharp and metallic, like hot wires and rain on stone. The hair on Rylan’s arms lifted. A blue spark snapped from the dashboard knob to his finger.

“Ow.”

Camden’s phone lit up by itself.

The screen filled with lines of text, then symbols, then static.

“That’s not normal,” Camden said, and for once there was no joke in his voice.

Ahead of them, the road shimmered.

Kaelex’s foot eased toward the brake.

The shimmer bent the trees behind it. The trees along the road waved and bent. The stone road seemed to stretch forward, then fold inward, as if the road had become a piece of cloth being twisted by invisible hands.

“KK,” Rylan said quietly.

“I see it.”

“Kaelex,” Gradyn said, louder.

“I see it!”

The trailer pushed from behind as the truck lost speed. Gravel spat under the tires near the edge of the lane.

The shimmer widened.

It became a circle.

Not a perfect circle, not like a tunnel or a doorway, but a turning ring of light and shadow hanging across the road. Inside it, Kaelex saw trees, then stars, then standing stones under a gray sky, then the road again.

Camden whispered, “What is that?”

The truck’s engine coughed. The headlights flashed on by themselves. The radio screamed a burst of static so loud they all flinched.

Kaelex hit the brakes.

The pedal shook under his foot.

The trailer fishtailed.

“Hold it!” Rylan shouted.

“I am!”

The back end of the truck slid toward the shoulder. The trailer swung wide, dragging them forward with terrible weight. Kaelex fought the wheel, jaw clenched, arms hard.

For one second, the truck straightened.

For one second, it seemed like they might stop.

Then the circle of light moved toward them.

Or the road moved into it.

Or the whole mountain opened its mouth.

Teagan grabbed the handle above the door. Camden dropped his phone. Gradyn braced one arm against the seat in front of him. Rylan twisted around, eyes wide but still somehow wearing the look of a man about to say something stupid.

“If we die,” Rylan said, “I want it known I was the best wrestler.”

“Not a chance” Kaelex shouted.

“There’s a glowing hole in the road!”, shouted Gradyn

“Exactly why it matters!”

The light swallowed the hood.

The truck lurched.

The windshield filled with green fire, white stars, black branches, and stones older than memory. Sound vanished, then came back all at once as a roar so huge it felt like the world itself had growled.

For a breath, Kaelex saw impossible things.

A mountain under snow.

A sea under moonlight.

A battlefield full of banners.

A ring of stones burning blue beneath a sky with two suns.

Then everything dropped.

The truck slammed down hard enough to throw all five brothers against their seat belts. The trailer crashed behind them with a shriek of metal and a violent bounce. Tools clattered, cases slammed, something heavy toppled inside the trailer, and the engine sputtered like it had swallowed a gallon of water.

Kaelex fought the wheel.

The tires tore through wet grass.

No dirt road in site. Just grass.

The truck plowed forward across open ground, trailer swaying behind it. Mud sprayed over the windshield. A low stone shape flashed past on the left. Birds exploded from the field in a dark cloud.

Kaelex stomped the brake again.

This time it worked.

The truck skidded, slowed, and stopped with the trailer jackknifed slightly behind them.

No one moved.

The engine ticked.

The radio hissed.

Somewhere outside, wind moved through tall grass.

Rylan was the first to speak.

“Okay,” he said carefully. “What was that?”

Kaelex breathed hard through his nose. “Everybody alive?”

“Yeah,” Teagan said, voice shaky but awake. “Yeah.”

Camden fumbled around the floor until he found his phone. It turned on but there was no signal.

Kaelex kept both hands on the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.

For several seconds, he stared through the muddy windshield.

There was no road ahead.

No Mountain, no trees.

Only a wide, rolling plain under a dim gray sky.

And in the distance, rising from the earth like the broken teeth of some buried giant, stood a circle of massive stones.

Rylan leaned forward slowly.

“Gray,” he said, all humor gone now, “is that…”

“No,” Gradyn said.

Camden swallowed. “That looks like Stonehenge.”

“No,” Gradyn said again, because it was the only word he had.

Teagan’s voice came from the back seat, small and amazed.

“Then where’s the trees?”

No one answered.

Outside the truck, beyond the field, something moved near the stones.

A figure.

Then another.

Then three more.

Men in rough clothes, carrying what appeared to be spears or pikes.

Kaelex reached very slowly toward the locked case behind the seat.

“Don’t,” Gradyn said.

Kaelex froze. “Gray.”

“I know.”

“They have spears.”

“I know.”

Rylan looked at the men in the distance, then at his brothers, then at the trailer holding half their lives.

His smile came back, but smaller now. Nervous.

“Well,” he said, “good news is, I don’t think Mrs. Hollenbach’s gonna ask us to fix the step.”

Camden let out a laugh that sounded half-mad.

Teagan laughed too, because he was scared and because Rylan was Rylan and because sometimes laughing was better than screaming.

Gradyn looked at each of his brothers.

Ry, already trying to turn terror into words.

KK, ready to fight the whole world if he had to.

Cam, eyes bright with fear and impossible curiosity.

Teag, young and pale and trying not to show it.

They were all looking back at him.

Waiting.

That was how it always happened. On job sites, in trouble, in family arguments, in storms, in moments when nobody knew what to do next.

They looked to Gray.

He took one slow breath.

Then another.

“First thing,” he said, voice steadier than he felt, “we get the truck out of sight.”

Rylan nodded.

Kaelex reached for the door handle.

Camden grabbed his phone.

Teagan wiped mud from the window with his sleeve and scanned the field.

Gradyn looked once more at the standing stones in the distance.

Whatever had happened, whatever that light had been, whatever waited beyond that field, one thing was already clear.

They were a long way from home.

And the day’s work was not finished.

The first thing Gradyn learned about being stranded in a field beside what a appeared to be Stonehenge with four brothers, and men with spears in the distance was that nobody listened any better during a crisis than they did during a normal workday.

"Out of sight," he said again.

"I'm looking for some place to hide the truck," Teagan answered from the back seat, his face pressed near the muddy window. "Field drops off to the right. There's a tree line maybe two hundred yards that way."

"That ain't two hundred yards," Kaelex said.

"It is from here."

"You couldn't eyeball two hundred yards if it had a sign on it."

"I can absolutely eyeball two hundred yards. Just because you insist your hundred seventy five yard tee shot is two hundred yards doesn’t mean I don’t know how far two hundred yards is."

"Like I said you cant eyeball two hundred yards."

Rylan, still staring at the spear-carrying men near the stones, lifted one hand. "I hate to interrupt what is clearly an important surveying dispute, but our new neighbors are walking this way."

They were. Slowly at first, then with more purpose. Four men in rough tunics and cloaks, two holding spears, one with an ax, one with what looked like a long knife. They had stopped when the truck came crashing into the field, but curiosity and fear were wrestling in them now, and curiosity was winning.

Camden twisted around in his seat and looked through the rear window. "Trailer's not rolled. That's good."

"Kaelex," Gradyn said, low and serious.

Kaelex put the truck in gear.

The engine hesitated.

For one cold second, nothing happened.

Then it caught, rough but alive.

"Thank you," Camden whispered to the truck.

"Don't thank it," Kaelex said. "You'll make it proud."

Kaelex eased forward, trying not to spin the tires. The truck lurched through wet grass, the trailer dragging behind them like an angry house. Mud slapped the underside. Something metallic shifted in the trailer with a heavy thump.

"That better not be the table saw," Rylan said.

"That's definitely the table saw," Camden said.

"How do you know?"

"Because it sounded expensive."

"Everybody look for a path," Kaelex said.

The tree line Teagan had spotted ran along a shallow dip in the land. Beyond it, the ground rose into thicker woods. The field itself was open enough to make them visible from a mile away, and the truck was leaving two dark ruts any blind man could have followed with his feet.

"Left a little," Teag said. "There's lower ground."

"I see it."

"Harder left."

"I see it."

Kaelex shot him a look in the mirror.

Teag sat back. "Helpful silence. Got it."

The men near the stones had begun to run.

"They're coming now," Rylan said.

"No kidding," Kaelex said.

"I was providing situational awareness."

Kaelex kept the truck moving. The trailer bounced over a hidden rut and jerked hard enough to make all five brothers sway. The field blurred past the side windows: grass, mud, low stones, patches of yellow flowers, and here and there dark shapes that might have been old posts or markers. Above everything, the standing stones waited under the gray sky, massive and wrong and real.

For a moment, Gradyn's brain tried to reject them. It built answers as fast as it could.

A movie set.

A reenactment.

Some private historical attraction.

An accident near a replica.

A dream after inhaling too much deck stain fumes this afternoon.

But none of those answers explained the road vanishing. None explained the sky, or the grass under the tires, or the men with spears, or the fact that Camden's phone compass had spun itself into nonsense before freezing completely.

The truck reached the dip and dropped into softer ground.

"Don't stop," Gradyn said.

"I know."

The tires slid. For two awful seconds, the truck fishtailed again, trailer pushing from behind, mud spraying wide. Kaelex corrected gently. Too much would jackknife them. Too little would bury them.

"Come on," he muttered.

The truck climbed the far side of the dip. Branches slapped the windshield. The first trees swallowed them in shade.

Behind them, the field disappeared.

Kaelex drove another hundred yards into the woods before stopping. The truck sat crooked between two oaks, engine shaking, trailer angled behind them. Nobody spoke.

Outside, the woods were not silent. Birds called. Leaves hissed in the wind. Somewhere nearby water trickled over stones.

It should have been comforting. Woods were familiar. The brothers had grown up in woods and fields, hunting deer, cutting firewood, building forts, getting poison ivy in places no man should have poison ivy.

But these woods did not feel like home.

The trees were different. The air smelled different. Older, somehow, though Gradyn knew that was stupid. Air did not have an age. Still, it smelled of wet earth, smoke far away, crushed grass, animal hide, and a faint sharpness that reminded him of the flash on the mountain.

Rylan opened his door first.

"Nobody shoot anybody," Gradyn said.

Rylan paused with one boot already in the mud. "Well then I’m all out of ideas."

"Yeah that’s why I had to say it out loud."

Kaelex reached behind the seat and unlocked one of the cases. "Saying it out loud don't change the fact we don't know where we are."

"We know where we're not," Camden said.

"Thank you, Professor."

"You're welcome, Plumber Kong."

"Everybody out," Gradyn said before Kaelex could answer with a headlock.

They climbed out into mud and damp leaves.

The trailer had taken a beating but sat upright. The hitch was still locked. One taillight was cracked. The left fender had bent inward. Mud coated everything below the windows. A long smear of grass and earth ran down the side of the trailer under the company lettering.

Rylan walked along it and wiped mud away from the words with his sleeve.

GHOST CREEK CONTRACTING

Below that, in Camden's smaller lettering:

If We Can't Fix It, It's Probably Haunted

Rylan stared at it.

"Well," he said, "branding holds up."

Teag was already scanning the trees, jaw tight, trying hard to look older than eighteen. "I don't hear them."

"They'll find the ruts," Kaelex said.

"Maybe not right away," Teag said. "The dip was wet. Tracks are messy."

"Messy still points here."

Gradyn looked back through the trees toward the field. He could not see the men anymore, but that did not mean much.

"We need to hide this better," he said.

"Here?" Camden asked.

"For now."

Kaelex opened the trailer door.

The inside looked like a hardware store had gotten drunk and fallen down a flight of stairs.

The table saw had shifted, though not as badly as Camden feared. A stack of plastic bins lay spilled across the floor. A coil of PEX tubing had unrolled like a dead blue snake. Extension cords had tumbled out of their hooks. A box of screws had opened, because of course it had, and scattered across the floor in glittering betrayal.

Kaelex looked down at them.

Camden leaned around his shoulder. "You were driving so you dropped them.”

"Not now," Gradyn said, but he nearly smiled.

Gradyn knew they needed to take action before realization and then fear set in resulting in panic.

“Lets get to work.”

Within minutes, they moved like a crew.

Kaelex hauled broken limbs and heavier brush with Teag. Rylan cut saplings with a handsaw because the chainsaw would be too loud. Camden found tarps and muddy drop cloths. Gradyn decided what went where, pointing, lifting, rejecting anything that looked too neat. The truck and trailer had to disappear into the woods, not look like a hunting blind built by five idiots in a hurry.

They broke up the shape of the trailer with limbs and brush. They smeared mud over the black panels. They pulled a dark tarp across the roof and covered it with leafy branches. Teag climbed onto the trailer like a squirrel and spread brush across the top, ignoring every warning about slipping until his boot slid once and all four older brothers yelled his name at the exact same time.

"I'm fine!" he called down.

"You're gonna be fine on the ground," Kaelex said.

"I got it."

"Teag."

"One more branch."

"Teagan."

That got him down.

Rylan worked on the truck, muddying the windshield and chrome, then stepping back with a satisfied nod.

"Looks terrible," he said.

"Perfect," Gradyn answered.

Camden crouched near the rear tire tracks with a pine bough, brushing mud and leaves over the ruts. "This is very CSI: Medieval Unit."

"Less talking," Kaelex said.

"You'd miss me if I stopped."

"I'd risk it."

They worked until sweat cooled under their shirts and their breathing steadied. When the truck and trailer were hidden as well as five panicked contractors could manage in half an hour, Gradyn gathered them behind the trailer where the woods were thickest.

"Inventory," he said.

Rylan leaned against a tree. "Alive. Hungry. Confused."

"Useful inventory."

"Cookies are gone," Camden said.

Kaelex looked offended. "You ate the rest?"

"Stress response. Food just happens."

Gradyn rubbed both hands over his face.

"Tools?" he asked.

"Mostly good," Kaelex said. "Need to re-secure everything. Generator's fine as far as I can see. No fuel leak."

"Truck?"

"Running rough," Camden said. "Could be from whatever electromagnetic demon burp we drove through. Could be mud. Could be that reality doesn't come with a warranty."

"Can you check it?"

"Yes. But if I have to plug in a scanner and it tells me the fault code is Stonehenge, I'm quitting."

"Phones?"

Camden held up his phone. "No service. No GPS. Time is wrong. Date is very wrong. Battery's okay. Local files still work. Camera works. Flashlight works. My offline AI model still opens."

"Your robot brain," Kaelex said.

"Local language model. And yes."

"Can it tell us where we are?" Teag asked.

Camden glanced through the trees toward the field. "I can ask it, but without internet or GPS it's basically guessing from whatever we type in."

"Then type in giant rocks and spear guys," Rylan said.

Camden did.

The brothers crowded around him despite themselves.

The phone took longer than usual to respond. The cracked glass split the words in one corner, but the answer appeared.

Based on your description of a large prehistoric stone circle and men carrying spears in pre-modern clothing, one possible location is Stonehenge. However, the presence of armed locals and lack of modern infrastructure suggest either a reenactment, fictional scenario, or inaccurate observation. Please verify with maps or external data.

There was a long silence.

Kaelex said, "Tell it to verify with my boot."

"It also says fictional scenario," Rylan said. "I vote that."

"We're not fictional," Teag said.

"Prove it."

Teag punched him in the arm.

"Ow. All right, compelling."

Camden typed again. "What year is it if Stonehenge has no barrier fence and locals carry spears?"

The model responded with a paragraph full of cautious guesses, none of which made anyone feel better. It mentioned post-Conquest England, Norman rule, manorial villages, local lords, sheriffs, old Anglo-Saxon customs, and the uneasy mix of English, French, and Latin.

“That’s not a year,” Kaelex said.

“It doesn’t know,” Camden replied.

“Then why’s it using so many words?”

“That’s what it does.”

Gradyn stared at the screen until the words began to blur.

Norman rule. Manor villages. Sheriffs. Not Pennsylvania. Not 2026.

He looked at his brothers.

Rylan was trying to hide his concern behind half a grin. Kaelex’s face had gone hard and unreadable. Camden kept glancing between the phone and the woods, his mind racing faster than his mouth for once. Teagan looked like a kid who had found the greatest adventure in the world and was only beginning to understand that adventures could get people killed.

Gradyn rested one hand against the trailer door.

"We don't know anything yet," he said.

"We know Stonehenge," Camden said.

"We know rocks. We don't know Stonehenge. We don't know time travel. We don't know if this is..." He stopped, because he did not have a better word than magic, and he refused to use it yet. "We don't know."

Rylan nodded slowly. "So what's the plan, boss?"

"We stay hidden today. No fires unless we have to. No power tools. Phones on battery saver. We get eyes on the area before dark. We do not all go wandering around. Most important don’t shoot anyone just yet."

"I'll scout," Teag said immediately.

"No."

"Gray—"

"I said no."

"I'm the fastest."

"You're also the youngest."

Teag's face tightened. "That's not a reason."

"Tonight it is."

For a second, the woods were quiet except for the small clicks and creaks of cooling metal.

Teag looked away first.

Rylan stepped in before the moment turned into something bigger. "I'll go with him. Short loop. No hero stuff. Just see if the spear people found our tire tracks."

Kaelex shook his head. "I'll go."

"You're built like a barn door," Camden said. "Stealth’s not your strong suit."

"I can be quiet."

"I can hear you breathing."

Gradyn looked at Ry, then Teag. Rylan’s silver tongue could talk them out of trouble if needed. Teag could move quickly, quietly and spot things. It was not a bad pairing he had to admit.

"Short loop," Gray said. "You see people, you come back. You hear people, you come back. You find a castle, dragon, wizard, Roman temple, suspiciously clean bathroom, or anything else weird, you come back."

Rylan nodded. "What about a Sheetz?"

"If you find a Sheetz," Gradyn said, "bring coffee."

They chuckled. That steadied them better than a speech would have.

Ry and Teag changed fast. Bright modern shirts disappeared under darker hoodies and work jackets. They sure didn’t look medieval, not even close, but they were less likely to flash through the trees. Rylan took a knife. Teag took binoculars from the truck's center console and tucked them under his jacket.

Kaelex saw him grab the binos and raised an eyebrow. "Don’t you think will alarm medieval spear boys?"

"I’m not an idiot I’ll only use them hidden," Teag said.

"You better."

Camden handed Rylan an earbud case.

Rylan blinked. "What am I gonna do with these?”

"Bluetooth range might work for a little distance if one phone stays here and one goes with you, but trees will kill it. Better idea: I'll set my phone as a hotspot, no internet, just local network. If you stay close enough, we can message through the local chat app. If we can’t, then go back to airplane mode and conserve battery."

"You have a local chat app?" Gradyn asked.

"I have lots of things."

"Why?"

"Because one day society might collapse and everybody will apologize for mocking me."

Kaelex looked around at the hidden truck, the medieval woods, the distant stone circle, and the mud on his boots.

"I ain't apologizing yet," he said. "But you're closer."

Camden set one phone as a hotspot and connected the others. He gave each brother a short name in the chat.

RY.

KK.

GRAY.

CAM.

TEAG.

Then, because he could not help himself, he changed the group name to Definitely Not Time Travelers.

Gradyn saw it and chuckled

Rylan and Teagan slipped into the woods.

The moment they were gone, the hidden camp felt too quiet.

Kaelex opened the trailer again and began fixing the spilled mess because his hands needed work. Gradyn joined him. Camden checked the truck battery, fuses, and visible wiring, talking softly to himself the whole time.

"Battery reads okay," he said. "Alternator maybe okay. Dash electronics are mad. GPS is useless. Radio is possessed."

The radio chose that exact moment to crackle from inside the cab.

A burst of static poured out, followed by half a second of Hank Williams, then a voice none of them recognized speaking in a language that sounded like rocks rolling in a barrel, then silence.

Kaelex froze with a bin of fittings in his hands.

"Tell me that was your phone," he said.

Camden slowly shook his head.

Gradyn walked to the open driver's door and stared at the radio.

It was off.

"Nope, it wasn’t my phone" Camden said. "That’s freaky."

Gradyn reached in and turned the key back to accessory. The screen flickered, showed nothing, then flashed a string of symbols that vanished too quickly to read.

"Did you see that?" Camden asked.

"Yeah."

"That was not factory."

"Nope."

Kaelex set the fittings down with great care. "If the truck starts talking Latin, we sell it."

"To who?" Camden asked.

"Romans. They got roads."

Gradyn almost laughed.

A soft buzz came from his phone.

A message.

RY: Found ruts. They found them too.

Gradyn's chest tightened.

Another message appeared.

TEAG: 4 men at field edge. Searching wrong direction for now.

Kaelex leaned over Gradyn's shoulder.

"They coming here?"

Gradyn typed.

GRAY: Do not engage. Return now.

The reply came quickly.

RY: Yes dad.

Then:

TEAG: Ry almost stepped in sheep crap.

Then:

RY: Tactical avoidance.

Gradyn closed his eyes for one second. They were alive. They were scared. They were still idiots. That helped.

While they waited, Camden crouched beside the truck and opened his AI app again.

"What are you doing?" KK asked.

"Asking for survival priorities in early medieval Britain."

"Ask it how not to get stabbed by a spear."

Camden typed.

The model responded.

Avoid appearing threatening. Keep hands visible. Do not display unfamiliar weapons or tools unless necessary. Seek local allies. Learn language and customs. Secure food, water, shelter, and concealment. Do not assume modern objects will be understood.

Camden read it aloud.

Kaelex nodded reluctantly. "That one ain't dumb."

"I'll tell it you said that."

"Don't. It'll get proud."

A branch snapped nearby.

Kaelex turned fast, one hand going toward the pistol at his side under his shirt.

Rylan emerged first, both hands raised in surrender.

"Don't shoot the handsome one."

Teag came behind him, breathing hard but grinning.

"They went south," Teag said. "Toward the lower field. They didn't find the dip trail yet."

"Yet," Kaelex said.

"There's more," Rylan said.

Gradyn did not like his tone. "What?"

Rylan looked over his shoulder, then back at them. "There's a path through the woods. Old one. Not a hiking trail. Like... cart track maybe."

"People use it?" Gray asked.

"Somebody does. But not much."

Teag pulled something from his pocket.

It was a small flat stone, muddy, no bigger than his palm.

"Found this near the path," he said.

Gradyn took it.

At first it looked like nothing, just a piece of broken rock. Then he wiped mud away with his thumb.

A mark had been carved into it.

A circle split by a crooked line, with three smaller cuts branching from one side.

Camden leaned close.

"That looks similar to what flashed on my phone," he said.

The mark seemed simple, but it pulled at the eye. It felt unfinished, like the first letter of a word they did not know how to read.

Gradyn looked toward the unseen field, toward the stones beyond it.

"Where exactly did you find this?"

Teag pointed into the woods. "By the path. There were more stones too, bigger ones, half buried. I think it leads somewhere."

"Everything leads somewhere," Kaelex said.

"Yeah," Rylan said. "But some somewheres are worse than others."

Camden took a picture of the carved stone. His phone camera clicked loud in the quiet woods.

They all flinched.

"Sorry," he whispered.

He opened the image and fed a description to the AI. It could not identify the mark. It offered possibilities: boundary symbol, property mark, ritual carving, astronomical sign, fictional glyph, damaged rune.

"Fictional again," Rylan said.

The afternoon dimmed faster than it should have. The woods gathered shadow. Somewhere far off, a horn sounded once, low and mournful.

Teag turned toward it.

"Was that from the stones?"

"Could be a village," Rylan said.

"Could be the spear guys calling friends," KK said.

"Also possible."

Gradyn handed the carved stone back to Teag. "Keep it safe."

"Me?"

"You found it. Don't lose it."

Teag tucked it carefully into his pocket.

The sky was getting darker. The truck was still too visible from certain angles. The trailer needed straightened. They needed water, food, a safer camp, and a better story than five time travlers accidentally drove into the wrong century.

Rylan must have been thinking the same thing, because he looked down at his muddy clothes, then at the others.

"We need new outfits," he said.

Kaelex frowned. "That's your priority?"

"If spear people find us dressed like this, they're gonna have questions."

"They'll have questions either way."

"Yes, but I prefer questions like 'What village are you from?' over questions like 'Why does your shirt say Milwaukee Heated Gear?'"

Camden looked down at his own hoodie.

"Mine says Megadeth."

"That may actually help," Rylan said. "Sounds like a minor demon."

Gradyn nodded slowly. "Ry is right."

Camden put a hand to his heart. "That’s a first."

"We need local clothes. Food. Information. We need to know who runs this land and how not to get hanged by them."

"Or burned," Camden said.

Kaelex gave him a look.

"What? It’s a historically valid concern."

Gradyn looked around the half-hidden camp. "Tonight we stay put. No lights unless covered. No music. No fire. We eat what we have cold. Tomorrow, we make contact on purpose. Carefully."

"And say what?" Teag asked.

Everyone looked at Rylan.

Rylan sighed. "Why do I feel like I'm about to become a professional liar?"

"Not a liar, a B.S. artist. There is a difference?" Camden said.

"Principal Nolan didn’t think so."

“Yeah well now is your chance to showcase your craft.”

Ry wiped mud from his hands and stood a little straighter, trying on a voice older and rougher than his own.

"We are craftsmen from the western mountains," he said. "Robbed on the road. Separated from our kin. Seeking work, food, and shelter. We know wood, water, iron, light repairs, and difficult customers."

Gradyn considered it. A cover story. Simple. Hard to disprove. Close enough to truth if you squinted from a thousand years away.

"Craftsmen from the western mountains," he repeated. “Do any of you know what is west from here or even which way west is.”

"No, but there has got to be mountains somewhere to the west of here. I doubt these people know if there is or isn’t any mountains to the west either," Camden said.

"Good Point," Kaelex added.

“Yeah if your questioned just keep saying farther west,” Teagan said.

For the first time, the idea landed between them in full.

They were not going home tonight.

Maybe not tomorrow.

Maybe not for a long time.

The woods seemed to lean closer around them.

Then Gray's phone buzzed in his hand.

Not a message.

A sound file had started playing by itself.

For one impossible second, Johnny Cash's voice rolled softly from the tiny speaker, low and steady.

All five brothers stared at the phone.

Gradyn stabbed the screen to stop it.

Silence rushed back in.

Kaelex whispered, "Tell me you hit play."

Gradyn shook his head.

Camden's face had gone pale with fascination. "That was from your downloaded music?"

"Yeah."

"Which song?"

"Does it matter?"

"Maybe."

"Why would it matter?"

Camden swallowed. "Because the radio flashed symbols. My phone flashed symbols. The hotspot works but GPS doesn't. Your music just started by itself. Whatever pulled us here might have touched the electronics."

"Touched," Kaelex said. "I hate that word."

A twig cracked again.

This time it did not come from the brothers' side of the camp.

It came from the trees beyond the trailer.

Everyone froze.

Gradyn raised one hand slowly, palm down.

Quiet.

Another crack.

Then a small voice spoke from the shadows in a language none of them understood.

Not a man's voice.

A child's.

Teag turned first and saw him.

A boy stood between two trees, maybe nine or ten years old, barefoot in the mud, holding a bundle of sticks in both arms. His eyes were wide enough to show white all around. He stared not at the brothers, not at the mud-covered truck, not even at the half-hidden trailer.

He stared at Gradyn's phone.

The black glass still glowed faintly in Gray's hand.

The boy dropped the sticks.

Rylan lifted both hands, palms out, and put on the gentlest smile he owned.

"Hey there," he said softly, though the boy could not know the word. "Easy now. We won’t hurt you."

The boy took one step back.

Kaelex did not move. Camden barely breathed. Teag looked from the boy to Gray, waiting.

Gradyn slowly turned the phone screen against his chest, hiding the light.

The boy's mouth opened.

For a heartbeat, nobody moved.

Then the boy screamed.

He turned and ran crashing through the woods.

Rylan closed his eyes.

"Well," he said, "there goes carefully."

Far beyond the trees, somewhere toward the hidden field and the old stones, a horn sounded again.

This time, another answered it.

And another.

Gradyn looked at his brothers in the deepening medieval dusk.

"Pack only what we can carry," he said. "Now."

"Pack only what we can carry," Gradyn said again. "Now."

Kaelex was already at the trailer door. "Pockets and small bags that can be strapped over your back only. We don’t need someone droping a bag full of fantastical items to be found by the locals. Quickly."

Rylan grabbed Teagan by the shoulder before the youngest could bolt after the boy. "Nope."

"I can catch him."

"Then what, put him in a spladdle."

"If need be."

"No, best to let him run now and try to smooth it over later."

Teag's jaw tightened, but he stayed, Because he knew Ry was right.

From somewhere beyond the trees, a horn called again. Low. Rough. Closer than before.

Another answered it.

Camden stared into the dark where the child had vanished. "That is a very organized response to one kid seeing a phone screen."

"He didn't see a phone screen," Kaelex said, hauling open the trailer door. "He saw a glowing black mirror held by five mud-covered idiots in the cursed woods."

"That is any better of an explanation."

The inside of the trailer looked worse in the fading light. Every bin and box seemed to have multiplied. There was too much. Too many tools, too many cases, too many cords, too many little modern miracles that would turn them and their hiding place into a bonfire if the wrong people found them.

Gradyn forced his mind into work mode.

Not fear. Not panic. Just another job.

What has to happen first?

Hide what cannot be explained.

Move what cannot be lost.

Leave nothing shiny.

"Phones, battery packs, chargers," he said. "Food. Water. First aid kit. Knives. Flashlights, but keep them hidden. No bright colors. No branded stuff if we can avoid it."

"Weapons?" Kaelex asked.

The question sat heavy between them.

Gradyn looked at his brothers. Rylan was watching the woods. Camden had one hand on his phone and the other hovering uselessly as if trying to select fifty things at once. Teag was breathing fast. KK's face had gone flat and serious, which was never a good sign for whatever stood in front of him.

"Emergency only," Gradyn said. "One each Ry and KK. Hidden. Nobody sees them unless somebody is about to die."

Kaelex nodded once and moved to the locked case.

Rylan said, "I would like the record to show I am opposed to dying."

"Noted," Gray said.

"Strongly opposed."

“I second that.” Cam said.

Camden had started scooping electronics into a tool bag: phones, cords, charging blocks, two battery packs, his phone with his offline AI, a small foldable solar charger he had bought after a camping trip and never stopped bragging about, and the Bluetooth speaker.

Kaelex saw the speaker go in. "Really?"

Camden clutched it like a newborn. "Morale matters."

"So does not being hunted as demon musicians."

"Low volume morale matters."

Gray pointed at the bag. "Fine. But if I hear one note of anything tonight, I throw it in a creek."

"That's fair."

Teag grabbed a coil of rope, binoculars, two protein bars, and the carved stone from his pocket. He checked the stone like someone making sure a small animal was still alive.

Rylan filled a canvas nail apron with things that were only half practical: a tape measure, a pencil, two folding knives, a handful of zip ties, a lighter, three packs of crackers, and a small pry bar.

The horns called again.

Closer.

The woods were no longer just woods. They were hiding places for other people. Every branch had weight. Every shadow had intent.

Gradyn stepped out, looked at the half-camouflaged trailer, and knew it was not enough. In daylight, from the right angle, anyone would see the shape. Even in dusk, the straight lines were wrong. Nature did not make black aluminum boxes with mud smears and bent fenders.

"We can't move it tonight," Camden said behind him, reading his face.

"No."

"We can make it look worse."

"Worse how?"

Camden looked toward the trailer, then the trees, then the field beyond them. His fear sharpened into mischief. That was either comforting or dangerous.

"Like something people don't want to touch."

Kaelex came out with a pistol hidden under his untucked shirt and a hatchet in one hand. "Explain."

"We lean into haunted."

Gradyn looked skeptical.

Camden held up a small rechargeable work light. It was one of the cheap magnetic ones, square and bright, with a cracked plastic cover from a job where KK had absolutely dropped it off a ladder but insists he didn’t.

"No," Gradyn said.

"Low setting. Buried deep. Behind brush. If somebody gets close and moves the wrong branch, it flickers. They panic. They back off. We watch from over there."

"Or they get curious and uncover the whole thing."

"People with spears who just heard a kid scream about a glowing mirror are not going to get curious first."

"You don't know that."

"I know I wouldn't."

Gradyn looked at the trailer again. He hated tricks. Tricks went wrong. But the sad excuse for a camp was already compromised, and fear was the only wall they could build fast enough.

"One light," he said. "Covered. No phone. Nothing we can't lose."

"Deal."

"And no ghost noises."

Camden's mouth opened.

"Cam."

It closed.

"Fine. But your killing my creativity."

They moved fast. Kaelex and Gray dragged heavier deadfall against the lower part of the trailer. Rylan smeared mud over the last tail lights and broke branches across the sharp corners. Teag climbed a tree, tied off a tarp line, and dropped a curtain of leafy limbs down over the side.

"How’s that" he ask.

"Nice touch”, KK said.

He dropped lightly to the ground like a squirl, stood up and slipped on mud and caught himself with both hands.

Teag stood again, wiped his palms on his pants, and pointed at them. "Nobody saw that."

"I saw all of it," Camden said.

"You saw my new dance moves."

That broke the seriousness of the situation a bit.

Camden went behind the trailer and set the work light under a mess of brush near the trailer's rear corner, dimmed it, and trapped it beneath a muddy piece of plastic so the glow barely showed. He rigged the switch with a loose branch and a bit of cord so a hard tug would make it flash brighter.

It was not pretty, but with luck it might just be enough to spook the spear people and send them running for the night.

They backed away and studied the result.

The truck was nearly invisible from one side, a dark lump under branches and mud. The trailer looked like a fallen section of ugly hillside if a man did not stare too long. The company lettering was covered. The chrome was dulled. The windshield was smeared. The tire tracks were brushed over with leaves where they could manage it.

It would not fool a search party in the morning.

It might fool a scared superstitious mob at dusk.

"Move," Gray said.

They retreated uphill through the trees, each carrying more than he should and less than he wanted. Gray led at first, then let Teag slide ahead because the kid had the best eyes in the dim light and moved like the woods were his home. That was some thing Gray would have to get used to. Teag was young. He was not useless.

They reached a low ridge where thick bramble and two leaning oaks formed a natural blind. From there, they could see pieces of their hidden camp below, but only if they knew where to look.

They crouched in the wet leaves.

And waited.

Waiting was worse than working.

Kaelex settled behind a tree, broad shoulders hunched, green eyes locked on the woods below. "Hear that?"

At first, Gray heard only wind and the thud of his own pulse.

Then voices.

Not English. Not any English he knew. The words came through the trees chopped and strange, with hard edges and soft endings. Every once in a while a sound almost reminded him of a word he knew. Several men. One higher voice, maybe the boy. Someone else speaking faster, upset.

Camden had his phone out, screen dimmed almost to nothing.

"Don't," Gray whispered.

"I'm recording audio. Maybe the AI can help later."

"No light."

"It's covered."

Kaelex glanced back. "If that thing starts playing Johnny Cash again, I am throwing you and it downhill."

"Again, that's fair."

The first torch appeared between the trees.

Then another.

Men came cautiously, spread out and hunched, as if expecting the shadows to bite. The boy was with them, half pulled behind a woman with a shawl over her head. He pointed toward the hidden camp with one shaking hand, talking fast. The woman held his shoulder and kept looking around like she regretted every decision that had led her into the woods.

Behind them came four armed men.

One carried a spear. One had an ax. One had a round shield slung over his back. The last wore better boots and a leather jerkin with small iron studs across the chest. He had a short blade at his belt and a narrow face that looked angry even before it had a reason.

Rylan leaned close to Gray's ear. "That guy looks like he yells at people for smiling."

"Sheriff?" Teag whispered.

"Maybe," Gray said.

The hard-faced man barked something. The others stopped.

He stepped toward the hidden trailer.

Every brother went still.

The man saw the broken brush first. Then the mud. Then the ruts that had not been hidden well enough. He crouched and touched the ground. He spoke sharply to one of the armed men, who crossed himself in a quick, nervous gesture.

"That’s isn’t comforting," Kaelex whispered.

The woman spoke then. Her voice was firm, older than the rest. She pointed away from the brush, then toward the boy, then back toward the village. Whatever she said, the hard-faced man did not like it.

"She's defending him," Rylan whispered.

"Or telling them where to throw him," Camden said.

"She's got her hand on him like my mom did when Teag broke the church window."

Teag turned his head slowly. "That was Cam."

"Cam talked you into throwing."

Camden did not look away from the searchers. "That’s fake news.”

Below them, the hard-faced man took another step.

The dim hidden work light glowed beneath the brush.

He froze.

So did everyone else.

It was not bright. It was barely more than a soft glow under the leaves, back home somebody might mistake the glow for a cluster of lightning bugs. It was just enough to look like moonlight reflecting off of a huge eye.

The boy cried out and backed into the woman.

The spear carrier muttered something that sounded very much like a prayer even though none of the brothers knew the words.

Captain Pruneface drew his blade.

"Bad sign," Kaelex whispered.

"Wait," Gray breathed.

The man leaned closer and jabbed the brush with the tip of his blade.

The branch trigger slipped.

The work light flashed bright for half a second.

White light burst through the leaves.

The search party exploded backward.

The boy screamed again. One man fell over a root. The shield carrier threw his arm up so fast he hit himself in the face with the edge of his own shield. The woman shouted something that might have been, Get back, you idiots, in any century.

Rylan clamped both hands over his mouth.

Camden trembled with the effort of not laughing.

Kaelex whispered, "Do not."

Camden made a small strangled noise.

"Don’t."

The hard-faced man recovered first. Pride dragged him upright faster than courage. He shouted at the others, but he did not step closer. The blade stayed in his hand. The torchlight shook.

Then the light under the brush dimmed again.

For several long moments, nobody below moved.

At last the woman said something low and sharp. She pulled the boy back. The armed men retreated with her, all except the hard-faced man, who lingered long enough to spit toward the brush.

Even from the ridge, Gray understood the gesture.

Not fear alone.

Anger.

The man did not know what he had found, but he hated it.

Finally he backed away too.

The torches withdrew through the trees.

The voices faded.

The woods closed behind them.

Camden put his forehead against the damp leaves and chuckled silently.

Rylan whispered, "The shield guy punched himself."

Camden lost the battle and made one terrible squeak.

Kaelex grabbed the back of his hoodie and shoved his face gently but firmly into the moss.

"Quiet."

"I am quiet," Camden wheezed into the ground.

Gradyn should have told them both to shut up. Instead, he let the laugh rise just enough to loosen the knot in his chest. It came out as one breath through his nose.

They had not been found.

Not really.

But the camp was no longer secret. It was something worse.

It was a story.

Stories traveled faster than men.

They waited until the last torch vanished and then waited longer. The sky drained from gray to black. No modern glow softened the world. No porch lights. No headlights on distant roads. No red blink of a tower. The dark here was complete and ancient, and it made the little covered screen of Camden's phone feel like a sin.

Gray finally motioned them back from the ridge.

They moved another hundred yards uphill before stopping in a hollow beneath a fallen tree. It was miserable, wet, cramped, and hidden. For tonight, that made it perfect. The moon glowed faintly through a thin layer of clouds.

"Cold camp," Gray said.

"Cold everything," Rylan muttered.

"No fire," Kaelex said. "No light. No noise."

They took inventory by touch and by the faintest covered glow from a phone screen under Gray's jacket. Their supplies were laughable and priceless at the same time.

Three bottles of water. Two protein bars. A crushed pack of crackers. One first aid kit. Five knives of various sizes. A hatchet. Two flashlights. One small roll of electrical tape. Zip ties. Rope. A tape measure. A lighter they dared not use. Camden's electronics bag. A few battery packs. Binoculars. One compact tool pouch with pliers, a multi-bit screwdriver, wire cutters, and a little adjustable wrench. Two concealed firearms and limited ammunition that nobody wanted to mention too loudly.

And a palm-sized carved stone that might mean nothing or everything.

Teag set it in the middle of their little circle.

No one asked him to.

The symbol looked different in the dark. A circle split by a crooked line, three smaller marks branching from one side. Mud still sat in the cuts even after Teag had wiped it clean. It looked old. Not gift-shop old. Not graveyard old. Real old.

Camden opened his phone under his jacket again and pulled up the photograph.

"The model still can't place it," he whispered. "It keeps hedging. Boundary mark. Astronomical sign. Damaged rune. Ritual carving. Fictional glyph."

"It doesn’t feel fictional," Kaelex said.

"Ask it something useful," Rylan said. "Like how to explain five strangers to spear people."

Camden typed slowly, shielding the screen.

How should lost travelers make peaceful contact with an early medieval village?

The answer came in neat, careful lines.

Show empty hands. Approach slowly. Bring a useful gift. Avoid sudden movements. Let one speaker take the lead. Do not display unfamiliar technology. Seek a child or non-combatant only with caution; frightening children may cause retaliation. Offer labor or healing assistance if culturally appropriate.

Camden read it softly.

When he reached the part about frightening children, all five brothers looked at each other.

"Little late for that Oracle," Rylan whispered.

Teag frowned. "Oracle?"

"Cam's robot brain needs a name," Rylan said. "Professor was too respectful."

"Merlin," Camden said immediately.

"No," Gray said.

"Why not?"

"Because if we are actually near Stonehenge in the Middle Ages, naming your phone Merlin feels like tempting fate."

"That is exactly why it's good."

Kaelex pointed at the phone. "We are not naming a curesed rectangle after a wizard."

"We don't even believe in wizards," Teag said.

The woods answered with a long, distant howl.

Nobody moved.

The howl faded into the dark.

Rylan swallowed. "Merlin it is."

On the menu for tonight was 3 protein bars. They divided the bars as equal as they could make 6 halves split into 5 mouths.

Afterward, they sat with their backs against damp roots and tried not to think about home.

The quite was unnerving.

No hum from power lines. No distant truck on a road. No phone notification. No porch light. No refrigerator kicking on in another room. No easy answer waiting in a search bar. No mother calling. No father asking whether the job got done.

Just wet leaves, near total dark, and the breathing of brothers trying not to sound scared.

Gray checked the local chat. The hotspot still connected the phones as long as they stayed close. The group name Definitely Not Time Travelers glowed at the top of the screen.

RY: this is bad

KK: obviously

TEAG: very bad

CAM: we should go back for more food

GRAY: not tonight

KK: im with cam, more food

GRAY: first light

KK: if I don’t starve to death till then

RY: i have no doubt you will make it

A smile tugged at Gray's mouth despite everything.

Then another message appeared.

TEAG: I could have caught the kid

Gray looked over the top of his phone. Teag sat across from him in the dark, face hidden but posture stiff.

No one else typed.

Gray considered answering in the chat. Easier, maybe. Cleaner.

Instead, he put the phone down.

"You might have," he said quietly.

Teag's head lifted.

"But if you caught him," Gray continued, "then what? Hold him? Tie him up? Scare him worse? Let him go and have him tell everyone we grabbed him?"

Teag said nothing.

"You did right staying put."

"You told me to stay."

"And you listened. That's doing right."

For a while, the only sound was Kaelex shifting his weight and Camden pretending he was not listening.

Teag looked down. "You still think I'm a kid."

Rylan made a soft noise like he wanted to jump in, but Gray raised one hand.

"I think you're my little brother," Gray said. "That's not the same thing."

"Feels the same."

"Yeah," Gray admitted. "Probably does."

That surprised Teag enough to quiet him.

Gray rubbed at the mud drying on his wrist. "I need you sharp. Not proving something every five seconds. Sharp. You saw the path. You found the stone. You spotted the tree line. We need that. I need that. But I can't have you running at every sound like you're trying to win a dare."

Teag's face was hard to read in the dark, but his voice came softer.

"I'm not trying to win a dare."

"Then don't act like Cam."

"Hey," Camden whispered.

"Fair," Rylan said.

Kaelex grunted. "Accurate."

Teag snorted despite himself. The knot loosened.

"Fine," he said. "Sharp. Not stupid."

"That's the dream for all of us," Rylan said.

"Some farther from it than others," KK added.

"Your all buttheads," Camden whispered.

They tried to sleep in shifts and failed at it in shifts. KK took first watch. Rylan took second and spent most of it listening to things that were probably squirrels and imagining his trophy buck was walking right past him just out of sight. He dozed of in frustration before he could wake Cam for the next watch. Gray slept restlessly and dreamed of yellow lines bending into a circle of green fire. He woke before dawn with his heart hammering.

The woods were blue and cold.

Mist lay low between the trees. Birds had begun to argue somewhere overhead. For a few seconds, in that gray not-quite-morning pr dawn stillness, he could almost pretend they had camped after a hunting trip and the truck was parked just over the hill.

Then he saw Camden curled around the electronics bag like a dragon on treasure, Kaelex sitting awake with the hatchet across his knees, Rylan asleep with one hand still on the pry bar, and Teag crouched at the edge of the hollow staring downhill.

Gray sat up.

Teag lifted one finger to his lips.

Movement.

Not the heavy movement of men searching. Smaller and more careful. A foot placed, then a pause. Cloth brushing leaves. A sniffle.

Kaelex nudged Rylan.

Rylan opened his eyes to Kaelex’s face with a finger over his mouth.

"Don't scream," KK whispered.

Rylan woke up with a slight smile on his face. Awareness of their situation quickly returned to his eyes and the smile faded. He nodded.

The movement came closer.

Through the mist, a boy appeared. The same boy from the night before.

He was smaller in daylight. Nine or ten, as they had guessed, with bare legs scratched by brush and a tunic belted at his waist. His hair stuck out in pale-brown tangles. He carried something wrapped in rough cloth with both hands, held away from his body like it might bite him.

He did not see them in the hollow.

He crept to a tree twenty yards below, the same direction from which he had watched them the night before. His eyes darted toward the hidden camp farther down the slope. He swallowed hard.

Then he set the cloth bundle on a flat stone.

He backed away three steps.

Stopped.

Looked around.

Rylan shifted slowly, just enough to see.

The boy froze.

For one long second, child and brothers stared at each other through the mist.

Rylan raised both hands, palms out, just as he had the night before.

"Easy," he whispered.

The boy could not know the word, but he seemed to understand the hands.

Gray held everyone still.

The boy pointed at the bundle. Then, very carefully, he touched his own mouth.

Food.

He had brought them food.

Rylan looked at Gray.

Gray gave the smallest nod.

Rylan slowly pointed to himself. "Ry."

The boy stared.

Rylan touched his chest again. "Ry."

Then he pointed gently toward the boy.

The boy looked like he might run. His eyes flicked toward the hidden camp, toward where the strange light had flashed. Then back to Rylan.

His lips moved.

"Wulf," he said, or something close to it.

Rylan smiled, warm and easy, though Gray could see the effort in it.

"Wulf," Rylan repeated.

The boy's eyes widened at hearing his name returned. He took another step back, but he did not run.

Camden, because Camden had been born without whatever piece of the brain controlled timing, whispered, "If his name is actually Wolf, that’s bad ass."

The boy flinched at the sound.

Kaelex elbowed Camden so hard he folded.

Rylan kept his smile. He pointed at the bundle, then at his own chest, eyebrows raised.

For us?

The boy nodded once.

Then he pointed downhill toward the village they still had not seen, pressed one finger hard against his lips, and shook his head.

Do not tell.

Or do not come.

Or do not make the singing ghost box angry again.

Possibly all three.

Rylan nodded solemnly as if he understood every word.

"Thank you," he said, and placed one hand over his heart.

The boy watched that gesture carefully.

Then he copied it.

Hand to heart.

A tiny bridge, built from nothing.

A horn sounded far away.

The boy jerked like a rabbit. He turned and ran, but this time he did not scream. He vanished between the trees, quick and silent.

No one moved until the woods had swallowed him completely.

Finally, Rylan let out a breath.

"Well," he said softly, "either he thinks we're hungry, or he's baiting a trap."

Camden rubbed the place where KK had elbowed him. "Both can be true."

Kaelex pointed at the bundle. "Nobody eats that until we know what it is."

"It is bread," Teag said.

"It is probably bread."

"Looks like bread."

"Lots of things look like bread."

Gray stood slowly, every joint stiff from cold ground and no sleep.

He looked downhill toward the hidden truck and trailer. Then toward the place the boy had gone. Fear had brought villagers into the woods last night. Authority had brought armed men. But curiosity had brought the boy back.

And kindness, maybe.

That mattered.

In a world where they owned nothing except what they could hide and carry, it might matter more than the generator, the tools, or all the strange advantages locked in their trailer.

Gray looked at Ry. Then at Teag.

"You two made first contact by accident," he said. "Now we're going to do it on purpose."

Teag straightened.

Rylan's grin returned, small but real. "Craftsmen from the far western mountains?"

"Not yet," Gray said. "First we learn who Wulf is, where he came from, and how much trouble that hard-faced man can make."

Kaelex glanced toward the bundle. "And then?"

Gray looked through the trees, toward the unseen village and the old stones beyond it.

"Then," he said, "we find out what kind of job we just walked into."

The bread was hard at the edges, soft enough in the middle, and wrapped in cloth that smelled faintly of smoke and sheep.

Nobody ate it right away.

They sat in the hollow under the gray morning light with the bundle open between them, staring at it as if it might unfold into an answer. The woods around them were damp and waking. Birds moved in the branches. Somewhere downhill, beyond the place where the truck and trailer hid under brush and mud, men called to one another in voices too distant to understand.

Kaelex crouched with his elbows on his knees, watching the bread like it had insulted him.

"Could be fine," Rylan said.

"Could be poison," Kaelex answered.

"He's a kid."

"Kids can carry poison."

“As a matter of fact, throughout history armies have routinely used kids to…,” Gradyn began to say.

Teag cut him off, “We don’t need a history lesson right now Gray.”

Camden rubbed both hands over his face. He felt like he slept maybe an hour, sitting upright against a tree with the electronics bag under one arm. "If medieval children are already running covert poison operations then we are doomed."

Teagan picked up the cloth and sniffed it. "It smells like bread."

"would be a very good poison attempt if it smelled like poison," Kaelex said.

Rylan broke off a corner, examined it, then took a bite.

All four brothers stared at him.

He chewed slowly, making a thoughtful face.

"Well?" Camden asked.

"Dry," Rylan said. "Little smoky. Needs butter."

Kaelex gave him a flat look. "If you fall over dead, I'm telling people you died like you lived, like and asshole."

“Tell them I died with a full belly,” Rylan slurred with a full mouth.

Kaelex tore a chuck of bread from the loaf. "The boy brought food. That means he's not scared of us. He’s also curious and brave. We can work with that."

Gradyn thought about it. KK was right. Wulf had seen enough to run screaming the night before. He had heard music coming from seemingly nowhere, seen men in strange clothes around a half-hidden thing no man of this time could explain, and still he had come back with food.

That was not nothing.

Gray stood, knees stiff from the damp morning.

"Ry and Teag make contact," he said. "Carefully. No hero stuff.”

Kaelex rose at once. "I should go."

"No."

"Gray—"

"You're too big to look harmless."

Kaelex looked down at himself as if this were a personal accusation.

Camden nodded. "You have the grace and presents of a refrigerator tumbling down a hill."

"I’ll tumble you down a hill."

“Ooh good comeback,” Cam taunted

"Later," Gradyn said. "Right now, Ry can B.S. Teag can move quiet and quick. They already know Wulf's face. If the kid sees all five of us, he’s likely to run again."

Teag tried not to look pleased at being picked. He failed, but only a little.

"We follow him?" he asked.

"You find him," Gray said. "Or you find where he came from. You do not walk into the middle of a village. You do not get surrounded. You do not bring anyone back here unless you are sure."

Rylan brushed crumbs from his palms. "Define sure."

"Sure enough that KK won't have to start throwing people down hills."

Kaelex grunted with a smile.

Gray pointed at him without smiling. "No throwing people until they need thrown."

“No promises.”

Camden unzipped the electronics bag and pulled out two phones. "Hotspot stays here. Ry takes this one, screen brightness all the way down. Local chat still works if you're close enough. If it doesn't send, don't keep trying. Battery is our new currency."

Rylan took the phone and nodded

Teag checked the knife at his belt, then tucked the carved stone into an inside pocket. His movements were quick and controlled, but Gray saw the nerves in the set of his shoulders.

"Teag," Gray said.

The youngest looked over.

Gray held his gaze for a second. "You see trouble first, you come back first. Proving yourself does not mean doing something stupid before anyone else can stop you."

Teag's face tightened, then softened. "I know."

"Good."

Rylan clapped him lightly on the shoulder. "Besides, that's Cam's job."

Camden opened his mouth, considered the last twenty-four hours, and closed it again.

A few minutes later, Ry and Teag slipped from the hollow and moved downhill through the trees.

They did not follow Wulf's trail at first. Teag insisted on looping wide, and Rylan let him. The boy had gone toward the village, but if the armed men from last night were still searching, the most obvious path was the worst one.

The woods were old in a way Rylan could feel even if he could not explain it. Back home woods had their own voice: squirrels in dry leaves, distant traffic, a chainsaw somewhere over a ridge, an airplane too high to see. These woods had birds, wind, insects, and nothing else. No engine. No tires. No far-off highway. No hum of the world.

It made every snapped twig sound like a gunshot.

Teag moved ahead, crouched low, eyes working. He had always been good in the woods. As a kid, he had been the one who found deer trails and lost arrows, the one who could disappear behind a patch of laurel while his brothers were still arguing over who had made the noise. Rylan had teased him for it plenty. He was not teasing him now.

After ten minutes, Teag stopped and held up a fist.

Rylan froze.

Below them, voices drifted through the trees.

Teag pointed to the left. They eased that way, using a mossy rise for cover. Through the brush, the camp lay partly visible. In the field at the edge of the forest stood four men in a loose half circle. Two had spears. One had a bow. The fourth wore a leather jerkin dark with oil and a short cloak pinned at the shoulder.

That one gave the orders.

He look like the sheriff from last night, Rylan thought. He had the look of a man who borrowed authority from someone worse. Narrow face, hard eyes, a beard trimmed closer than the others. His boots were better. His belt had metal on it.

He pointed toward the mud where the truck had torn the ground the day before and spoke sharply.

Teag leaned near Rylan's ear. "That's the guy from last night. The hard-faced one."

Rylan nodded.

The men clearly did not want to enter the woods. They were afraid of them. That was plain enough. One of the spear men made a sign across his chest. Another spat on the ground.

The hard-faced man barked at him, but even he kept distance from the tree line.

Then a loud noise from in the trees startled them all.

Even Rylan flinched.

He glanced at Teagan who was smiling holding a rock and quit obviously just got done troughing one also.

Rylan shoved him disapprovingly.

All four men stumbled away.

One actually fell.

The man with the bow raised it, hands shaking. The hard-faced man shouted, but his voice cracked around the edge. He stepped forward as if pride dragged him by the collar, then stopped when another bang spooked him.

Rylan heard Teag take a slow breath beside him.

"Good and bad," Teag whispered.

"Mostly both," Rylan whispered back.

The hard-faced man gave one final order. Two of the others backed away at once. The bowman kept his arrow pointed at the woods until the leader slapped his arm down. Then all four retreated toward the lower field, moving faster than they had arrived.

Rylan waited until the men disappeared and turned to Teagan with a look of pride and disapproval, “well, can’t argue with results”.

“That’s what you say about headlocks,” Teagan quipped.

Ry smiled.

"They are going to tell people," Teag said.

Ry’s smiled faded, "yep."

"That there's a ghost wagon in the woods."

"Probably."

"Is that good?"

Rylan watched the half-hidden trailer. "don’t see how it could be."

Teag almost smiled, but the sound of a child coughing drew both their heads around.

A small figure crouched near a fallen tree twenty yards downslope, one hand clamped over his mouth.

Wulf.

The boy had watched the spooky rock show too.

For a moment nobody moved. Then Wulf looked straight at them, eyes wide but not panicked this time. He raised one dirty hand and pressed a finger to his lips.

Rylan nodded.

Teag lifted the heel of bread they had brough with and held it up.

Wulf stared, uncertain.

Teag broke the bread in half, kept one piece, and set the other on a stump between them.

The boy's gaze flicked toward the retreating men, then back to the brothers. He crept forward, snatched the bread, and retreated two quick steps. But he did not run.

"Wulf," Rylan said softly, touching his own chest and then pointing to the boy.

The boy swallowed his bite and nodded. "Wulf."

“Well I guess now we know for sure that the bread was not poisoned,” Teag noted

Rylan gave Teag a side glance then continued with Wulf.

He pointed to himself. "Ry."

Wulf repeated it carefully. "Ray."

"Close enough."

Teag touched his own chest. "Teag."

Wulf tried the sound twice before it became something like "Tig."

Teag grinned as he remembered dad use to call him Tigger. "I'll take it."

The boy watched their mouths, then looked downhill. He pointed through the trees and spoke several quick words. Rylan caught none of them. The language had rough edges, with a few sounds that almost felt familiar before slipping away.

Rylan shook his head and spread his hands.

Wulf frowned, thinking hard. Then he pointed downhill again, put both hands together like a roof, then mimed people walking. A village. Home. Then he pointed to the hard-faced men's tracks and made a face so full of dislike that no translation was needed.

"Bad men?" Teag whispered.

"Authority," Rylan said. "Often similar."

Wulf pointed at Rylan and Teag, then tapped the ground, shook his head hard, and pointed toward the west through thicker woods.

Do not go that way.

Or do not stay.

Or those men will come back.

Rylan nodded anyway. He had spent half his life understanding customers who did not know the right words for what they wanted. This was not so different, except the customer had bare feet and might accidentally get them hanged.

Wulf motioned for them to follow.

Teag looked at Rylan.

Rylan looked back toward camp, then pulled out the phone Camden had given him. He turned his body so Wulf could not see the faint glow and typed with his thumb.

RY: Found Wulf. Following short distance. Armed men left for now.

A few seconds later:

GRAY: don’t go to far. DO NOT enter village.

Then:

CAM: bring back lunch.

Rylan put the phone away without answering.

They followed Wulf along a path so narrow it was more memory than trail. He moved quickly when he forgot they were behind him, then slowed each time he remembered. Twice he looked back as if surprised they had not vanished.

The path bent around a stream, down through willows, and over a place where flat stones had been set in the mud. Rylan noticed old wheel ruts there, worn deep and filled with brown water. The village had to be close.

They smelled smoke first.

Then animals.

Then people.

Wulf stopped at the edge of a screen of hazel brush and crouched. He motioned for them to do the same.

Beyond the brush, a small village sat in a shallow valley.

It was not the storybook kind, not clean thatched cottages glowing gold in friendly sunlight. It was mud and smoke, crooked fences, low houses of timber and wattle, roofs dark with old straw, pigs rooting near a ditch, chickens scattering from barefoot children, and thin dogs nosing through refuse. A little chapel or hall stood near the center, crude but sturdier than the homes around it. Beyond it, fields stretched in strips, and beyond those the gray shoulder of the land rose toward the unseen stones.

Rylan felt something in him settle and ache at the same time.

This was real.

Not a set. Not a prank. Not some historical park.

People lived here. Hungry people. Tired people. People who would be terrified of five men from nowhere and the impossible thing hidden in their woods.

Near the center of the village, a line had formed beside a cart carrying two barrels. A man dipped water from one barrel into smaller jugs and buckets while another collected payment in eggs, bits of cloth, or small coins. At the far end of the lane, a stone well sat unused, its wooden cover tied shut with a strip of red-dyed cloth.

A woman in the line coughed into her sleeve. A child cried against her hip.

Wulf's face changed when he looked at the well. His expression betrayed anger, small but hot.

He spoke low, pointing first at the covered well, then to his stomach. He made a retching motion. Then he pointed to the water cart and rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign of payment.

Teag understood first. "They can't use the well. They're paying for water."

Rylan looked closer. The man taking payment wore a strip of leather at his arm with the same color as the hard-faced man's cloak pin.

"And somebody's making money off it," he said.

Wulf nodded as if he recognized the tone if not the words.

The hard-faced man appeared near the cart.

He came from between two houses, cloak swinging, one hand resting on the pommel of a short sword. The villagers shifted when they saw him. Not much. Just enough. Heads lowered. Shoulders tightened. The man taking payment stood straighter.

Wulf ducked lower.

The hard-faced man said something to the payment taker, then turned on an old man who had stepped from the line holding an empty bucket. The old man answered with both hands raised. The hard-faced man shoved him hard enough that he fell in the mud.

Teag moved before thinking.

Rylan caught his sleeve.

"No," he whispered.

"Ry—"

"No. Not like this."

Teag's jaw worked. His eyes stayed on the old man struggling up from the mud.

A young woman stepped out from beside the cart and helped the old man to his feet.

She was maybe Rylan's age or a little younger, with dark hair braided back, a patched green dress, and a look on her face that suggested she had been born tired of men who enjoyed frightening people. She said something sharp to the hard-faced man.

The village went very still.

Rylan did not understand the words, but he knew tone. He had heard that tone from mothers, waitresses, teachers, nurses, and Mrs. Hollenbach when Camden almost tracked mud through her kitchen the other day.

The hard-faced man turned slowly toward the woman.

Wulf whispered a name.

"Olivia," it sounded like.

Rylan glanced at him. "Olivia?"

Wulf nodded once, eyes fixed on the woman.

The man with the sword stepped closer to her. Olivia did not step back. She lifted her chin, said something else, and pointed at the covered well.

The man laughed.

Then he knocked the old man's bucket from her hand.

That was all he did. It was not enough to justify Rylan charging out of the brush and changing history with a pry bar. It was not enough to risk Teag, Gray, KK, Cam, the truck, the trailer, and every secret they had.

But it was enough to make Rylan's hands curl.

Beside him, Teag breathed through his nose like a bull calf trying to become a bull.

"We remember his face," Rylan said quietly.

Teag nodded once.

The hard-faced man left after a few more words, taking two of the water jugs with him though he had not paid anyone. When he was gone, the village breathed again. Olivia knelt to pick up the bucket. The old man touched her shoulder in thanks.

Wulf watched her for a long moment, then began to crawl backward.

A twig snapped under Teag's boot.

It was not loud.

It was loud enough.

Olivia's head turned.

Her eyes found the brush.

Rylan went still.

For half a second, he thought she would cry out. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and looked directly at the place where his face was half-hidden behind leaves.

Then she looked away.

Not by accident.

On purpose.

She said something to the old man, handed him the bucket, and walked toward the edge of the village with the calm, deliberate pace of someone going to fetch firewood.

Wulf made a small panicked sound.

"Friend?" Rylan whispered.

Wulf gave him a look that said the question was too large for a single answer.

Olivia disappeared behind a shed, then reappeared on a side path that led toward the brush, carrying a bundle of sticks she absolutely did not need. She stopped ten yards from where they crouched.

"Wulf," she said softly.

The boy squeezed his eyes shut like a criminal caught stealing pie.

She repeated his name, sharper this time.

He stood slowly from the brush.

Rylan rose with him, hands open.

Teag followed, half a step behind.

Olivia stared at them.

Up close, Rylan saw that she was younger than the weariness in her face had first made her seem. Thick brown hair, touched with warmer strands where the light found it, had been pulled back loosely and tied at the nape of her neck. Several windblown pieces had escaped to frame high cheekbones and a firm mouth. Tucked carefully behind one ear was a tiny blue wildflower—a small, stubborn touch of beauty in a life that seemed to offer little of it.

She wore a plain wool dress over a faded linen shift, both neatly patched. A simple belt drew the dress close at her waist, subtly defining the curve of her hips, while a dark cloak covered her shoulders against the damp morning.

Despite the hardness in her expression, a certain softness remained in her, and Ry noticed it immediately.

Her beauty might have been easy and bright in a kinder life. Here, it had been sharpened by exhaustion. Sleepless shadows lay beneath her eyes, and something close to despair lived behind them, as though she had carried too much for too long and had stopped expecting anyone to help.

But despair had not defeated her.

Strength showed in the set of her shoulders and in the way she stood between the Wulf and two strange men without taking a single step backward. She looked tired enough to collapse and stubborn enough to remain standing long after everyone else had fallen.

Ry forgot, briefly, that he was supposed to be thinking of a convincing cover story.

Then he noticed the knife in her right hand, mostly concealed behind the bundle of sticks she carried, and remembered that staring was probably not the best beginning.

Her eyes moved carefully over their clothes, their boots, their belts, the strange stitching in Rylan’s jacket, and the metal zipper Teag had forgotten to cover.

She said something in the village tongue.

Rylan shook his head gently. "We don't understand. Not much."

Her brow furrowed.

"Understand," she repeated, the word heavy and strange but recognizable.

Rylan blinked. Beneath the accent, beneath the old shape of it, there it was.

"A little," he said, touching two fingers close together.

Olivia looked at Wulf.

Wulf spoke quickly, pointing toward the woods, then miming light with his fingers, then clapping both hands over his ears in a way that almost certainly represented his own screaming.

Teag winced.

Olivia listened without interrupting. Her face changed only once, when Wulf pointed toward the hidden camp. She looked past them into the trees and made a sign with her left hand, quick and old.

Not Christian, Rylan thought. Not exactly.

Protection maybe.

When Wulf finished, Olivia studied Rylan again.

"Men," she said slowly, choosing the word with care. "From... where?"

Rylan felt the moment settle on him.

He had lied to customers, inspectors, cops who wanted to know why he was sitting in his car in the buff when he had gotten pulled over for speeding, he fell in the water while he was fishing, and once to a furious goat owner after Teag accidentally let three goats into a half-finished kitchen addition. But this was different. This lie needed to be simple enough to survive a world he did not understand.

He touched his chest. "Rylan."

Then he touched Teag's shoulder. "Teagan."

He pointed west, then farther west, then shrugged as if distance itself had become a problem.

"Craftsmen," he said.

Olivia repeated the word poorly, then said another word in her own tongue. Wulf nodded, seeming to understand.

Rylan mimed sawing wood. Hammering. Lifting. Building. Then he pointed to his clothes, made a ripping motion, and spread his hands in helplessness.

"Robbed," he said.

Olivia's eyes narrowed.

Teag looked at Rylan from the corner of his eye.

It was not the worst lie. Their road had certainly been interrupted. Their belongings were certainly not where anyone could see them. And if time itself had stolen home, Rylan felt robbery was a fair word.

Olivia stepped closer. Her knife remained low, but not forgotten. She reached toward Rylan's sleeve and touched the fabric between two fingers. The weave was too fine. The seam too regular. She looked at his boots next. Work boots, mud-covered, but still unlike anything in her village.

"Craftsmen," she said again.

Rylan nodded.

She said something else. He caught one word because Wulf had used it.

She pointed at the boy, then at the hidden woods, then at Rylan, and her expression hardened.

Rylan understood enough.

"We didn't hurt him," he said, shaking his head. He touched his heart, then pointed to Wulf, then shook his head again. "No hurt."

Teag held up the remaining bread, then pointed to Wulf. "He helped us."

Wulf spoke up, voice small but firm. He stepped between Olivia and the brothers, said something fast, and pointed toward the village well. Then he coughed. Deliberately. He mimed drinking, then sickness.

Olivia's face closed.

Rylan saw it. Whatever the well meant, it was not just a village problem to her. It was personal.

"Well," he said softly, pointing toward the village.

Olivia looked sharply at him.

Rylan pointed to the covered well, then made a questioning face.

"Bad water?"

The words were not hers, but water was old. Almost the same in enough tongues. She understood.

"Water," she said, and pointed to the well. Then she shook her head. "Death. Sickness. Curse."

The last word was not exactly curse, but the shape of it was close enough, helped by the way she glanced toward the sky and the old stones beyond the fields.

Teag looked at Rylan.

Rylan kept his face still.

A cursed well. A hard-faced man selling water. A hungry child bringing bread to strangers in the woods. This was starting to look less like bad luck and more like a job.

A distant shout came from the village.

Olivia turned at once. Wulf ducked instinctively.

The hard-faced man had returned to the lane with two others. He was looking toward the brush.

Olivia hissed something under her breath. She grabbed Wulf by the shoulder and pushed him toward the village path, then pointed at Rylan and Teag with the knife.

The meaning was clear.

Stay hidden.

Then, after a beat, she pointed to the ground near her feet, then held up two fingers, then pointed to the lowering sun though it was still morning. Not sunset. Later.

Meet here later.

Rylan nodded.

Olivia caught his nod, then looked him dead in the eye and spoke slowly.

"No fire. No singing. No light."

Rylan's mouth twitched despite everything.

"Understood," he said.

She did not smile. But something in her eyes suggested she understood that he wanted to.

Then she turned, caught Wulf by the back of his tunic before he could look one more time at the strangers, and marched him toward the village.

Teag waited until they were gone before exhaling.

"She saw the zipper."

"She saw everything," Rylan said.

"Do we trust her?"

Rylan watched Olivia rejoin the village lane. The hard-faced man spoke to her. She answered without looking toward the brush once.

"What choose do we have," he said. "We need any help we can get and it seems like something is going on here that she needs any help she can get."

They retreated the way they had come, staying off the main path. Rylan sent Gray a message when the connection picked back up.

RY: Found village. Well problem. Water being controlled. Met woman named Olivia. She knows Wulf. Armed authority nearby. Returning.

The message hung unsent for almost a minute, then finally showed a small mark beside it.

Delivered.

When they reached the camp, Gray was waiting at the edge with Kaelex behind him. Camden sat on a log with his phone in hand, trying not to look as though he had been checking the group chat every ten seconds.

“Well?” Gray asked.

“Well what?” Ry said.

“Well, what’s the problem?”

“Well problem.”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“I just told you. Well problem.”

“Then tell me what it is already.”

“I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with it. I just know they have a well problem.”

Kaelex looked between them. “Why is this starting to sound like a game of ‘Who’s on First?’”

Realization settled into Gradyn’s eyes. He chuckled, shook his head, and said, “You did that on purpose.”

“Not at first,” Rylan admitted. “But once I realized what you thought I meant, I played along.”

This time, Rylan gave it to him plainly.

He described the village, the covered well, the water cart, the hard-faced man, the old man shoved into the mud, Olivia's knife, Wulf's fear, and the warning: no fire, no singing, no light.

Camden lowered his phone. "In fairness, the singing was not our strategic choice."

Kaelex ignored him. "They're charging for water?"

"Looks like it," Teag said. "The well's tied shut. Red cloth around it. People looked scared of it."

KK's jaw tightened. Of all the brothers, bad water offended him personally. Plumbing was not just pipes to him. It was the line between filth and living right. He had fixed enough farmhouses with bad wells and worse septic layouts to know that people could live with crooked floors, drafty windows, ugly kitchens, and half the nonsense Ry called character. Bad water was different.

"Could be contaminated," he said. "Dead animal. Runoff. Bad lining. Latrine too close. Any number of things."

"Keep it short," Gray said, not unkindly.

KK nodded once. "Point is, cursed ain't my first guess."

"Mine neither," Camden said. He had already opened his local model. "I asked about common causes of medieval well contamination. It gave me a list. Most of it is gross."

"Do not read the list," Rylan said.

"I wasn't going to."

Everyone looked at him.

"Fine, I was considering it."

Gray crouched and drew lines in the dirt with a stick: their hollow, the hidden truck and trailer, the path, the village. He marked the well with a small circle.

"We have two problems," he said. "One, the camp. They know something is there. They are afraid of it, which helps until it doesn't. Two, the village. If we want food, clothes, language, information, we need people. Wulf and Olivia are the first people who have not tried to call armed men on us."

"Yet," Kaelex said.

"Yet."

Teag pointed at the dirt map. "Olivia told us to meet later. I think. Same place."

"Or she told you to stay away," Camden said.

"No. She pointed to the ground and then later."

"You are basing this on interpretive pointing. How exactly did she point to later.”

“She pointed to the sun then archer her ringer across the sky towards the west,” Ry said.

Camden accepted that with a small tilt of his head. "Fair enough."

Kaelex looked toward the hidden camp. "Before anybody meets anybody, we secure the trailer better. If they get brave and start cutting brush away, this is over."

Gray nodded. "Agreed. No power tools. No generator. Hand tools only. We build the hide better and move anything obvious deeper inside. Cam, kill that decoy before starts a religion."

Camden stood. "That is the most reasonable anti-religion order I've ever received."

They spent the next hours turning panic camouflage into something closer to concealment.

The banter faded while they worked. Not gone entirely, because they were still brothers and silence made fear louder, but quieter now. They had all seen the village. Or heard enough from those who had. It changed things. This was not only about them anymore.

Kaelex and Gray began with the frame.

They cut stout saplings by hand and dragged them into place along the deeper side of the truck and trailer, laying the first poles low and close together. Rylan fitted the ends where he could, shaving rough notches with a hatchet so the walls would hold without looking too clean or deliberate. Between the heavier poles, they wove thinner branches back and forth, then packed the gaps with wet earth, leaves, and moss. It was crude chinking, but it blocked the worst of the wind and broke up the straight metal lines hidden behind it.

The shelter was not a cabin yet. It was the hurried beginning of one.

The truck and trailer formed the hidden spine of it, buried beneath brush and shadow. On the side facing deeper into the woods, the brothers extended the walls far enough to create a rough living space where they could eventually sleep, cook, store food, and sit without being pressed against toolboxes and equipment. A narrow passage remained between the woven wall and the trailer door, giving them concealed access to their gear from inside the shelter.

Teag climbed to the top and spread overlapping layers of leafy branches across the roof frame. Over those he laid moss, bark, and forest debris until the shelter seemed to grow out of the ground. The roof would not hold against a hard rain yet, but it would shed some water and hide movement from anyone passing at a distance.

Rylan worked mud and crushed leaves across the pale patches of the truck while Gray stepped back repeatedly, studying the shape from different angles. Whenever a straight edge showed, they covered it. Whenever the outline looked too square, they broke it with another limb, another hanging branch, another armload of moss.

Inside the trailer, Camden packed the most impossible-looking equipment into deeper bins. He cleared a narrow walkway, stacked supplies where they could be reached quickly, and began sorting anything useful for light, heat, cooking, or charging.

He paused only once, holding the Bluetooth speaker.

“This is now classified as dangerous supernatural equipment,” he said.

Gray held out a hand.

Camden gave it to him.

Gray wrapped it in a towel and buried it beneath three hoodies in the electronics bag.

By midday, the camp no longer looked like a truck and trailer carelessly covered with brush. It looked like a dark, low survival shelter hastily woven into a mound of stormfall and living trees. From fifteen yards away, it might pass unnoticed. From five, anyone with sense would know men had built something there.

But it was a beginning.

Given time, they could add a proper roof, sleeping platforms, a fire pit with a hidden flue, shelves, drainage, a covered work area, and walls thick enough to hold back winter.

For now, it kept their secret from a distance and gave them a place to start making the woods feel less like a hiding place and more like home.

It would have to do.

They ate sparingly. Jerky. Crackers. The rest of Wulf's bread. Water from their bottles, counted and recounted. KK wanted a clean source before the next day. Gray wanted clothes before they showed themselves near anyone else. Cam wanted time to charge devices, which could not be done without either the truck or generator. Ry wanted a story good enough to survive Olivia's suspicious eyes.

Teag sat apart for a while, turning the carved stone in his hands.

Gray noticed and walked over.

"You okay?"

Teag shrugged. "Yeah."

Gray sat beside him.

For a few breaths, they watched the trees.

"You did good," Gray said.

Teag looked down. "Didn't do much."

"You found the path. You found Wulf. You spotted the village layout. You didn't jump out when that man shoved the old guy."

"Wanted to."

"I know."

"Would've been stupid."

"Probably."

Teag ran his thumb over the carved symbol. "I hate that he's just allowed to do that."

Gray did not answer right away. Back home, unfairness had rules around it. Not perfect rules, not always fair ones, but something. Permits. Police. Courts. Cameras. Text messages. Witnesses. Here, a man with a sword and a bad temper could become the rule if enough people were afraid of him.

"We don't know this place yet," Gray said. "If we introduce our selves to the village like a couple of super hero’s flying in to help the damsel in distress, we’ll make it alot worse."

Teag smiled and nodded.

"That doesn't mean we don't help," Gray added.

TheTeag looked up.

Gray tapped the dirt map with his stick. "It means we learn the job before we start swinging hammers."

That, Teag understood.

Late afternoon brought a thin rain that softened the woods and hid sound. It was miserable and useful. Under its cover, Ry and Teag returned to the meeting place, this time with Gray close behind them and Kaelex shadowing farther back.

Camden remained at the hollow with strict orders to do nothing clever unless someone was dying.

"Define clever," he had said.

"If you need a definition of clever then I guess by definition you won’t be doing anything clever," Gray told him.

Cam chucked the stick he had been fiddling with at him.

At the hazel brush near the village, they waited.

The village looked smaller in the rain. Smoke lay low over the roofs. The water line was shorter now, but the covered well still sat in the center like a sealed wound. A woman crossed herself as she passed it. A child threw a stone at the red cloth and ran when an older man shouted.

Then Olivia came.

She did not bring Wulf this time.

She carried a basket over one arm and a bundle under the other, and she moved as if every step had been chosen before she took it. When she reached the brush, she set the basket down and looked into the trees.

"Ry," she said.

Rylan stepped out first, hands visible. "Olivia."

Her eyes flicked past him and found Gray in the shadows. Then, farther back, Kaelex, who was doing a terrible job of not looking like a guard dog.

Her mouth tightened.

"Brothers," Rylan said, touching Gray's shoulder as he came forward. "Gradyn."

Gray nodded once.

Rylan pointed toward where KK stood. "Kaelex."

Olivia repeated the names.

She held up the bundle. Clothing. Rough tunics, cloaks, belts, hose, patched but usable. Not enough for all five, but enough to begin.

Rylan's expression softened. "You brought us clothes."

She seemed to understand from his tone, if not the words. She tapped the bundle, then pointed at their jackets and made a face that needed no translation.

Teag looked down at himself. "Yeah, fair."

Olivia set the bundle at Rylan's feet. Then she lifted the basket cloth. Inside were onions, hard cheese, more bread, and something wrapped in leaves.

Kaelex's stomach made a sound loud enough to embarrass all of them.

Olivia looked toward him.

KK cleared his throat and stared at a tree.

For the first time, Olivia almost smiled.

Almost.

Then she pointed toward the village well.

Her face changed. The near-smile vanished.

"Water," she said.

KK stepped forward before Gray could stop him. Not fast. Not threatening. Just enough that Olivia looked at him fully.

He pointed to the well, then to himself. He mimed looking down, smelling, digging, building a cover, pouring water. Then he shook his head at the word she had used before.

"No curse," he said.

Olivia stared at him.

Rylan quietly translated the only way he could. He pointed to the well, made a sick face, then pointed uphill, mimed rain running through filth, and made a disgusted sound.

Teag, catching on, added pig noises and pointed toward the village pens.

Gray closed his eyes briefly.

It worked.

Olivia's eyes shifted from confusion to reluctant understanding. She looked back toward the village, toward the slope above the well, then toward KK.

"You know?" she asked.

KK held her gaze. "I know water."

The words were simple. Maybe she did not understand them all. But she understood him.

A shout came from the village.

Olivia turned sharply. The hard-faced man was in the lane again, looking in her direction.

She shoved the basket toward Rylan and spoke quickly, too fast for them to follow. Then she slowed, forcing the words into shapes they might understand.

"Night," she said. "No men. No light. Come... see."

She pointed to the well.

Ry understood the offer and the danger in the same breath.

She was inviting them into the village after dark.

To inspect the cursed well.

Ry looked past Olivia at the village and the hard-faced man.

This was not the way home. He though.

Not directly.

But it was the first door this world had opened.

He looked at Gray. Gray nodded once.

"Tonight," he said.

Olivia studied him as if measuring whether he was brave or foolish.

Then she nodded back. And poorly repeated “tonight.”

She turned and walked toward the village without looking behind her.

The brothers gathered the clothes and food and withdrew into the wet trees.

No one spoke until the village disappeared behind them.

Then Kaelex said, quiet and certain, "That well's our first job."

Gray kept walking.

"Yeah," he said. "And this time, the customer thinks it's cursed."

Rylan shifted the basket under his arm. “I guess this is our down payment.”

“Or last meal,” Teag said

“If this is our last meal Cam will be severely disappointed.” Ry Said.

They all laughed.

Only once.

Only softly.

But there, walking in the rain, in the wrong century with danger waiting in a village that had not yet decided whether to fear them or trust them, that brief laugh was enough to remind them of one thing:

They were still together.

And as long as that remained true, they were not beaten yet.

By the time darkness settled over the woods, the shelter had gained another wall.

It was not a good wall.

It leaned slightly, bulged in the middle, and had enough gaps to admit rain, wind, mice, and any snake determined enough to improve its living arrangements. But the woven saplings broke up the outline of the trailer, and the first layers of mud and moss chinking had begun to close the worst openings.

That made it progress.

Nobody stood around waiting for night.

Kaelex and Gradyn strengthened the roof frame over the new living area. Teag gathered armloads of dry leaves and fern to spread beneath the sleeping platforms. Camden worked inside the trailer, sorting through bins and selecting anything that could help them inspect the well without looking like it came from another century.

Rylan tried on the clothing Olivia had brought.

The rough brown tunic hung lower on one side than the other, and the wool scratched everywhere it touched.

“How do I look?” he asked.

Camden glanced up from a toolbox. “Like somebody robbed Robin Hood’s unemployed cousin.”

Rylan looked down at himself.

“That good?”

“Better than the work jacket.”

Gray stepped through the narrow passage between the shelter wall and the trailer. He had changed into a dark tunic and rough cloak, though his work boots remained hidden beneath the hem.

“We can all go,” he said.

Kaelex stopped tying a roof pole. “I’m going.”

“No argument there. It’s a well.”

“Ry has to go,” Teag said. “Olivia knows him.”

Rylan tried not to look too pleased by the statement.

Gray noticed anyway.

“I’m going,” Gray continued. “Teag scouts ahead and watches the lane.”

“What about me?” Camden asked.

“You stay here.”

Camden stared at him.

“Why?”

“Because someone has to protect the camp, monitor the phones, and keep improving the shelter.”

“I can inspect water.”

“You can inspect wiring.”

“I can inspect anything if I look concerned enough.”

Gray shook his head. “We can’t all walk into the village. If something happens, we need one person here who knows where everything is and can prepare what we need.”

Camden did not like it, but he knew Gray was right.

He reached into the toolbox and removed a small inspection camera attached to a flexible cable. It was meant for looking inside walls, drains, ductwork, and other places human heads were not designed to fit.

“This might help,” he said.

Kaelex took it from him. “Screen lights up too much.”

Camden produced a piece of black cloth with a narrow viewing slit cut into it.

“I made a hood.”

KK looked at the cloth, then at Camden.

“You made this already?”

“I knew you were going.”

Gray gave Camden an approving nod.

Camden also handed him a compact flashlight wrapped in dark cloth. Only a thin opening remained at the front, narrowing the beam.

“Keep it pointed down. You should be able to see without lighting up the whole village.”

Kaelex took both items and placed them into a plain leather bag Olivia had brought with the clothing. He added a short length of rope, a folding knife, work gloves, two small empty jars, and a narrow pry bar wrapped in cloth so it would not shine or rattle.

“No drills,” Gray said.

“I know.”

“No pump.”

“I know.”

“No generator.”

Kaelex stared at him. “Do you think I was planning to roll seven thousand watts into the village?”

“I’m saying it before Cam suggests it.”

Camden raised both hands. “I wasn’t going to suggest the whole generator.”

Gray looked at him.

Camden returned to organizing the trailer.

They ate before leaving. Bread, cheese, onions, and the meat Olivia had wrapped in leaves. It was not much by their standards, but after the previous night it felt like a meal.

Rylan saved a piece of cheese and wrapped it in cloth.

“For later?” Teag asked.

“For Wulf.”

Teag nodded.

Nobody argued, that boy looked skinnier than Teagan.

When the moon had risen above the trees, they smothered the small covered fire they had used to warm themselves. Camden stayed at the shelter entrance while the others checked their clothes and hidden equipment.

Each of them carried a knife.

Kaelex had one of the pistols beneath his cloak. Rylan carried the other. Neither weapon was meant to be used unless everything else failed.

Camden held up his phone.

“I’ll keep the hotspot running, but you’ll probably lose connection before the village.”

“If you get a message, answer,” Gray said.

“If I don’t hear from you by morning?”

Gray looked toward the dark woods.

“Stay hidden. Improve the shelter. Don’t come looking unless you hear shots.”

Camden’s expression lost its usual humor.

“That would definitely be the oh shit signal.”

“Yep and you better turn into Rambo.”

They left him standing beneath the start of a roof, surrounded by unfinished walls and equipment from a world that no longer seemed real.

Teag led the way.

The woods had changed after dark. Paths that seemed obvious during the day disappeared between shadows. Trees stood closer together. Every branch rubbing against another sounded like a footstep.

Teag moved quietly ahead of them, stopping often to listen. Gray followed, then Kaelex. Rylan brought up the rear until they reached the old cart path.

Olivia waited where she had promised.

At first, Rylan saw only the shape of her cloak beside an oak. Then she stepped into a strip of moonlight.

The blue flower was still tucked behind her ear.

It had wilted since morning, but she had not removed it.

Her eyes moved over the four brothers and stopped on Rylan. She looked at his rough tunic, wool cloak, and poorly tied belt.

“Better,” she smirked.

The word was clear.

Rylan looked down at himself. “I was hoping for handsome.”

Olivia tilted her head.

“Hand-some?”

“Never mind.”

The corner of her mouth moved slightly.

Not quite a smile.

Close enough that Rylan noticed.

Gray stepped forward. “Olivia.”

She looked at him, then at Kaelex and Teag. She repeated their names slowly, making sure she had them right.

The difference in communication surprised them.

In daylight, with fear and confusion between them, her speech had sounded almost foreign. Now that she spoke slowly and they knew some of the sounds to expect, the words began falling into place.

It was still English.

Old, stretched, and shaped differently, but English.

Some words sounded familiar immediately. Others required context. A few meant nothing at all. But they no longer needed to act out every thought with their hands.

Olivia noticed it too.

“Thy speech is strange,” she said carefully.

“So is yours,” Rylan answered.

Her eyes narrowed.

“But yours is prettier.”

Gray gave him a look.

Olivia did not understand every word, but she understood enough. This time she did smile, though only for a moment.

Then she looked toward the village.

“We must go.”

They followed her off the path and down through a shallow cut in the land. Teag ranged ahead, returning twice to signal that the way remained clear.

As they walked, Olivia explained the village in slow pieces.

The more she spoke, the easier it became.

The hard-faced man’s name was Rafe Gault.

He was the manor bailiff.

“Bailiff?” Gray asked.

Olivia pointed toward the village, then toward the fields beyond it.

“Lord’s man. Takes rent. Takes grain. Takes coin.”

“And water,” Kaelex said.

Olivia’s face tightened.

“And water.”

“Who’s the lord?” Rylan asked.

“Lord Renard.”

She pointed east, beyond the village and into the darkness.

“His hall lies two days from here. Gault keeps the manor in his name.”

“Does Lord Renard know what he’s doing?” Gray asked.

Olivia hesitated.

“I know not.”

That answer told Gray enough.

Rafe Gault had room to do as he pleased, and the person above him was either ignorant, indifferent, or receiving enough money not to ask questions.

“He’s not the sheriff?” Rylan asked.

Olivia shook her head.

“No sheriff. Gault would have folk think him greater than he is.”

They reached the edge of the village.

Most of the homes were dark. A few weak fires glowed through smoke holes or around wooden shutters. Somewhere a child cried and was quickly quieted. A dog barked once, then stopped.

The covered well sat in the center of the village lane.

The red cloth tied around it moved faintly in the breeze.

Olivia raised one hand and led them behind a low stone wall.

Rylan stepped across a muddy drainage cut and turned to offer her his hand.

Olivia looked at it.

Then at him.

“I can cross.”

“I know.”

She studied his face for a moment before placing her hand in his.

Her fingers were cold and rough from work.

She crossed easily, just as she had said she would, but she did not release his hand until both feet were steady on the other side.

It lasted only a second longer than necessary.

Rylan noticed that too.

Teag, several yards ahead, pretended not to.

They crouched behind the wall while two men walked along the far end of the lane. Both carried spears. One held a small lantern.

Olivia leaned close to Rylan.

“Gault’s men.”

“Do they always patrol the well?”

“Since the sickness. Yes.”

One of the men stopped.

The brothers went still.

The lantern turned toward them, weak light stretching across the lane. It reached the edge of the wall but did not pass over it.

Rylan felt Olivia’s hand close around his forearm.

Not fear exactly.

Readiness.

The guard listened, then spat into the mud and continued walking.

Olivia slowly released Rylan’s arm.

When the men disappeared between the houses, Teag crossed the lane first. He reached the well, checked both directions, then waved the others forward.

They moved quickly.

Up close, the well smelled of wet stone, old wood, and something sour beneath both.

Kaelex crouched beside it.

The opening had been covered with rough planks and bound with rope. Red cloth had been tied around the rope in several places.

He touched one of the strips.

“What’s this supposed to do?”

“Warning,” Olivia said. “The priest blessed it.”

KK looked at the cloth.

“Did it help?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Gray watched the surrounding houses while KK examined the ground.

The well stood lower than part of the village. The land behind it sloped down from animal pens, sheds, and several homes. Recent rain had cut narrow paths through the mud.

KK followed one of them with his eyes.

“There.”

A shallow channel ran from higher ground toward the base of the well. Someone had tried to divert it with stones, but the stones had shifted or been moved. Muddy water now collected beside the well wall.

Kaelex pressed his fingers into the soil and smelled them.

Olivia watched with a doubtful expression.

“It’s dirt,” Rylan whispered.

KK ignored him.

He moved around the well, studying the stonework. Several joints had lost their mortar. Near the base, one stone had settled enough to open a dark crack.

“That’s part of it,” he said.

Gray crouched beside him. “Runoff getting through?”

“Probably. Need to see inside.”

Together, they loosened the rope and lifted one plank just far enough to work.

The smell became stronger.

Olivia covered her mouth.

Kaelex removed the hooded flashlight. He switched it on beneath the black cloth, keeping the narrow beam pointed into the opening.

Olivia’s eyes widened when she saw the light.

Rylan stepped between her and the well.

“Tool,” he said quietly. “For seeing.”

She looked from the hidden light to him.

“No flame.”

“No flame.”

Her eyes returned to the cloth.

Rylan waited for fear, accusation, or another mention of curses.

Instead, Olivia asked, “Can Gault see it?”

“Not if we’re careful.”

She nodded once.

That was all.

Kaelex lowered the inspection camera into the well. The screen remained hidden beneath the cloth while he and Gray leaned close.

The image was dark, grainy, and mostly useless at first. Wet stones slid past. Roots pushed between joints. The water below reflected the small light.

Then KK stopped lowering the cable.

“There.”

Gray studied the screen.

A pale shape lay caught against the inner wall just above the waterline.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Cloth, maybe.”

KK shifted the camera.

Behind it was a break in the stone lining. Mud and dark water had pushed through the opening, leaving a streak down the inside wall.

Kaelex withdrew the camera.

“The well isn’t cursed.”

Olivia watched his face.

“You know this?”

“I know it’s taking dirty water from the ground around it. Maybe worse.”

He pointed uphill.

“Animals. Waste. Rain. All of it runs down here. The stone lining’s broken.”

Rylan explained more slowly, using words Olivia understood and pointing when he needed to.

Her gaze moved toward the animal pens on the slope.

“The sickness comes from there?”

“Could,” KK said. “Most likely.”

Olivia looked into the darkness of the well.

“My mother drank from it.”

No one spoke.

“She fell sick near the spring feast. Many did. Gault closed the well after.” Olivia swallowed. “She died before summer.”

Rylan’s attention moved fully to her.

“Olivia,” he said quietly.

She shook her head, not wanting comfort she could not afford.

“Wulf drank also. He lived.”

“Your brother?” Rylan asked.

Olivia nodded.

“My little brother.”

That explained the way she stood in front of him with a knife. It explained the bread. It explained why Wulf trusted her and feared disappointing her.

Kaelex looked again at the well.

“We can fix this.”

Olivia turned toward him.

“Fix?”

“Yes.”

He pointed to the broken stonework, then uphill.

“Stop water here. Dig a drain there. Clean the well. Repair the lining. Cover it right.”

“How long?” Gray asked.

“With enough hands? A day to redirect the runoff. Another to clean and repair, depending on what’s down there.”

“We can’t use much of our equipment.”

“I know.”

“We also can’t walk into the village tomorrow morning and start tearing apart their cursed well.”

Kaelex sat back on his heels.

“Then Ry talks.”

Rylan looked away from Olivia. “Why is that always the answer?”

“Because nobody wants KK explaining diplomacy,” Teag said.

Kaelex gave him a look, but the humor faded quickly.

Olivia was staring uphill.

“What is it?” Gray asked.

She moved away from the well and crouched beside the drainage channel. Her fingers found something beneath the mud.

Wood.

A short line of sharpened stakes had been driven into the channel and packed with clay, creating a small dam. It forced the runoff away from the older drainage ditch and toward the well.

KK joined her.

He pulled one stake loose.

The cut wood was pale beneath the mud.

Fresh.

“This wasn’t here long,” he said.

Olivia’s expression changed.

“Gault’s men worked here after the well was closed.”

“Doing what?” Rylan asked.

“He said they made the ground safe.”

Kaelex looked at the blocked ditch, then at the water cart parked beneath a lean-to across the village.

“No,” he said. “They made sure it stayed bad.”

A sound came from the far lane.

Horse hooves.

Olivia stood quickly.

“Gault.”

Teag moved to the corner of the nearest house and looked out.

A rider entered the village with two men walking behind him. Even in the dark, the hard-faced man was easy to recognize. His cloak hung from broad shoulders. A sword rode at his hip.

Rafe Gault.

He stopped near the water cart.

One of his men pointed toward the well.

The loosened rope lay across the planks.

“Move,” Gray whispered.

Kaelex replaced the board while Teag pulled the rope back into position. There was no time to retie it properly.

Olivia led them behind a house, but lantern light appeared at both ends of the lane.

“They’re coming around,” Teag said.

A narrow gap separated the house from an animal shed. Gray pushed KK through first, then Teag.

Rylan waited for Olivia.

She pointed after the others.

“Go.”

“You first.”

Her eyes flashed. “This is my village.”

“And you brought us here.”

For half a second, she looked ready to argue.

Then voices sounded behind the house.

Rylan took her hand and pulled her into the gap.

They squeezed between the buildings as lantern light crossed the place where they had been standing.

The space narrowed. Olivia stumbled on a buried stone. Rylan caught her around the waist before she fell.

They froze together.

Close enough that he could see the darker ring around her eyes. Close enough to smell rain, smoke, and the crushed blue flower in her hair.

Olivia looked up at him.

The fear in her face lasted only a moment before determination covered it again.

Rylan loosened his hold but did not release her until she was steady.

“You always catch women hiding behind barns?” she whispered.

The words were old, but the meaning was clear.

“Only the dangerous ones.”

That almost earned him another smile.

A guard passed the end of the gap.

Rylan moved in front of Olivia without thinking, placing himself between her and the lantern.

The guard continued past.

Teag appeared at the far end and motioned urgently.

They followed him through a garden, over a low fence, and into the trees.

Nobody stopped until the village lights disappeared behind them.

Gray counted heads.

Five, including Olivia.

“You can’t go back yet,” Rylan said.

Olivia looked toward the village.

“If I am gone at dawn, Gault will question Wulf.”

“He might question you tonight.”

“He does not know I came.”

“He knows somebody opened the well.”

Olivia’s face hardened.

“Then I must return before he searches the houses.”

Rylan did not like it.

He liked even less that she was right.

Gray stepped closer. “Can you get back another way?”

“Yes.”

She pointed toward a path that curved around to the lower part of the village.

Teag studied the ground.

“I’ll take her close.”

Rylan started to speak.

Teag looked at him. “I’m smaller and stealthier.”

That was also true.

Olivia looked between the brothers, then at Rylan.

“I will come tomorrow.”

“To the woods?”

She nodded.

“We must speak to the village. Some will listen. Some will fear Gault more than sickness.”

“And you?” Rylan asked.

Olivia met his eyes.

“I have feared him long enough.”

There was no fear in her voice, just determination.

Rylan reached up before thinking and touched the wilted blue flower behind her ear, straightening it.

Olivia went still.

“So it doesn’t fall,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Neither moved for a moment.

Then Olivia stepped back.

“Tomorrow, Rylan.”

“Tomorrow.”

Teag led her toward the stream path.

Ry watched until the darkness took them.

Kaelex looked at the stake that he took which had been blocking the ditch. Mud still coated most of it, but the fresh-cut wood showed at one end.

“Gault knows exactly what’s wrong with that well,” he said.

Gray looked toward the distant village.

“And he’s making money from it.”

“Then we fix the well,” Rylan said.

Gray turned toward him.

“And when Gault comes after us?”

Rylan looked once more in the direction Olivia had gone.

“Then we’ll fix him too.”

By sunrise, the shelter had a roof that almost deserved the name.

The layer of bark beneath the moss still leaked in three places, but the water no longer fell directly onto the sleeping area. Teag had dug a shallow trench around the uphill side to carry rain away from the walls, while Camden built a rough shelf between two saplings for phones, battery packs, and anything else they could not afford to lose in the mud.

Inside the living space, the ground had been covered with dry leaves, pine boughs, and two folded drop cloths. It smelled like wet dirt, cut wood, and the inside of the construction trailer.

It was starting to become a proper base camp.

Kaelex stood over a patch of bare earth with a stick in one hand, drawing the village as best he remembered it.

“The well sits here,” he said.

He marked a circle.

“Animal pens uphill. Houses here and here. Old ditch used to carry water past the well.”

He drew a crooked line beside the circle.

“Gault’s men blocked the ditch and cut a smaller channel this way.”

The new line ran directly toward the well.

Gradyn crouched across from him. “You’re sure it was done on purpose?”

“Stakes were fresh cut. Clay was packed around them. Nobody accidentally builds a dam.”

Rylan sat on an overturned bucket with Olivia’s empty food basket near his feet.

“Could they have been trying to keep water away from something else?” he asked.

Kaelex shook his head.

“Maybe if they were idiots. But even then, you can see where the water goes.”

Camden leaned out through the trailer door. “Never underestimate the engineering decisions of idiots,” then returned to the collection of items spread across a workbench.

He had found two clear plastic containers, several pairs of gloves, a roll of heavy plastic, mason’s string, a folding shovel, a hand level, and a small bag of activated charcoal meant for a ventilation project.

He held up the charcoal.

“This could help filter water.”

“Filtration would only be a temporary fix,” Kaelex said. “we need to stop filth from running into the well.”

“Merlin agrees.”

Kaelex pointed the stick at him. “You don’t need to ask the phone every time I say something.”

“I wasn’t checking your work. I was checking if medieval people understood germ theory.”

“And?”

“They did not.”

The conversation went salient when they heard twigs snapping near the path.

All five brothers looked.

Teag had already reached for the knife at his belt when Olivia stepped into view.

Wulf was with her.

The boy looked different from the day before. His usual curiosity was gone. His skin was pale, and sweat darkened the hair near his temples despite the cool morning.

Olivia had one arm around him.

Rylan was on his feet before she reached the shelter.

“What happened?”

“He was ill in the night.”

Her speech was easier to understand now. Partly because she spoke slowly, partly because the brothers had begun hearing the shape beneath the accent.

Wulf tried to straighten.

“I am well.”

Then he bent forward and pressed a hand against his stomach.

“No, you’re not,” Rylan said.

He moved to help, but Olivia already had him.

Kaelex stepped closer. “Did he drink from the well?”

“Not since it was closed.”

“Water cart?”

She nodded.

KK and Gray exchanged a look.

The cart water might not be clean either. Or Wulf could still be suffering from earlier exposure. Without tests, there was no way to know.

Camden brought out a bottle of modern water with the label peeled away. From the basket, he took the plain wooden cup Olivia had used for the berries and poured a little water into it.

“Small sips,” he said.

Wulf looked at the cup and then at Olivia.

She nodded.

He drank.

Olivia watched him with the same exhausted determination Rylan had noticed the first time he saw her. The blue flower behind her ear was gone this morning. Her hair had been tied back quickly, and worry had pulled the softness from her face.

Ry wanted to tell her they would fix everything. He knew they were fully equipped to be able to fix the well, he knew the curse was just germs. He also knew better than to make promise to things not in his control, like the villagers and superstition.

“We need to get that well open,” Kaelex said.

Olivia looked toward him.

“The red binding remains.”

“The cloth?”

“It bears the priest’s blessing. None will break it.”

KK glanced at the others.

“It’s cloth.”

“To you,” Olivia said.

There was no anger in her voice, only exhaustion.

“To them, it is a warning and holy seal. Gault says any who cut it will answer to the sheriff.”

That was the first time she had mentioned the sheriff clearly.

Gradyn focused on it.

“Gault answers to him?”

She nodded.

“Sheriff William de Harcourt. He serves Lord Renard.”

“And Lord Renard knows Gault is making the village pay for water?”

Olivia hesitated.

“I have never seen the lord.”

That answer did not surprise Gray.

“Does anyone from the village speak to him?”

“He holds court at his hall on feast days and when rents are counted. Men such as Gault and the sheriff speak before him.”

“So he hears whatever they tell him,” Rylan said.

Olivia nodded.

“Lord Renard is said to be just.”

“Said by who?” Kaelex asked.

“Those who have stood before him.”

KK looked toward Gray.

“So the lord might not be the problem.”

“Maybe not,” Gray said. “But he’s a long way from here, and Gault isn’t.”

Wulf finished the water and lowered himself onto the overturned bucket. Rylan crouched in front of him.

“You stay here today.”

The boy frowned.

“I can help.”

“You can help by resting and regaining your strength.”

Wulf understood.

Olivia placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Stay.”

The boy gave in, though unhappily.

Camden led him into the shelter and showed him the sleeping platform. Wulf stopped when he saw the inside of the trailer through the concealed passage.

Camden quickly pulled a hanging tarp across the opening.

“Nothing interesting in there.”

Wulf stared at him.

Camden pointed toward the bed.

“Sleep.”

Wulf was to weak to protest.

He laid down on the bed of pine boughs and folded canvas. Within minutes, exhaustion took over.

After Wulf finally slept, Kaelex returned to the drawing in the dirt.

“When did the well first turn bad?”

Olivia looked at him.

“After Gault came.”

Gray stepped closer. “Rafe Gault?”

She nodded.

“He built a new hall beside the village lane. Not a lord’s hall. Smaller. A place for counting rents, storing grain, hearing complaints, and reminding folk who held power.”

“An administration hut,” Camden said from inside the shelter.

Olivia did not know the phrase, but the meaning seemed clear enough.

“A hut for Gault,” she said. “With a hard yard around it. Packed clay. New ditching. Men worked there for weeks. After that, the ground changed when rain came.”

Kaelex lowered himself beside the dirt map he had drawn earlier.

“Changed how?”

“Water stood where it had not stood before. Paths turned to mud. The lower lane stayed wet longer. Then people began to sicken.”

“Did anyone think the hut caused it?” Gray asked.

Olivia’s mouth tightened.

“Some wondered. None said it loudly.”

“Because of Gault.”

“Because of Gault,” she said.

Kaelex dragged the point of his stick through the dirt, adding a rough square above the well.

“Where is this hut?”

Olivia crouched and pointed.

“There.”

KK studied the mark, then drew a line from the hut toward the well.

“If his roof and yard drain water this way, and the old ditch can’t carry it off, it may be moving under the surface.”

Rylan looked down at the map. “So the village wouldn’t see dirty water pouring into the well.”

“No,” KK said. “That’s the problem. It may not look like much from above. Water finds low places. Cracks. Old stone. Bad mortar. It could be carrying filth under the mud, right into the well wall.”

Olivia stared at the lines in the dirt.

“It was not a curse,” she said.

“No,” Kaelex answered. “It was bad drainage.”

She swallowed, and for a moment anger looked stronger than grief.

“Then Gault knew?”

“Maybe not at first,” Gray said.

KK nodded reluctantly. “Could’ve been an accident. Men build something, change the ground, and don’t understand what they changed.”

"This is way we get permits boys," Gray said.

Ryalan and Kaelex scoweled at him.

“But after people got sick,” Rylan said, “he saw a way to profit.”

Olivia looked toward the sleeping boy.

“He closed the well. Called it cursed. Sold water by the barrel.”

“And now even the barrel water is making people sick,” Camden said.

Olivia turned back to them.

“The clean stream lies north,” Olivia said. “Past the upper fields and into the trees. A strong man may walk there and back with two buckets, but he will not wish to do it twice.”

“How far?” Gray asked.

“Far enough that old backs cannot bear it, and children spill more than they carry. Far enough that folk pay Gault rather than lose half a day fetching water.”

“But a cart can make it,” Kaelex said.

Olivia nodded. “A mule cart, yes. That is why Gault’s barrels mattered. At first, his men went north to the clean water. Lately, they take the easier road to the lower bend.”

“The lower bend is downstream from the village?” Camden asked.

Olivia’s face tightened.

“Yes.”

Kaelex looked at the dirt map and shook his head.

“So they got lazy, filled the barrels from dirty water, and kept charging people like it was clean.”

Rylan looked toward Wulf asleep inside the shelter.

“No curse in water,” he said quietly.

Olivia’s eyes lifted to his.

“No,” she said. “Only corruption.”

“We don’t need magic. We need bodies.”

“How many?” Gray asked.

“Enough to dig a new drainage ditch, remove the blockage, pull water from the well, scrub the lining, repair the broken section, and build a cover that keeps animals and runoff out.”

Olivia stared at the map.

“You can do this?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes moved to Rylan.

Not Kaelex.

Rylan felt the weight of that look.

“He can,” Ry said. “If KK says he can fix water, he can fix water.”

Kaelex grunted.

“Appreciate the confidence.”

“You’ve flooded fewer houses than most plumbers.”

“I flooded one.”

“It was the upstairs unit in a two-unit apartment. That’s a two for one deal.”

“The valve broke.”

Gray interrupted before the argument ended up on the ground.

“We need the village to agree. We can’t sneak in and repair a well while everyone sleeps.”

“Why not?” Teag asked.

Everyone looked at him.

He shrugged. “Just asking.”

“Because digging a drainage ditch quietly is difficult,” Gray said. “And because if the villagers believe we broke a holy seal and made the curse worse, they’ll turn on us before Gault has a chance to.”

Olivia looked toward the path.

“Some will listen.”

“Some?” Rylan asked.

She met Rylan’s eyes.

“And the rest?”

“They fear sickness. They fear Gault. They fear God.”

Rylan stood.

“Then we don’t tell them they’re wrong.”

Kaelex frowned. “I’m not looking to offend God either. But this well wasn’t cursed from heaven. It was fouled here on earth, and most things fouled on earth have men’s hands somewhere in them.”

“I know. You know. But if I stand in the village and tell them everything they believe about curses is stupid, they aren’t going to care what you know about water.”

“So what do you tell them?”

“The truth.”

KK waited.

Rylan pointed to the dirt map.

“We tell them the sickness starts up here, where the animals foul the ground. Before Gault built his hut, the rain carried most of it away from the well. But now that hard-packed yard and new ditching send the water where it never used to go.”

He dragged his finger down the slope toward the circle that marked the well.

“It runs under the mud, where no one sees it, slips through the broken stones, and fouls the water below.”

He tapped the circle once.

“And if we fix the drainage problem, we fix the curse problem.”

Camden stepped out of the shelter.

“So, medieval germ theory with better marketing.”

“Something like that.”

Olivia studied Rylan’s face.

“You speak as a priest?”

“No.”

“A lord?”

“Definitely not.”

“Then why will they hear you?”

Rylan smiled, though not as easily as usual.

“Because I’ll give them something better to believe.”

They decided Gray, Kaelex, Rylan, and Olivia would go to the village.

Teag would follow at a distance and watch the road for Gault or his men. Camden would remain with Wulf, continue improving the shelter, and prepare the tools they would need if the village agreed.

“You always get the exciting jobs,” Camden said.

“You have a sick child and a roof that leaks,” Gray told him. “That’s plenty exciting.”

“I’ll have the west wall done by the time you’re back.”

“And the roof?”

“The roof and I are negotiating.”

Before they left, Camden handed Rylan a phone wrapped in cloth.

“Keep it hidden. Hotspot should reach partway to the village. Maybe farther if I climb a tree.”

Gray shook his head but didn’t say anything.

The village looked different in daylight.

At night it had been shadows, lanterns, and danger. Now they could see the full wear of the place.

Roofs sagged beneath old thatch. Mud filled the lane. Chickens scratched near doorways. Smoke drifted low between homes because the damp air would not let it rise.

People watched the brothers arrive.

Some from windows.

Some from doorways.

A few openly.

Rylan felt their fear before anyone spoke.

Olivia walked beside him. Her shoulder occasionally touched his arm as the path narrowed.

Kaelex carried no visible tools except a wooden staff and the leather bag. Gray wore a borrowed cloak and kept his hands where they could be seen.

They stopped near the well.

The red cloth still surrounded the planks.

Rafe Gault was not there.

Two of his men stood beside the water cart, however. One was young and thin with a spear too large for him. The other had a broken nose and a sword hanging from a worn belt.

The broken-nosed man looked at Olivia.

“What are these men doing here?”

The sentence sounded strange but understandable.

Olivia answered before Ry could.

“They have come to see the well.”

“No one sees the well.”

Kaelex looked directly at him.

“We saw it last night.”

Rylan closed his eyes for half a second.

The guard’s hand moved toward his sword.

“You entered the village after dark?”

Ry stepped between them.

“He means we saw where it stood. From the woods.”

KK looked at him.

Rylan did not look back.

The guard’s suspicion remained, but his hand eased away from the sword.

“The well is sealed.”

“We know,” Rylan said. “We came to speak, not break it.”

People had begun moving closer.

An old man carrying a wood mallet stopped near a doorway. Two women stood beside a cooking fire. Several children gathered behind a fence until one of their mothers pulled them away.

Olivia raised her voice.

“These men know why the well brings sickness.”

That drew more people.

The younger guard laughed nervously.

“They are strangers.”

“So was the sickness once,” Olivia said.

A murmur passed through the gathering.

Rylan glanced at her.

She did not look back, but he could tell she knew exactly what she had done.

She had given him the room.

Now he had to use it.

Ry stepped near the well, but not close enough to touch the seal.

“We are men of craft,” he said.

His words came slowly at first. Not because he did not know what to say, but because he was choosing words the villagers would understand.

“We build. We mend. Wood, stone, water, roofs, walls.”

He pointed to Kaelex.

“My brother knows water. He knows where it travels, where it hides, and how it turns foul.”

Kaelex shifted slightly at the introduction but kept quiet.

Ry continued.

“We do not say your fear is foolish. Men and women have sickened. Some have died. That is reason enough to fear the well.”

Several villagers nodded.

“But fear does not tell us why.”

A woman near the fire crossed herself.

“It is cursed.”

Rylan looked at her.

“Perhaps.”

Kaelex turned his head sharply.

Ry ignored him.

“Perhaps curse is the word given to a danger men cannot see. But even unseen danger enters by a door.”

He pointed uphill.

“The rain brings filth from the pens. The old ditch is blocked. The water gathers against broken stone. What lies upon the ground enters what lies below.”

A few villagers followed his hand.

Most did not look convinced.

The broken-nosed guard smirked.

“You speak many words for a man who knows nothing of this land.”

“I know water runs downhill.”

That earned a few quiet sounds that might have been laughter.

Ry crouched and picked up a wooden bowl lying near a doorway.

He looked toward the owner.

“May I?”

The woman hesitated, then nodded.

Rylan handed the bowl to Kaelex.

KK understood.

He walked uphill to where a shallow puddle had formed near the animal pens. He scooped a little mud, manure, and dead grass into the bowl.

Then he took Olivia’s water skin and poured it slowly through the foul water in the bowl.

Dark brown water dripped from the edge of the bowl.

Kaelex caught it in a second cup.

He returned and held it up.

“Would you drink this?”

The villagers stared at the cloudy water.

No one answered.

KK pointed toward the slope and then toward the well.

“That’s where it ends up. Its seeping unseen through the ground.”

People began whispering.

An older woman pushed through the gathering.

Rylan recognized her. She had been with the search party near the woods when Wulf first saw the brothers.

Her hair was nearly white, braided and wrapped beneath a cloth. A leather pouch hung from her belt, and dried plants had been tied in small bundles along the strap.

Olivia leaned toward Rylan.

“Aldith.”

The woman looked first at Kaelex, then at the dirty cup.

“You say this enters the well?”

KK nodded.

“Through broken stone.”

Aldith turned toward the covered well.

“I told Gault the sickness was in the water.”

The broken-nosed guard stepped forward.

“Take care.”

Aldith faced him.

“I have taken care of this village longer than you have drawn breath.”

The guard’s mouth closed.

That told the brothers exactly how much weight she carried.

Aldith looked back at Kaelex.

“If the stone is mended, will the sickness end?”

“Not right away. The well must be emptied and cleaned. The runoff ditch has to be moved. Water boiled until we know it’s safe.”

“Know?”

Kaelex hesitated.

Without modern testing, certainty would be difficult.

“We’ll know it is safer than it is now.”

Aldith appreciated the honesty. Rylan could see it in the way her expression changed.

Olivia stepped beside the older woman.

“Wulf was ill again last night.”

Concern moved through the villagers.

Aldith’s face tightened.

“He drank cart water.”

“So did others,” someone said.

“My girl has been sick three days,” another woman called.

The broken-nosed guard raised his voice.

“The cart water is clean.”

Kaelex held up the cup of brown runoff.

“According to who?”

“According to Bailiff Gault.”

That answer did not help the guard as much as he thought it would.

Rylan saw doubt pass through the gathering.

No trust in the brothers yet.

But doubt in Gault.

It was a beginning.

A broad man with a smith’s shoulders stepped closer.

“If we break the binding, Gault will punish us.”

Several villagers agreed.

The red cloth had become more than a warning. It was proof of Gault’s authority. Breaking it meant choosing a side.

Rylan looked at Olivia.

She was watching the people, not him.

He could see the hope in her, but also the fear of what would happen if they refused.

He moved closer to the well.

“We will not ask anyone to believe us without proof,” he said. “Let us open it. Let us show you the broken stone and the foul water entering from the hill.”

The young guard shook his head.

“The seal is blessed.”

“Then the blessing has done its work,” Rylan said.

The guard frowned.

“It kept people from drinking poison. Now let it protect them while the poison is removed.”

That silenced him.

Rylan had no idea whether the argument made religious sense.

It sounded good.

Sometimes that was enough.

A man near the back called out.

“And if you make it worse?”

“Then you close it again.”

“And if Gault hangs us?”

Rylan could not promise that would not happen.

Gray stepped forward for the first time.

“Gault does not need to know who agreed.”

“He will know,” the smith said.

“Then tell him we broke the seal.”

Everyone looked at Gray.

He met their eyes calmly.

“Tell him the strangers did it. Tell him you tried to stop us.”

Kaelex glanced toward him.

That was a dangerous proposition.

Gray knew it.

But they needed the villagers more than the villagers needed five strangers hiding in the woods.

Aldith walked to the well.

The broken-nosed guard moved into her path.

“You will not touch it.”

Aldith looked at him until he shifted uncomfortably.

Then she held out one hand toward Olivia.

“Your knife.”

Olivia drew the small knife from her belt and placed it in Aldith’s palm.

The village went silent.

Aldith stepped around the guard.

She stood before the covered well, staring at the strips of red cloth moving in the breeze.

“My husband died after drinking from this well,” she said.

Her voice was not loud, but everyone heard it.

“Olivia’s mother died. Children have suffered. Gault sells us water and says keeps us in fear and says it’s for our own safety.”

She placed the knife against the cloth.

The guard reached for her arm.

Kaelex moved once.

Only one step.

But it was enough.

The guard saw the size of him and stopped.

“No more fear.”

Aldith cut through the first red strip.

Several villagers gasped.

Nothing happened.

No thunder.

No fire.

No voice from heaven.

Only a piece of cloth falling into the mud.

Aldith cut the second strip.

Then she turned toward Kaelex.

“You say you can mend it?”

KK looked at the well, the slope, the worried villagers, and finally at Gray.

Gray nodded.

Kaelex faced Aldith.

“Yes.”

She handed Olivia back the knife.

“Then mend it.”

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Then the broad-shouldered smith stepped beside Kaelex.

“I have a shovel.”

A farmer raised his hand.

“I have two sons.”

The woman whose daughter was sick said, “I can bring baskets for the mud.”

More voices followed.

Not many.

Not yet.

But enough.

Rylan looked at Olivia.

Relief softened her face. The exhaustion remained, but for the first time since he had met her, the hope in her eyes seemed stronger than the despair.

She reached for his hand where it hung beside him.

Her fingers closed around his briefly.

“You gave them something better,” she said.

Rylan looked at the villagers gathering tools.

“No.”

He nodded toward Aldith.

“She did.”

Olivia did not release his hand immediately.

“No,” she said. “You both did.”

Across the lane, one of Gault’s men slipped away from the water cart and disappeared between the houses.

Teag saw him go.

So did Gray.

The village had agreed to let the brothers repair the well.

Now they had to finish before Rafe Gault returned.

The red cloth hung in two pieces where Aldith had cut it.

“We need hands,” Gray said. “Buckets. Clay. Shovels. Picks. Flat stones. Gravel if you have it. Charcoal from clean fires. Rope. Timber. Two strong beams if anyone has them. Cloth we can spare. Boiling pots. And we need people who can follow instructions without arguing every breath.”

Few moved.

Gray waited.

The villagers looked at one another.

Then Aldith came forward.

She was small, bent, wrapped in a dark wool shawl, and somehow more commanding than men twice her size. She leaned on a stick and looked over the gathered faces one by one.

“You heard him,” she said. “Or shall we stand here and die politely?”

That moved them.

Slowly at first, then all at once.

Two men went for shovels. A woman sent her boys for buckets. An old man limped toward a pile of stones near a broken wall. Someone called for clay from the lower bank. A pair of girls ran for rope.

Teag watched them scatter, then looked at Gray.

“What do you need me doing?”

Gray lowered his voice. “You run between us and the shelter. Cam’s got the things we talked about. The cloth-wrapped gloves, small pump, the clear tube wrapped in leather, the flashlight box, and whatever else his weird little brain decided was useful.”

Teag nodded.

“And you watch the road,” Gray added. “Gault won’t let this go.”

“I know.”

“I mean it. No hero stuff.”

Teag gave him a look. “I heard you the first fifteen times.”

“Good. Hear me sixteen.”

Teag almost smiled, then slipped through the crowd and vanished between two cottages.

Kaelex crouched near the well and ran his fingers along the stone.

The top course was rough, old, and damp. Mortar had failed in several places. Moss clung in the cracks. The cover sat unevenly where Gault’s men had nailed boards across it.

KK sniffed once, grimaced, and stood.

“Gray.”

“What?”

“We need to get these boards off careful. Don’t drop anything in. I want two men on support ropes before we open it.”

Rylan raised his eyebrows. “You worried something’s coming out?”

“I’m worried one of these rotten planks falls in and makes a bad job worse.”

“Less exciting, but fair.”

Gray picked two villagers who looked strong enough and sober enough, then had them hold ropes while KK worked the boards loose.

The first nail shrieked when it came free.

Half the village flinched.

Rylan turned quickly. “Wood complains when it’s been held wrong too long.”

An old man frowned. “Wood complains?”

“Constantly,” Ry said. “Ask any carpenter.”

The old man looked uncertain, but a few of the younger villagers laughed under their breath.

That helped.

A little.

The boards came off one by one. The smell rose as soon as the cover opened.

Several people stepped back.

Kaelex leaned over the well and studied the darkness below.

Gray moved beside him. “Bad?”

“Not great.”

“How not great?”

“Like if this was a customer call, I’d already be thinking about how to explain the bill.”

Rylan came to his other side. “Can we maybe not mention billing to the peasants?”

“Probably wise.”

KK picked up a stone and dropped it.

They listened.

It struck water after a short fall.

“Water’s high,” he said. “Higher than it should be.”

Aldith stood several paces back, knuckles tight around her stick. “What does that mean?”

“It means water is getting in,” KK said. “Maybe from below like it should. Most likley from the sides like it shouldn’t.”

“And you can tell the difference?”

“I can smell the difference.”

Teag returned with a bundle on his shoulder and leaned toward Gray. “Cam had everything ready so I brought all I could carry.”

Kaelex took the bundle.

“He also sent this.”

Teag handed Gray a folded scrap of cardboard with Camden’s handwriting on it.

Gray opened it.

DO NOT USE THE PUMP IN FRONT OF EVERYONE UNLESS YOU WRAP IT IN THE WOODEN BOX. ALSO WULF’S FEVER IS DOWN. HE ATE TWO BITES OF BREAD.

“How’s Wulf ?” Ry asked quietly.

Teag’s expression softened. “Better than last night. Still weak. Cam’s staying with him.”

Olivia, who had been standing near Aldith, heard enough to turn.

“He woke?”

Teag nodded. “Yeah. Camden says he’s not fixed, but he’s fighting.”

For the first time that morning, Olivia’s face loosened.

Then Kaelex clapped his hands once.

“All right. We know where it starts. Now we find where it gets in.”

Gray translated the command into action before confusion set in.

“You, you, and you,” he said, pointing to three men with shovels. “Start a trench here, along this line. We need to catch surface water and lead it away from the well. You two gather stones. Flat ones if you can. We need the sides held. Clay there. Gravel there. Keep the clean stuff separate from the muck. I need 4 strong men to start digging out the walls of the well.”

The villagers hesitated only a moment this time.

Then they moved.

Gray walked among them, keeping the whole thing from turning into chaos. He did not shout unless he had to. He just gave orders like a man used to being obeyed, not from fear, because the orders made sense.

Kaelex marked lines in the dirt with a stick.

“Not straight down,” he told the diggers. “Across the slope. You want to catch it before it gets speed.”

One man frowned. “Water runs down.”

“Not if you give it an easier way sideways.”

The man looked skeptical.

Kaelex took the shovel from him, cut a short angled channel in the mud, then poured a little water from a bucket into it. The water slid sideways, then away from the well.

The man stared.

Kaelex handed back the shovel. “Like that.”

The man nodded slowly. “Like that.”

Here is a cleaned-up version that flows more naturally while keeping the tone and humor intact:

Rylan moved through the crowd, sharing just enough truth to satisfy them, wrapped in words they could easily understand.

“Anger won't beat this sickness,” he told a worried woman. “We beat it by making it go somewhere else.”

To an old man afraid of offending God, he said, “None of us command heaven, friend. We’re just cleaning up what men left dirty.”

When a child asked if the well would bite, Rylan smiled. “Only if Kaelex gets hungry.”

The child peeked at Kaelex.

Kaelex stared back, deadpan.

The child immediately scrambled behind his mother.

Rylan leaned closer to his partner. “You really have a gift with people.”

“I’m busy,” Kaelex muttered.

Teag worked differently.

He was everywhere.

One moment he carried a message to the upper lane. The next he was helping a boy drag brush away from the ditch. Then he was on a roofline, watching the road past Gault’s hall while pretending to adjust a rope. Then he was back near Gray, reporting quietly.

“Two of Gault’s men near the granary.”

Gray nodded. “Watching?”

“Yeah. One left toward the manor road.”

“Already?”

“Soon as they saw the trench.”

Gray looked toward Rylan.

Ry saw the look and understood.

Gault was coming.

They had less time than they hoped.

The first real problem appeared when the trench reached the lower ground near the well.

A shovel struck stone with a flat, hollow sound.

The man digging stopped at once.

Kaelex heard it and turned.

“Again,” he said.

The man tapped lightly.

Hollow.

KK crouched and scraped mud away with his hands.

A line of flat stones appeared beneath the soil, fitted together too neatly to be natural.

Gray knelt beside him. “Drain?”

“Old one.”

“How old?”

Kaelex brushed more mud away.

The stones were worn smooth, but the edges had been cut with skill. Too much skill for the village. They formed the top of a narrow buried channel running across the slope before turning near the well.

Rylan crouched on KK’s other side. “Please tell me that’s good.”

“It was good once,” Kaelex said.

“And now?”

“Now it’s probably carrying the bad water exactly where we don’t want it.”

Aldith came closer.

“I remember many years ago when they constructed that barn. The men struck something like that. I remember because there was a long break in the construction that day while the men discussed what it was and who built it. I don’t know what they concluded but they capped it and continued building the barn ”

One of the elderly men said. “Old water way under the earth.”

Another whispered, “Roman.”

The word moved through the crowd like a small wind.

Roman.

Roman things were useful and frightening in equal measure. Roads, walls, bridges, ruins. Works too large for living men and too old to trust completely.

KK did not care what century had built it.

He cared that it was in the wrong place and doing the wrong job.

“We need to open it,” he said.

The nearest villagers stepped back.

“No,” one man said.

Kaelex looked at him.

The man swallowed but kept talking. “Old drains hold dead air.”

He’s not wrong, Kaelex thought.

Gray saw his expression. “What?”

“I need Cam.”

“He’s with Wulf.”

“I know.”

“Can we do it without him?”

KK looked at the stones, the well, the slope, the villagers, then the sky.

“Maybe. But I don’t like maybe.”

Teag stepped up. “I can run.”

Gray hesitated.

Kaelex said, “Tell Cam we found an old covered drain. Stone channel. Might be tied to the well. I need the box, the little light, and his not-magic pump. Also ask him how Wulf is.”

Teag nodded and was gone.

Work continued elsewhere. The diversion trench took shape above the well, guided sideways toward a lower ditch that would carry dirty runoff away from the village center. Villagers hauled clay in baskets and gravel in sacks. Children gathered small stones. Aldith stood like a commander with a stick, sending the hesitant back to work with sharp words and sharper looks.

Kaelex had the old drain exposed in three places but did not lift the cover stones yet.

The second problem was the well wall. The men had exposed about 7 feet of the outside of the wall. When KK tapped the stones around it, one shifted.

“That’s loose,” he said.

Gray looked down. “How bad?”

“If it shifts to much the whole well might collapse”

Rylan rubbed one hand over his mouth. “So don’t touch it.”

Kaelex gave him a flat look.

“Just trying to help.”

Gray turned to the villagers. “We need timber. Two beams. Three if you have them. Strong rope.”

A man named Oswin, who had arms like fence posts and very few words, nodded and left with two younger men.

They returned dragging beams from an old cart shed.

Gray and KK built the brace together.

Not modern. Not pretty. But strong.

Two beams leaned together above the opened section of drain. A third locked them apart. Rope lashed the top. A pulley would have been nice. A chain hoist would have been better. They had neither in public.

So they used what they could show.

Rope.

Wood.

Wedges.

A digging bar.

Stone.

And men.

Behind a cart, hidden from most of the crowd, Gray opened the bundle Teag had brought from Cam. Inside were modern gloves wrapped in old cloth, a compact flashlight tucked into a wooden box with a slit cut in one side, a short length of clear tubing wrapped in brown leather, and the small battery pump Camden had disguised inside a rough wooden container.

A note sat on top.

IF ANYONE ASKS, IT IS A HUMBLE WOODEN WATER WHEEL.

Gray sighed.

“What?” Ry asked.

“Camden.”

“Ah.”

Kaelex put the wrapped gloves on under cloth strips and looked at the pump box.

“He really did make a box.”

“Apparently.”

“Looks stupid.”

“Will it work?”

“Probably.”

“Then love the stupid box.”

Kaelex grunted and carried it toward the well.

They opened the first cover stone of the old drain by hand and timber leverage.

The smell came up sharp enough to make three men gag.

The crowd backed away again.

Kaelex covered his nose with his sleeve and leaned close, using the slit-box light so only he and Gray could see clearly.

The old channel below was narrow, lined with stone, and half filled with black mud, roots, straw, and things nobody wanted to name.

Water moved through it slowly.

The wrong direction.

KK followed it with his eyes until it disappeared beneath the ground toward the well.

“There it is,” he said.

Gray crouched beside him. “Can we block it?”

“We block this without giving the water somewhere else to go, it backs up and floods the yard. Then Gault says we ruined his hall.”

“He’ll say that anyway.”

“Yeah, but I prefer when liars have to work harder.”

Rylan squatted on the other side. “So what’s the play?”

“We open enough to clear it. Then we cut it off from the well and feed it into the new trench. Clay plug on the bad side. Stone and gravel bed to take the flow sideways. Then patch the well wall.”

“Sounds simple.”

“It ain’t.”

“Noted.”

KK looked toward the well. “Need somebody small.”

Rylan and Gray both looked toward where Teag had disappeared.

Before they could answer, Teag came running back into the village.

He was not alone.

Camden came behind him with a pack over one shoulder, breathing hard and trying to look like he was not out of shape.

Beside him, moving slower but upright, was Wulf.

Olivia saw her brother and ran.

She reached him in three strides and dropped to her knees in front of him, taking his face in both hands.

“Wulf.”

“I am well,” he said, though he clearly was not fully well. His fever was gone.

Camden stopped behind him and put his hands on his knees. “He is not well. He is stubborn. There’s a difference.”

Olivia looked at Camden.

For the first time, most of the village did too.

Until then, Camden had been only a rumor. The brother who stayed in the woods. The one who tended the sick boy. The one who carried strange things and talked too fast.

He straightened under the attention and gave a small, awkward wave.

“Hi.”

No one understood that.

Rylan closed his eyes briefly.

Gray stepped in. “This is Camden. Our brother. He watched over Wulf through the morning.”

That changed the way people looked at him.

Aldith came forward and studied Wulf’s face with sharp old eyes.

“Fever broke?”

Camden nodded, then remembered she might not understand the phrase. He touched his forehead, then lowered his hand and gave a thumbs-up.

The village stared at his thumb.

Camden slowly lowered it.

“Need to stop doing that,” he muttered.

Wulf pulled away from Olivia just enough to stand by himself.

“He gave me water,” Wulf said. “Clean water. And he did not let the ugly one eat my bread.”

Rylan turned. “I know that is not about me.”

Wulf pointed at him.

Several villagers laughed.

It was small. Nervous. But real.

Olivia looked at Camden again.

“Thank you,” she said.

Camden’s mouth opened.

For once, nothing came out right away.

Then he nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”

Kaelex ruined the moment by calling, “Cam, old drain, bad air, moving water, loose well stone, and I need a small idiot.”

Camden pointed at Teag. “We brought one.”

Gray was nervous about sending Teagan in.

“I can fit.”

“That is not the only requirement.”

“I’m light. I’m quick. I’m not scared of tight places.”

Kaelex looked at the opening, then at the well. “He’s also right.”

Gray’s head snapped toward him. “Do not help him.”

Teag stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I can do it. Tie a rope on me. I go in as far as KK says, clear what he says, and come back. No proving. No showing off. Just the job.”

Gray looked at him for a long moment.

That was the problem.

It did sound like the job.

Camden crouched beside the open drain, holding his covered light low. “Opening’s narrow. Not a full crawl. More like reach and shoulders. Bad air risk is lower since it’s open in sections, but still not fun. We can move air through it.”

“With what?” Ry asked.

Camden lifted a folded piece of stiff leather and cloth stretched over a frame.

Kaelex frowned. “What is that?”

“Bellows-ish.”

“Bellows-ish is not a word.”

“It is now. I made it out of scraps at camp. We can push fresh air through one opening while Teag works from this one.”

Kaelex stared at him.

Camden stared back.

KK said, “I hate when you’re useful.”

“I know. It’s hard for both of us.”

Gray looked at the drain. Then at Teag. Then at Wulf, who was leaning against Olivia and watching with wide eyes. Then at the village.

If they stopped now, fear would return.

If they pushed wrong, Teag could get hurt.

This was the kind of decision Gray hated most. The kind where every answer had teeth.

Finally he stepped close to Teag.

“You listen to KK. Do exactly what he says.”

“I will.”

“You feel dizzy, you say it.”

“I will.”

Gray put a hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t have to prove you’re our brother.”

Teag’s face changed just a little.

Then he nodded.

“I know.”

“Good,” Gray said. “Now prove you can follow directions.”

They tied a rope around Teag’s waist and another around his chest. Kaelex checked both knots. Then checked them again. Then had Gray check them.

Camden set the covered light where it shone into the opening without flashing toward the crowd. To the villagers, it looked like a strange wooden lantern box. Strange was acceptable. Impossible was not.

Teag got down on his stomach in the mud.

Kaelex crouched beside him. “You’re only reaching to the first bend. You hear me?”

“First bend.”

“You’ll feel roots and packed muck. Pull loose stuff back. Don’t yank any stone. If a stone moves, you tell me.”

“Got it.”

“If anything shifts, I pull you out.”

“Got it.”

“If you say ‘wait,’ we wait. If I say ‘out,’ you come out. No debate.”

Teag looked up. “KK.”

“What?”

“I got it.”

Kaelex stared at him, then gave one short nod.

“Go.”

Teag slid into the opening.

The crowd went silent.

Camden worked the bellows-ish contraption at the upper break in the drain, pushing air through. It made a soft coughing sound.

Rylan glanced at him. “You built that in an hour?”

“Forty minutes.”

“Of course you did.”

Teag’s voice came muffled from inside the drain. “There’s a root ball.”

“Can you break it?” KK asked.

“Maybe.”

“Small pieces. Don’t yank.”

Mud began coming backward. Teag pushed it out by handfuls. Black, stinking, tangled with straw and fine roots.

Two villagers turned away gagging.

KK ignored them.

“Good. Keep going.”

More mud came out.

Then a trickle of trapped water followed.

Then more.

The water moved sluggishly through the opened drain and into the shallow pit they had dug instead of toward the well.

“That’s it,” KK said. “That’s the flow.”

Gray had men ready with clay and stone.

“Build the side wall here,” he ordered. “Pack clay behind it. No gaps. Gravel first, then stone. Keep the dirty water in the channel.”

The villagers moved faster now.

They had seen proof. They had seen the old drain opened. They had seen fowl water moving toward the well.

Fear had not vanished.

But work was stronger than fear when enough hands joined it.

Teag grunted inside the drain.

Kaelex leaned closer. “What?”

“Stone.”

“Loose?”

“Not loose. Carved.”

Camden stopped pumping for half a second.

Gray noticed. “Cam.”

Camden started again.

Kaelex lowered his voice. “Carved how?”

Teag did not answer right away.

Then: “Same mark.”

Gray’s body went still.

Rylan saw it.

Kaelex saw it.

Camden definitely saw it.

The village did not.

Good.

Kaelex kept his voice normal. “Ignore it for now. Clear the blockage.”

“But—”

“Teag.”

A pause.

“Clearing.”

More mud came back.

Then straw.

Then something hard clattered out onto the ground.

A small broken piece of shaped stone, dark with filth.

Camden picked it up before any villager could see it clearly and wiped it with the edge of his sleeve.

The mark was there.

Not complete.

But enough.

A circle.

A broken line.

Three cuts branching away like roads on a map.

Camden’s face changed.

He looked toward Gray.

Gray gave the smallest shake of his head.

Not now.

Camden wrapped the stone in cloth and tucked it away.

That was when Gault arrived.

He came from the upper lane with four men behind him, boots muddy, cloak dark, face hard enough to cut wood. He stopped at the edge of the crowd and took in everything at once.

The opened well.

The cut red cloth.

The trench.

The villagers working.

The strange men directing them.

His jaw tightened.

“What is this?” he demanded.

No one answered.

Work slowed.

Fear returned like cold water.

Gault stepped forward. “Who gave leave to break the seal?”

Aldith turned with her stick in hand.

“I did.”

Gault looked at her as if she were a dog that had spoken.

“You?”

“Aye.”

“This well was closed by order.”

“This well was fouled by neglect. And poor planning”

A few villagers sucked in sharp breaths.

Gault’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, old woman.”

Rylan moved before Gray could stop him.

Not in front of Aldith. Not exactly.

Beside her.

That was smarter.

“We are only turning dirty water clean,” Ry said.

Gault looked him over. “You again.”

“Usually.”

“You think your tongue makes you safe?”

“No,” Ry said. “My brothers make me safe. My tongue just causes the need.”

Somewhere behind him, Camden whispered, “Accurate.”

Gault’s gaze moved to Camden, then to Kaelex, then to Teag’s legs sticking out of the old drain opening.

“What is he doing?”

“Clearing debri,” Kaelex said.

“Inside old stone?”

“Yes.”

“You are tearing Lord Renard land without leave.”

Gray stepped forward this time.

“We are repairing a village well.”

“You have no permission.”

Aldith lifted her chin. “They have ours.”

Gault looked around the crowd. “Yours?”

No one spoke.

Then Oswin, the broad-armed man, set another stone into the trench wall.

“The well is ours to drink from,” he said.

Gault turned on him.

Oswin kept working.

That mattered.

One man continuing did more than ten men shouting.

Gray saw it and immediately pointed to the next group. “Clay there. Pack it tight.”

They obeyed.

Gault’s face darkened.

“I can have men whipped for less.”

Ry smiled without warmth. “Probably why nobody likes you.”

Gray closed his eyes for half a second.

Kaelex muttered, “There it is.”

Gault stepped toward Ry.

Kaelex stood.

He did not threaten. He did not reach for a weapon. He did not say a word.

He just stood.

Gault stopped.

Not because he was afraid, exactly.

Because he could count.

Four men with him. Four strange brothers standing. A whole village watching. One boy in the drain. One old woman with the moral force of a church bell.

Not the right moment.

Gault knew it.

So did Gray.

That made the situation more dangerous, not less.

Gault changed tactics.

“This is not mercy,” he said to the villagers. “This is trickery. If sickness follows, it will be on your heads. The sheriff will hear of it.”

Rylan answered before anyone could panic.

“Good.”

The crowd looked at him.

So did Gault.

Ry spread his hands. “Let him hear the truth. Let him hear that animal filth was washing from the upper yard. Let him hear that old stone carried it toward the well. Let him hear that the village worked together to turn it aside.”

Gault’s mouth tightened.

“That is not what he will hear.”

“No,” Gray said quietly. “I expect not.”

The two men looked at each other.

For the first time, the village saw something plain between them.

Gault had authority.

Gray had none.

But Gray was not afraid of him.

That was new.

From the drain, Teag called, “KK.”

Kaelex dropped instantly beside him. “What?”

“Blockage is loose.”

“Back out.”

“I can push it through.”

“I said back out.”

“But—”

“Teag.”

A long pause.

Then Teag began sliding backward.

Good, Gray thought.

Thank God.

They pulled him free, covered in black mud from elbows to chest, hair plastered to his forehead, breathing hard but grinning like an idiot.

“I listened,” he said before Gray could speak.

Gray nodded. “I noticed.”

Kaelex grabbed the back of Teag’s shirt and hauled him fully clear.

A mass of root, straw, and packed filth shifted inside the drain. Water surged behind it, suddenly free.

Too much water.

It rushed toward the opened section and began chewing at the mud wall near the well.

“Clay!” KK barked.

Gray was already moving.

“Clay here! Stones now!”

Villagers scrambled.

The surge undercut one side of the shallow pit. A stone slipped. Then another.

If the flow reached the cracked well seam before they plugged it, all the filth that had built up in the old drain could dump straight into the water.

Gault saw it.

So did everyone else.

For one heartbeat, fear froze the village.

Then Kaelex stepped into the mud.

“Gray, brace the well stone!”

Gray and Oswin moved together, setting a timber against the loose well course.

“Ry, keep them moving!”

Rylan spun toward the crowd. “You heard him! Clay! Stone! Gravel! Move like your children drink from this!”

That did it.

The village moved.

Women passed baskets hand to hand. Men shoved stones into place. Children carried handfuls of gravel. Aldith cursed at anyone who slowed down, using words that made Camden blink.

Camden dropped beside the opened drain with the wooden pump box.

Kaelex saw him. “Now!”

Camden shoved the leather-wrapped tube into the dirty flow and kicked the little pump hidden inside the box to life.

It hummed.

Not loud.

But not natural.

Gault’s head snapped toward it.

Rylan immediately stepped between him and Camden.

“Have you ever noticed,” Ry said loudly, “that men who sell water get upset when water runs free?”

Gault shoved him.

Not hard enough to start a fight.

Hard enough to test him.

Ry stumbled back one step, smiled, and did not swing.

That may have been the hardest work any brother did that day.

Behind him, the pump pulled enough of the surge into a side pit to buy KK a minute.

“Clay plug!” KK shouted.

Gray and Oswin slammed packed clay into the break between the old drain and the well side. Kaelex drove flat stones into place like wedges. Teag, still muddy, crawled beside him and shoved gravel behind the stones.

Camden kept the pump running.

A woman named Merewen threw down another basket of clay.

A boy brought gravel.

Aldith planted herself in front of Gault’s nearest man when he tried to move around Rylan.

She whispered something to him.

The man stopped.

Apparently that threat carried weight.

Kaelex pressed both hands against the clay plug.

“Hold,” he muttered.

Water rose.

Mud trembled.

The plug bulged.

Gray leaned his shoulder into the timber brace.

Oswin did the same.

Teag shoved another stone in.

“Now the side channel!” KK shouted.

Villagers packed the new trench wall with clay and stone. The water, denied the well crack, diverted into the trench.

Away from the well.

Down toward the lower ditch.

For several seconds, no one moved.

The water kept going.

Sideways.

Away.

Kaelex stayed crouched, hands still on the plug, breathing hard.

Then he sat back in the mud.

“There,” he said.

Gault’s face had gone very still.

He looked at the trench, the well, the villagers, the brothers, and finally at the cut red cloth.

“You think this changes anything?” he said.

Gray wiped mud from his hands. “It changes where the dirty water goes.”

Rylan added, “That seemed important.”

Gault’s eyes moved to him.

“You will regret your mouth.”

Kaelex stood, and this time there was mud on him up to the knees and fury in his eyes.

Gray stepped slightly in front of him.

Gault backed away, but slowly, as if leaving had been his choice all along.

“This will reach the sheriff,” he said.

Gray nodded. “I figured.”

“And Lord Renard.”

That name moved through the villagers differently.

Lord Renard.

Some lowered their eyes. Some looked hopeful. Some looked afraid.

Gault noticed and smiled thinly.

“You strangers have done more than dig mud today.”

He turned and walked away with his men.

No one stopped him.

Teag climbed to his feet beside Camden.

“He’s gonna be a problem.”

Camden looked after Gault. “He already is.”

Kaelex pointed at the pump box. “Turn that off before somebody asks why the bucket is humming.”

Camden quickly did.

Rylan looked over. “Water-wheel making noise?”

With Gault gone, the work continued.

There was still more to do.

Kaelex made sure they understood that.

“No drinking yet,” he said.

A few faces fell.

Ry translated the meaning before disappointment turned to doubt.

“The well must be cleaned first. The bad water drawn out. The sides mended. The new path packed strong. Then the water boiled for a few weeks before anyone drinks.”

A man frowned. “But the dark water is turned.”

“Yes,” Kaelex said. “Turned ain’t clean.”

Rylan repeated it in softer words. “A bandaged wound still needs time to heal.”

That they understood.

So the work continued.

Gray organized a rotation for drawing and dumping the filthy water from the well.

Camden quietly used the pump twice more when people were distracted by hauling stone. The rest of the time, he looked like he was simply tending a wooden box and helping with rope. Wulf sat nearby on an overturned bucket, wrapped in Olivia’s cloak, watching him with open admiration.

“You are the strange one,” Wulf said.

Camden looked offended. “Out of all five of us?”

Wulf nodded.

Camden considered that. “Fair.”

Olivia sat beside Wulf for a moment, one hand on his shoulder, but her eyes kept going back to Rylan.

He was talking to three villagers now, showing them how to lay planks over the raised well cover with enough slope to shed rain. His hands moved as he talked. Quick. Confident. Familiar with work.

Not like a lord or a priest, like a teacher.

He caught her looking and smiled.

She looked away.

Then looked back.

Camden saw it and leaned toward Wulf.

“You see that?”

Wulf nodded gravely. “He is still ugly.”

Camden smiled. “You’re my favorite medieval person.”

Wulf looked at him in horror, “I’m not evil”

Cam realized his mistake. Wulf would have no idea what medieval was. “No no, I said mid-regal person. Not quit like a prince but close. It’s just a saying where I come from.”

Wulf’s smile returned.

Near the well, Teag washed enough mud from the broken stone to confirm the mark.

He waited until Gray, KK, Rylan, and Camden stood close enough to see without drawing attention.

Then he opened his hand.

The broken piece lay in his palm.

The carved symbol was worn, but clear.

Circle. Broken line. Three cuts branching outward.

Camden’s joking expression vanished.

“That’s the same,” he said.

Teag touched the cord under his tunic where he kept the first carved stone hidden. “Yeah.”

Kaelex looked toward the well.

“That was inside the drain?”

“Deep,” Teag said. “Past the first bend.”

Gray lowered his voice. “Could be Roman.”

Camden shook his head slowly. “The drain might be Roman. This mark feels older.”

“Feels?” Kaelex said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

Rylan studied the mark. “This well ain’t just a well.”

“No,” Camden said. “I don’t think it is.”

Gray closed Teag’s fingers over the stone.

“Not here,” he said.

Teag nodded and tucked it away.

The day stretched on.

By late afternoon, the well looked different.

Not new.

Nothing in Eldergate looked new.

But it looked tended.

The loose stones had been reset. Clay sealed the cracks. Gravel and clean stone formed a bed around the side where water needed to move. The new trench cut across the slope above the well and carried runoff toward the lower ditch. The hard flow from Gault’s yard no longer pointed straight at the village’s water source.

A raised cover sat over the well mouth, built from timber and planks, sloped so rain would run off instead of pooling on top. It was heavier than what had been there before, but it could be lifted by two men when needed. Kaelex had insisted on that.

The first buckets drawn from the well were cloudy.

The villagers watched with sinking faces.

Kaelex only nodded.

“Good. That’s what I expected.”

“You expected dirty water?” Aldith asked.

“Yes, it will take some time to clear the bad water out.”

More buckets came up.

Cloudy.

Then less cloudy.

Then clearer.

Not perfect.

But better.

KK still would not let anyone drink.

That angered one man who had worked all day.

“If it is clean, why not drink?”

“Because clean-looking ain’t clean,” Kaelex said.

Rylan translated quickly. “Clear water can still carry sickness. Boil it. Let it cool covered. Use clean cups. Keep hands and buckets out of the mud.”

The man frowned. “Always?”

“For now,” Kaelex said. “Until we know.”

Aldith nodded once.

“Then we boil.”

That settled it.

Women began carrying water to pots. Fires were built. Clean cloth was stretched over bucket mouths. Camden showed two boys how to pour without dipping dirty hands into the water. Gray organized who would draw water and who would keep animals away from the slope.

It was ordinary work.

That was what made it powerful.

No flash.

No spell.

No thunder.

Just hands, mud, stone, heat, and grit.

As the first pot of boiled water cooled beneath a clean cloth, Rylan dipped a small cup.

The village went silent.

He looked at Kaelex.

Kaelex nodded.

Ry lifted the cup.

The village watched.

So did Olivia.

“Just so everybody knows,” he said, “if this goes badly, I am blaming Camden.”

“I heard that,” Camden called from near the well.

“That was the point.”

A few villagers gave nervous laughs.

Rylan looked once toward Olivia.

Her face was still and pale, but her eyes were fixed on him.

So he stopped joking.

He lifted the cup and drank.

Only a careful mouthful.

The water was warm, flat, and carried the faint taste of smoke from the boiling pot.

Everyone watched him swallow.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened.

Sickness did not wreck a body in one breath.

But Rylan stood straight, handed the cup to Aldith, and gave the village a small nod.

“It is water,” he said. “Not cursed.”

Aldith took the cup from him.

Then she held it out to Wulf.

Olivia stiffened.

Kaelex said, “Small.”

Aldith nodded.

Wulf drank.

Only a little.

Then he made a face.

“It tastes like smoke,” he said.

The village laughed.

Not loudly.

But enough.

Olivia covered her mouth with one hand.

Ry saw tears in her eyes and looked away before she caught him seeing too much.

Gault’s water cart stood unused near the lane.

No one went to it.

That may have been the moment the village understood.

Not that everything was fixed or that no one would sicken again.

Not that danger was gone.

But that Gault did not own the water.

That one truth changed the air.

Oswin was the first to step toward the brothers.

He stopped in front of Kaelex and looked down at the mud on KK’s boots, hands, shirt, and face.

“You are a man of water,” he said.

Kaelex looked uncomfortable. “Plumber.”

Oswin frowned.

Rylan said, “A man of water.”

Kaelex sighed. “Fine.”

Oswin nodded and gripped his forearm.

Then he turned to Gray.

“You lead men well.”

Gray did not know what to do with that, so he nodded. “They worked well.”

Oswin looked at Ry.

“You have a sly tounge.”

Ry smiled. “I’ve heard that.”

“But well enough.”

“I’ll take it.”

The old man looked at Teag.

“You are small.”

Teag’s smile faded.

Oswin continued, “Good for old drains.”

Teag stared.

Camden coughed into his fist.

Gray looked at the sky.

Rylan lost the fight and laughed.

Teag pointed at Oswin. “I don’t know if that was a compliment.”

“It was,” Camden said. “Take it. You have little usefulness, I mean your usefulness is being little.”

Teag shoved him.

Aldith came last.

She looked at all five brothers together.

For the first time, Eldergate saw them that way too.

Rylan, mud on his sleeves and a half-smile on his face.

Kaelex, broad and filthy and still studying the water like it might betray him.

Gradyn, tired-eyed and steady, already thinking three steps ahead.

Camden, strange and clever.

Teagan, young and muddy and standing a little taller than he had that morning.

Five brothers from mountains no one in Eldergate had ever seen.

Aldith tapped her stick once against the ground.

“The well is not healed,” she said.

Kaelex nodded. “No.”

“But it may heal.”

“Yes.”

“And if it does?”

Rylan answered softly. “Then the village has water again.”

Aldith looked toward the road where Gault had gone.

“And enemies.”

Gray followed her gaze.

“Looks that way.”

The old woman nodded as if that only confirmed what she already knew.

“Then eat before they return.”

That was the most sensible thing anyone had said all day.

Food appeared slowly at first. Bread. Thin stew. Onions. A little cheese. Dried apples. Nothing plentiful, nothing wasted, but offered with the solemn care of people who had little and understood the weight of giving it.

The brothers accepted. Camden was starving and looked ready to eat a fence post.

They sat near the well as evening settled over Eldergate.

Wulf leaned against Olivia, half asleep, a cup of cooled boiled water near his hand. Camden sat on his other side, explaining something with two sticks and a pebble that Wulf appeared to understand no better than anyone else did.

Kaelex watched the trench.

Gray watched the road.

Teag watched the village watching them.

Rylan watched Olivia.

She knew it.

After a while, she looked at him.

“You did not mock the villagers,” she said.

Ry shook his head. “They were scared.”

“You are not?”

He looked toward the darkening woods, then the old well, then the road beyond Gault’s hall.

“Constantly.”

That surprised her.

Good, he thought. Let her have a true thing.

Olivia studied him.

“You hide it poorly.”

Ry laughed under his breath. “That hurts a little.”

“No,” she said. “You hide it with noise.”

He looked down at his hands.

“That sounds more accurate.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Olivia said, “Wulf says your brother Camden kept watch all night.”

“He did.”

“And you trusted him?”

“With Wulf?”

“With a child.”

Ry looked over at Camden, who was now making Wulf smile by balancing the pebble on the back of his hand.

“Yeah,” Ry said. “With anything that matters.”

Olivia’s face briefly softened.

He saw it.

Teag slipped the broken marked stone out of his pocket and handed it to Gray.

Gray closed his fingers around it without looking down.

Camden noticed.

Kaelex noticed.

Rylan noticed because his brothers noticed.

The moment passed through all five of them silently.

Something had brought them to Eldergate.

The mark told them a fouled well was not the reason they had been brought here.

Beyond the village, where the old road bent toward the woods, a rider watched from the shadow of the trees.

Only Teag saw him.

The rider sat still for a long moment, then turned his horse and disappeared toward the manor road.

Teag stood.

Gray followed his gaze.

“What?”

“Messenger,” Teag said.

“Gault?”

“Maybe. Maybe worse.”

Gray looked toward the darkening road.

The repaired trench whispered with moving water, carrying filth away from the well and down toward the lower ditch. Behind them, villagers sat around a fire drinking carefully boiled water and spoke in low voices filled with hope that had not been there that morning.

Hope.

Fear.

Strangers.

Western mountains.

Lord Renard.

Sheriff.

Gray turned the carved stone over in his palm.

Its worn lines caught the last light of evening.

Camden came up beside him.

“That’s not just a maker’s mark,” he said quietly.

“No.”

“And it’s not random.”

“No.”

Kaelex joined them, wiping his hands on an already filthy cloth.

“I hate when old buried stuff starts looking important.”

Rylan stepped up on Gray’s other side.

“On the bright side, we fixed the well.”

Teag looked at the road where the rider had vanished.

“Yeah,” he said.

Gray closed his hand around the stone.

The village had water.

Gault had lost control.

And somewhere beyond Eldergate, word was already riding toward men who would not be grateful.

Rylan let out a slow breath.

“Well,” he said, “good news is we made friends.”

Kaelex looked at the road.

Gray looked at the mark.

Camden looked toward the woods and the hidden camp beyond it.

Teag listened to the fading sound of hooves.

No one asked for the bad news.

They could hear it coming.

Lady Esmarelda knew when Sheriff William de Harcourt was lying.

It was not because his voice changed. Men who lied badly looked away, wet their lips, or crowded their words together as though speed might carry them past doubt. The sheriff did none of those things. He spoke with the same calm weight whether he was naming a tax, praising a dead knight, or explaining why a frightened tenant had misunderstood the hand around his throat.

His lies were too well dressed to show their bones.

That morning, he stood beneath the high timber roof of her father’s hall in a dark wool mantle clasped with silver. Rain shone on the shoulders of men behind him. The great hearth breathed smoke into the rafters, where it gathered in a gray layer before finding the roof vent. Hounds slept near the warmth. Wet boots, rushes, damp wool, woodsmoke, and the faint sour smell of too many bodies made the hall feel smaller than it was.

Lord Renard sat in the carved chair on the low dais, one hand resting on the arm and the other curled around a cup he had forgotten to drink from. He wore no crown. He needed none. The hall itself carried his authority: the red-and-gold banner above him, the armed men along the wall, the steward with his tablets, the clerks with ink-dark fingers, and the long line of people waiting to be heard.

Esmarelda sat one step below and to her father’s right.

A tenant from the northern edge of the estate stood before the dais with his cap crushed between both hands. He was a narrow man with mud dried to his knees and a bruise yellowing beneath one eye.

“The reeve says you withheld two measures of barley,” Renard said.

The tenant swallowed. “My lord, I did not withhold it. The roof fell on the storehouse in the storm. The grain was spoiled.”

The steward glanced down at his tablet. “The reeve reports no such damage.”

“He did not come to see it.”

A small movement passed through the line of petitioners. Not surprise. Recognition.

The sheriff shifted his weight almost too little to notice.

Renard noticed anyway. “Who struck you?”

The tenant’s fingers tightened around his cap.

“No one, my lord.”

“Do you often bruise spontaneously,” ask Lord Renard

The man looked toward the sheriff, then toward the floor.

Esmarelda watched her father’s face harden.

“Your reeve’s man,” Renard said.

The tenant gave the smallest nod.

Sheriff William spoke before the steward could. “A dispute during collection, my lord. The reeve’s men found the household reluctant to yield what was owed. Tempers rose. I have already ordered the matter examined.”

Esmarelda looked at him.

The tenant did too, and the fear in his face was not the fear of a man who expected examination. It was the fear of a man who had just learned that the hand above the hand that struck him belonged to the same arm.

Renard set his cup aside. “The barley is forgiven until the storehouse is seen. My mason will inspect the roof before the week is done. If the grain was spoiled, the loss is mine as well as his.”

The steward bowed over the tablet.

“And the reeve’s man?” Esmarelda asked.

The sheriff turned his head toward her. His expression remained respectful. It always did.

“My lady, I will question him.”

“You said you had already ordered the matter examined.”

“I have.”

“Then you know his name.”

For the first time, the pause was almost visible.

“Osbert,” the sheriff said.

The tenant flinched.

Not Osbert, Esmarelda thought.

Her father’s gaze moved from the tenant to William. He had seen it too.

“You will learn the correct name before sunset,” Renard said. “Then you will bring the man before my steward.”

“Of course, my lord.”

The sheriff bowed as though the correction had cost him nothing.

The tenant was dismissed with an order for bread from the kitchen and a place by the fire until the rain eased.

The petitions continued.

A widow asked leave to gather fallen wood from the eastern fence rows. Renard granted it. Two brothers argued over an ox until Renard made them exchange the animal every third day and threatened to give it to the abbey if either returned before harvest. A miller complained that a cart track had washed away. A priest requested timber for a chapel roof. A village woman began to speak of a levy collected twice, but the sheriff’s clerk stepped close, whispered that her matter belonged before another court, and guided her from the line before Renard heard more than three words.

Esmarelda marked her face.

She marked the clerk’s as well.

By the time the last petitioner bowed and backed away, the fire had burned low. Servants carried benches from the center of the hall. The hounds woke and stretched. Rain tapped steadily against the wooden shutters.

Renard rubbed one hand over his beard.

“You have been sharpening that look all morning,” he said without turning toward Esmarelda.

“I have only one look.”

“You have at least twelve. That one means a man has said something foolish and does not yet know he has been measured for his grave.”

Across the hall, Sheriff William was speaking quietly with his clerk. If he heard, he gave no sign.

Esmarelda folded her hands in her lap. “Osbert was not the man who struck the tenant.”

“No.”

“You knew.”

“I knew William guessed.”

“And still you let him leave the matter in his hands.”

Renard turned then. A touch of gray marked his beard at the chin, but his eyes were clear and steady. “I ordered the accused brought before my steward.”

“After William finds a man named Osbert willing to say he did it.”

The corner of her father’s mouth almost moved. Not amusement. Pride restrained by worry.

“You think poorly of my sheriff.”

“I think carefully of him.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No,” she said. “It is safer.”

For a moment, he looked as though he might rebuke her. Instead, he rose from the chair and offered his hand.

“Come. If you mean to accuse half my officers before the noon meal, I would rather do it somewhere the other half cannot listen.”

She took his hand and stood.

They left the dais through the door behind the hanging banner. The passage beyond was narrow and cold. A servant opened the door to Renard’s sitting room and withdrew after adding a split log to the small hearth.

The room was plain by the measure of noble houses. A heavy table stood beneath the window. Maps and rent rolls lay in orderly stacks. A chest rested against one wall. Two cushioned chairs faced the fire, one worn deeper than the other. Esmarelda had learned her letters in that room, sitting on a stool while her father pretended not to smile whenever she corrected the chaplain.

Renard poured watered wine into two cups.

“You were seven the first time you told me my steward was stealing,” he said.

“He was.”

“He was feeding scraps to his dog.”

“It was a very fat dog.”

Her father handed her a cup. “And now?”

“Now your sheriff answers questions before the people you question can speak.”

“He is charged with knowing the condition of the county.”

“He is charged with knowing it. That does not mean he must decide what you are allowed to hear.”

Renard went to the window. Rain streaked the thick glass, blurring the inner yard into moving shapes: stable boys, cloaked guards, a cart rolling toward the kitchens.

“A lord who hears every quarrel himself will do nothing but hear quarrels,” he said. “I have a steward because I cannot count every sack. A forester because I cannot watch every tree. A sheriff because I cannot ride every road and stand in every village square.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He looked back at her. “Delegation is not blindness, Esme. It is the only way land this large can be governed without becoming a collection of fires no one reaches in time.”

She accepted the correction because it was true.

But not all of it.

“A man can carry water for you,” she said, “and still poison the bucket.”

Renard studied her over the rim of his cup.

“That sounds like something your mother would have said.”

“She would have said it better.”

“She would have said it louder.”

The memory warmed his face and wounded it at the same time. Esmarelda lowered her eyes. Her father’s grief had changed over the years. It no longer entered every room before him, but it had never truly left the house.

A knock sounded at the door.

Renard set down his cup. “Enter.”

The steward opened the door only far enough to show his shoulder and worried face. “My lord, Sheriff William asks leave to speak with you at once. A messenger has come from Eldergate.”

Esmarelda looked up.

The name was familiar in the distant way of small places listed on accounts: Eldergate, nine hides and poor soil, an old chapel, a lower meadow that flooded in spring. She remembered a petition from the previous winter concerning a broken footbridge. She did not remember hearing how it had been settled.

“Send him,” Renard said.

The sheriff entered with rain still shining on one sleeve, though he had not been outside. Behind him came a young rider whose boots and cloak were soaked dark with mud. The rider bowed too quickly and nearly slipped on the stones.

William gave him a displeased glance.

“This man carries a report from Rafe Gault,” the sheriff said. “There has been trouble in Eldergate.”

“What kind of trouble?” Renard asked.

The messenger looked toward William.

There it was again.

Not fear of the lord whose hall he had entered. Fear of the man standing beside him.

William unfolded a small piece of parchment. “Five unknown men entered the village and set themselves against the bailiff’s authority. They broke the seal placed upon a fouled well, gathered the villagers, opened old ground beside the lane, and stirred considerable unrest.”

“Five men gathered an entire village?” Renard asked.

“They made promises,” William said. “Hungry people are quick to follow anyone who promises relief.”

“What relief?” Esmarelda asked.

The sheriff’s eyes came to her. “Water, my lady.”

She waited.

He did not continue.

Renard noticed. “Was the well dry?”

“No, my lord. It had been closed after sickness appeared. Gault acted prudently to prevent its use.”

“And these men opened it?”

“They claimed they could make it safe.”

“Could they?”

The messenger’s mouth moved before he caught himself.

William folded the parchment once. “The villagers believe so.”

“That was not my question,” Renard said.

The room became still.

The messenger looked down at his muddy boots.

Renard walked closer to him. He did not raise his voice. He rarely needed to.

“What is your name?”

“Martin, my lord.”

“Did you see the well?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Did you see anyone drink from it?”

Martin glanced at the sheriff.

“Look at me,” Renard said.

The rider obeyed.

“A man drank before all of them,” he said. “One of the strangers. Then the sick boy drank a little. The boy had been near death two days before, so they say. He stood beside the well himself.”

“After drinking the water?”

“Yes, my lord. Though they boiled it first.”

William’s jaw tightened.

Renard’s expression did not change. “What happened to the village?”

“They cheered.”

The word seemed too large for the small room.

Martin swallowed. “Not all, my lord. Some prayed. Some wept. But they cheered the men.”

Esmarelda looked at the sheriff. “That is the unrest?”

“The undermining of lawful authority is not made harmless because peasants cheer it.”

“No,” she said. “But neither is failure made lawful because a bailiff wears your badge.”

“Esmarelda,” Renard said quietly.

She held her tongue, though not her gaze.

The sheriff turned back to Renard. “The matter is larger than a well. The men claim to be craftsmen from mountains in the far west. They carry no letters, name no lord, and offer no proof of their account. They persuaded the villagers to dig where Gault had forbidden digging.”

“Why had he forbidden it?” Renard asked.

“Because the ground lies near old works. Broken drains. Buried stones. Remains from before our grandfathers’ grandfathers. Such places draw superstition, treasure-seekers, and fools.”

“Which are these men?” Esmarelda asked.

“That is what must be learned.”

Sheriff William placed the parchment on the table. His finger remained over the lower portion as though by chance.

Esmarelda noticed a line of darker ink beneath it.

“Move your hand,” she said.

The sheriff looked at her.

“My lady?”

“The report continues.”

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Only Gault’s account of damage to the lane.”

“Then my father may judge how dear the mud is to him.”

Renard held out his hand.

For the first time that morning, William’s courtesy looked like effort. He gave the parchment to him.

Renard read in silence.

Esmarelda watched his eyes stop near the bottom.

“What stone?” he asked.

The messenger went pale.

William answered. “A shaped piece of stone removed from the old drain. Gault says one of the strangers concealed it before he could examine the carving.”

Esmarelda felt the room change.

Not because she understood what had been found. She did not. But she knew the sheriff understood more than he wished to say.

Renard read the line again. “Why was this hidden under your hand?”

“It was not hidden.”

“You judged it unimportant.”

“I judged it dangerous to encourage old fears before we know what was found.”

“A moment ago you told me the danger was reason enough to act.”

William inclined his head. “Reason enough to investigate, my lord. Not reason enough to alarm your household.”

His eyes moved, just briefly, toward Esmarelda.

There it was.

Safety.

Not a threat. Never a threat.

An offer of protection, laid carefully between father and daughter.

Renard saw the glance. His hand closed around the report.

“How near is Eldergate to the old road?”

“Less than half a day by horse,” William said. “And the road bends toward your southern lands.”

“My southern lands,” Renard repeated, but his gaze had gone to Esmarelda.

William did not press. He was too skilled for that. He let silence do the work and stood as a loyal servant waiting for his lord to reach the proper conclusion.

Esmarelda understood then why the sheriff frightened her more than an openly cruel man would have.

Cruelty announced itself.

William brought a chair, invited a man to sit, and arranged the rope where he would not see it.

“What do you ask?” Renard said.

“Leave to send men to Eldergate, secure the old ground, question the strangers, and restore Gault’s authority before the village grows bolder.”

“Restore his authority,” Esmarelda said. “After he failed to restore their water.”

William faced her fully. “My lady, villages are governed by more than gratitude. Today they cheer men who clean a well. Tomorrow they refuse rent because those same men tell them the lord is far away.”

“Did they?”

“Did they what?”

“Tell the villagers to refuse rent.”

“No.”

“Threaten Gault?”

“The report says there were hard words.”

“Strike him?”

“No.”

“Steal grain?”

“No.”

“Take coin?”

William’s gaze sharpened. “You mistake the absence of blood for the absence of danger.”

“And you mistake questions for defiance.”

“That is enough,” Renard said.

Neither spoke.

He returned to the table and laid the report flat. Rain whispered against the glass. In the yard below, a horse whinnied and stamped.

Renard read from the beginning once more.

When he looked up, the weariness had gone from him.

“Five men entered a village where sickness had spread,” he said. “They opened no granary, raised no banner, took no hostage, and spilled no blood. They found a way to give the people water. For this, Gault reports rebellion.”

William’s expression remained smooth. “He reports the beginning of it.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he reports humiliation.”

The messenger seemed to stop breathing.

Renard looked at him. “Martin, did Gault send you here?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Did he tell you what to say?”

Martin’s eyes flicked toward the sheriff again.

Renard’s voice softened. “You will not be punished for answering.”

“He told me to say the strangers broke the seal, turned the village against him, and dug into forbidden ground.”

“Did he tell you to say the well now gives drinkable water?”

“No, my lord.”

“Did he tell you to say the sick boy stood?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you the villagers helped?”

Martin shook his head.

Renard looked at William.

The sheriff spread one hand. “A bailiff under insult writes like a man under insult. That does not make the danger false.”

“No,” Renard said. “But it makes the report incomplete.”

The words were quiet.

William heard the warning in them.

Esmarelda did too.

Her father walked to the hearth and stood with his back to it. Firelight edged his shoulders.

“You may send six men,” he said. “No more.”

The sheriff bowed his head. “My lord.”

“They will not seize the village. They will not close the well if the water remains sound. They will not beat answers from anyone.”

“Of course.”

“They will bring Gault to me with his records of rents, levies, and water collections.”

For the first time, William’s face emptied.

Only for a breath.

Then it was whole again.

“And the strangers?” he asked.

“Invite them to my hall.”

“Invite?”

“If they repaired what my appointed men failed to repair, I owe them hearing before judgment.”

“My lord, men without name or allegiance may not accept a courteous summons.”

“Then your six men will escort them. Without chains, unless they resist or threaten harm.”

William bowed. “As you command.”

Esmarelda watched him measure the order, turning it in his mind to find the spaces between the words.

Her father watched him too.

“And William,” Renard said.

The sheriff paused at the door.

“I want the truth from Eldergate.”

“You shall have it.”

“Whole.”

Something old and cold passed behind William’s eyes.

Then he smiled.

“Always, my lord.”

He left with the messenger.

The door closed.

Renard stood still for a long moment.

Esmarelda went to the table and looked down at Gault’s report. The writing was cramped and hurried. The line about the concealed stone seemed almost added after the rest, squeezed between the account of the dug lane and a complaint about damaged paving.

“Do you know what might have been carved upon it?” she asked.

Her father did not answer immediately.

“I have seen many old marks.”

“That was not my question.”

“No.” He came to stand beside her. “Not one I remember.”

It was not a lie. She knew his lies too.

But it was not the whole of what he felt.

“William knew it mattered,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And he did not want us to see it.”

“Yes.”

She looked at him. “Do you still think I judge him too carefully?”

Renard’s mouth drew into a hard line.

“I think,” he said, “that I have trusted a man because trust was required of his office.”

“That is not the same as trusting the man.”

“No.” He placed two fingers on the report. “It seems I may have forgotten the difference.”

The admission cost him. Esmarelda could see that.

She covered his hand with hers.

“What will you do?”

“Learn whether five wandering craftsmen have saved one of my villages.”

“And if they have?”

“Thank them.”

“And Gault?”

Her father’s eyes hardened.

“Learn what he believed he could hide from me.”

Outside, the rain began to ease. A pale brightness spread across the inner yard, turning puddles to dull silver.

Esmarelda looked again at the line about the strangers.

Five men from the far western mountains. No letters. No named lord. A sick child standing beside a well everyone had feared. A bailiff humiliated. A village cheering.

William had called them dangerous before anyone had asked whether they were good men.

That alone made her want to meet them.

Sheriff William de Harcourt did not speak until the solar door had closed behind him and he had crossed the narrow passage into the stairwell.

The messenger followed two steps back, breathing too loudly.

At the foot of the stair waited Sir Odo, captain of the sheriff’s household men. He was broad through the chest, scarred at the mouth, and clever enough not to ask questions where stone carried sound.

William kept walking.

“Six men,” he said when they reached the covered walk above the stable yard. “Take eight. Leave two beyond the village.”

Odo nodded.

“Lord Renard ordered six.”

“Lord Renard will see six.”

The messenger’s wet boots scraped behind them.

William stopped.

Martin nearly walked into him.

“You will ride ahead,” the sheriff said.

The young man’s face drained. “My lord sheriff, I have ridden since before dawn.”

“Then the road already knows you.”

“Where am I to go?”

“To Gault. Tell him Renard has asked for his records.”

Martin’s eyes widened.

“Tell him,” William continued, “that the books reaching this hall must show lawful collection and nothing more. The water cart served the sick. No coin was demanded from those unable to pay. The lower bend was never used.”

The messenger stared at him.

William stepped closer.

“Can you remember that?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good. You remembered so much upstairs.”

Martin dropped his gaze.

“What of the five strangers?” Odo asked.

William looked through the open arches toward the southern road. Beyond the walls, wet fields rolled under a breaking sky. Somewhere past them lay Eldergate, its muddy lane, its frightened peasants, its opened well, and a stone that should have remained buried.

“Bring them,” he said.

“Alive?”

“Renard wishes to hear them.”

Odo waited.

William’s mouth tightened.

“Therefore,” he said, “they must arrive able to speak.”

“And Gault?”

“Gault will remember who placed him where he stands.”

The captain bowed and moved toward the stable stair.

William caught his sleeve.

“One more thing. No talk of wonders. No wild tales. No frightened fool claiming sorcery because a ditch runs downhill and boiled water does not kill him.”

Odo’s scar bent with the edge of a smile. “What tale should be told?”

William looked back toward the closed door above them.

Renard wanted the truth whole.

That was the trouble with good men. They believed truth was a thing that could be carried into a room untouched.

“Tell them what happened,” the sheriff said. “Only make certain it happens in the proper order.”

Below, stable hands led out a fresh horse for Martin. Farther along the stable row, Odo ordered eight more mounts prepared for departure at first light.

Martin mounted with shaking legs and turned toward the gate. The rain had eased, but water still poured from the roofs and rushed through the yard channels. Beyond the walls, the clouds were already gathering themselves again.

By the time Lord Renard’s men reached Eldergate, the truth would be waiting for them.

Properly dressed.

The first thing Gray noticed when he woke was that his left boot was wet.

The second thing he noticed was that he was still wearing it.

He opened his eyes slowly.

A thin bar of morning sunlight had found its way through the shelter roof and lay across the packed earth beside his face. Somewhere above him, water gathered beneath a layer of moss, followed a branch, and dropped with careful precision onto the side of his boot.

Drip.

Gray stared at it.

Drip.

He turned his head.

Kaelex lay on his back two feet away, one arm thrown across his face and one knee bent because there was not enough room to stretch both legs. Camden had somehow twisted himself half beneath a folded tarp. Teag slept curled near the woven wall with his jacket rolled under his head.

Rylan was missing.

Gray lifted his head.

The movement reminded every muscle in his back that he had spent most of the previous day moving stone, digging trenches, lifting buckets, and arguing with frightened villagers.

He lowered his head again.

Drip.

“Ry,” he called.

No answer.

Kaelex spoke from beneath his arm. “he better be finding, roasting and brewing coffee.”

“You’re awake?”

“No.”

“You answered.”

“That djust means im not sleeping. I’ve been not sleeping most of the night”

Gray sat up carefully. His shoulder bumped the underside of the sloped roof. A shower of dry leaf pieces fell into his hair.

The shelter had looked better the day they built it.

At the time, it had seemed clever. Woven walls. Mud chinking. Bark and moss over a branch roof. A hidden passage into the trailer. The truck and trailer buried beneath enough brush to make them look like part of the hillside.

After several nights of men sleeping inside it, the truth had become harder to ignore.

The floor was damp.

The roof leaked.

The walls breathed cold air through every place the mud had cracked.

Their food sat in a canvas bag tied to a branch because something had chewed through the corner of the first bag.

The fire pit was too close to the sleeping space and too far from anything that needed warmth.

The narrow passage into the trailer forced Kaelex to turn sideways and still scrape both shoulders.

The only seat was a log that rolled whenever anyone leaned back.

The camp was hidden.

It was not comfortable.

Gray looked toward the entrance.

Rylan appeared carrying two sticks, a flat stone, and the expression of a man who had discovered civilization.

“I found coffee,” he said.

Gray stared at the empty hands.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I found the place where coffee should be.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It is emotionally similar.”

Kaelex lowered his arm. “Did you go to the village?”

“No. I went twenty yards downhill to pee.”

“You were gone fifteen minutes.”

Rylan set the flat stone beside the dead fire. “I walked around.”

“Why?”

“Because I slept with a root in my back.”

Camden’s voice came from beneath the tarp. “I dreamed we were home.”

The shelter quieted.

Camden pushed the tarp off his face and blinked at the roof.

“We just got breakfast,” he continued. “I had a breakfast sandwich and one of those giant iced coffees. Then KK slapped it out of my hand.”

Kaelex frowned. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. Dream you is hateful.”

“If you had a breakfast sandwich and an iced coffees there is absolutely no way I would slap it out of your hand and onto the ground. I’d take it out of your hands, push you onto the ground, sit on you, face up and make you watch me eat it.”

“Yep see real you is also hateful.”

Teag sat up and rubbed his face. “I dreamed Wulf was driving the truck.”

“That’s actually more likely than us getting breakfast sandwiches and coffee,” Camden said.

Gray looked toward the hidden wall where the trailer sat beyond woven branches and packed mud and thought about home.

It’s been four days since they were ripped from their home. Their warm dry beds. Hot showers. Cold drinks. Mom calling to ask where they were. Dad asking what work they had lined up for tomorrow and if they had all the supplies ready.

Now it meant a mud floor and mossy roof that leaked dew on one boot through the night.

He pushed himself to his feet.

His knees cracked.

Rylan looked at him. “You sound old.”

“I feel old.”

“You’re twenty-two.”

“I’ve aged.”

Kaelex sat up. “What time is it?”

Camden reached for his phone, checked it, then checked again.

“According to this, it is eleven forty-three at night on January nineteenth, nineteen seventy.”

“Useless,” Kaelex said.

“Battery is at sixty-eight percent.”

“Less uselss.”

Teag crawled toward the entrance and pulled aside the hanging brush.

Sunlight filled the opening.

Not weak morning light. Bright, clean sunlight.

He stepped outside.

The others followed one at a time, straightening backs and rolling shoulders.

The hollow sat beneath a clear blue sky. Leaves shone where morning dew still clung to them. Birds called from the higher branches. Warm air moved through the trees with the smell of earth, growing things, and distant woodsmoke from Eldergate.

Beyond the upper edge of the hollow, the sky changed.

Far to the north, dark clouds rose in a heavy wall. They covered the distant horizon from east to west, black beneath and silver along the top where the sun struck them.

Lightning flickered inside the clouds.

Several seconds later, thunder rolled so faintly it might have been a cart crossing a bridge.

Teag stared.

“That is a big storm.”

“Not here,” Rylan said.

“Yet,” Gray answered.

Camden stepped beside them. “Could be thirty, forty miles away. Maybe more.”

Kaelex looked at him. “You eyeballing that?”

Camden pointed toward Teag. “Ask the surveyor.”

Teag studied the clouds. “At least two hundred yards.”

Kaelex nodded. “Definitely.”

Teag gave him a shove.

Gray watched the storm for another moment.

Someone had ridden from Eldergate the previous evening.

If the manor lay beneath those clouds, the rider was having a terrible morning.

That was fine with Gray.

He hoped every road between Gault and whoever controlled him had washed into a river.

Behind him, Rylan stepped back into the shelter.

A moment later, they heard a commotion.

Then Rylan swore.

Gray turned.

Rylan emerged holding the log they had been using as a seat.

“This,” he said, “has tried to kill me for the last time.”

He threw it into the clearing.

The log hit the ground, rolled downhill, struck a tree, and stopped.

Camden pointed at it. “I think its laughing at you, Ry.”

Gray looked at the shelter.

Then he looked at his brothers.

“We’re fixing this.”

Kaelex nodded immediately.

Camden looked back toward the dark clouds. “Fixing the camp or reality?”

“The camp.”

“That feels more achievable.”

Gray walked to the entrance and pointed inside.

“No one sleeps on the ground tonight.”

Rylan raised a hand. “I support this campaign.”

“We need dry storage. Better roof drainage. A place for food where animals can’t get it. A better fire setup. Somewhere to wash without pouring water over our boots.”

“A shower,” Camden said.

Gray looked at him.

“I said somewhere to wash.”

“That is the definition of a shower.”

“No generator running all day. No wasting fuel. No power tools unless we have a reason.”

Rylan leaned toward Teag. “He’s about to make a list.”

Gray pointed at him. “Sleeping platforms.”

Rylan nodded.

“Storage.”

Kaelex nodded.

“Water.”

Kaelex nodded harder.

“Generator cover.”

Camden lifted both hands. “Yes.”

“Warning lines around the outer paths.”

Teag straightened. “I’ll do those.”

“Roof and smoke.”

Rylan rubbed his hands together. “Now this is a job.”

Gray looked at him. “You complained about working yesterday.”

“That was village work.”

“What’s the difference?”

“This is for us.”

“That makes it harder,” Kaelex said. “Ry’s the worst customer we’ve ever had.”

Rylan looked offended. “I have reasonable standards.”

“You once made me move a bathroom vent because you didn’t like where it looked from the yard.”

“It was ugly.”

“It was a pipe.”

“It was an ugly pipe.”

Gray stepped between them.

“We use what we can replace first. Wood. Rope. Clay. Stone. Save screws and modern lumber unless it matters.”

Camden looked toward the trailer. “What about batteries?”

“We inventory before we charge anything.”

“What about the speaker?”

“No.”

“I didn’t ask anything.”

“You were going to.”

Camden considered denying it.

Then nodded. “Fair.”

Within twenty minutes, the hollow became a job site.

The change settled something in all five brothers.

They had spent days reacting.

Hide the truck.

Avoid the men with spears.

Find food.

Inspect the well.

Save Wulf.

Stop Gault.

For the first time since arriving, they were building something because they wanted it.

Not just shelter.

A place to live.

Gray marked the work areas with sticks pressed into the ground. Rylan and Kaelex argued over the sleeping-platform height. Camden emptied three trailer bins and began sorting fasteners, batteries, cords, and fittings. Teag moved through the woods choosing trees for lookout positions and tracing the paths most likely to be used by anyone approaching the hollow.

Rylan stood inside the shelter with his hands on his hips.

“We can fit two platforms along that wall,” he said. “Two men each. One narrower one on the end.”

Teag looked through the entrance. “Why do I get the narrow one?”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“You looked at me.”

“You’re narrow.”

“I’m not sleeping in a shelf.”

“It’s a platform.”

“It’s a shelf if I’m the only thing that fits on it.”

Kaelex ducked into the shelter carrying two straight poles.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “Cam gets the floor.”

Camden called from the trailer, “I heard that.”

“Good.”

Gray crouched and measured the interior using one of the pieces of knotted cord they had begun using publicly around villagers.

The cord had marks at regular intervals. To anyone else, it looked like a craftsman’s measuring rope.

The actual dimensions had been set the day before using a tape measure.

“We can get two bunks on each side if they overlap at the feet,” Gray said. “Fifth one across the back.”

Rylan studied the space.

“Stagger them.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No. You said overlap.”

“That is staggered.”

“Not technically.”

Kaelex shoved one of the poles into Rylan’s hands. “Technically carry this.”

They began with upright posts set into shallow holes and packed with stone. Crosspieces were lashed with rope, then reinforced with wooden pegs.

Rylan cut the joints by hand where anyone might later see them.

The hidden connections were another matter.

Once the visible frame was assembled, he marked several places beneath the sleeping surfaces where a few modern screws would prevent movement. The screw heads would be covered by wood plugs and packed clay.

Gray watched him select ten screws.

“Ten.”

“I know.”

“Not twelve.”

“I can count.”

“You use screws like Cam uses zip ties.”

From the trailer, Camden called, “Zip ties are one of mankind’s greatest inventions.”

Kaelex answered, “You put one on a bread bag.”

“It worked.”

Rylan held up the screws. “Ten. That’s it.”

Gray nodded.

Modern materials had already begun to feel different.

Back home, screws came by the bucket.

Here, each one was a resource that could not be replaced.

A box of deck screws was no longer a box.

It was irreplaceable treasure.

Each one used needed to be necessary.

Rylan slipped the screws into his pocket.

Kaelex and Teag cut thin, flexible branches and wove them between the bunk frames. Over those they stretched rope in crossing patterns.

Teag pressed both hands against the first sleeping surface.

It flexed and returned.

“This will actually be comfortable.”

Rylan nodded. “More comfortable than dirt.”

“That’s not a high standard.”

“You were complaining about a shelf twenty minutes ago.”

“I will admit a shelf is better than dirt.”

Kaelex lifted the edge of the woven platform and tested it with one hand.

“We need a center support.”

“It’ll hold,” Rylan said.

Kaelex looked at him.

Rylan sighed. “For you, yes we need a center support.”

Across the clearing, Camden had reached the generator.

He stood over it with Gray, both studying the ground behind the trailer.

The generator could not remain in the trailer while running. Heat and exhaust would kill them faster than any medieval soldier.

They also could not fire it up in the open. The engine would scream and the foreign noise would travel for miles.

Gray pointed toward a shallow depression between the trailer and a thick bank of earth.

“Here.”

Camden nodded. “Three-sided enclosure. Open away from camp and away from the village. Dirt and logs around it. Angled air path so the sound doesn’t travel straight out.”

“Roof high enough for heat.”

“Nothing packed tight around the exhaust.”

“Right.”

“We could line the outer wall with those old moving blankets.”

“Not near anything hot.”

“I know.”

Gray looked at him.

Camden looked back. “I’m not an idiot.”

They moved the generator into position using two planks as a ramp and the come-along anchored to a tree. Kaelex joined them long enough to guide the weight, then returned to the sleeping platforms.

The enclosure was ugly.

That was part of the goal.

Logs formed the outer walls. Earth was packed between them. Stones supported a high bark roof that kept rain off while leaving large gaps for cooling air. The open side faced a thick rise of ground rather than the village.

Inside the enclosure, Camden built two offset wooden baffles that did not block airflow but prevented a direct line for sound to escape.

Gray stepped back.

“Will it work?”

Camden shrugged. “It’ll help.”

“How much?”

“We won’t know until we start it.”

“That is not comforting.”

“I can lie if you prefer.”

“No.”

Camden looked toward the shelter. “Ry would.”

Rylan shouted from inside, “I heard that.”

“You were supposed to.”

Teag returned from the upper woods.

“I walked the outside path. No one there. I set three warning lines.”

“What kind?” Gray asked.

“Cord low between trees. One has pebbles in a wooden cup. One pulls two dry sticks together. Third one drops a rock onto a flat stone.”

“Could animals trip them?”

“Yes.”

“Then how do we know the difference?”

“The first two are low enough for animals. Third is waist high.”

Kaelex stepped out of the shelter. “A deer can hit waist high.”

“Not your waist.”

Kaelex looked at him.

Teag smiled. “Your waist is deer-head high.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well I’m head of security right now and that’s what we got.”

Gray pointed toward the northern rise. “Before we start the generator, you go there. Phone connected. Message if you see smoke, people, horses, anything.”

Teag nodded.

“No exploring.”

“I know.”

“No following tracks.”

“I know.”

“No rabbits.”

Teag frowned. “Why rabbits?”

“No reason. Just no rabbits.”

Teag slipped his phone beneath his tunic and left through the concealed upper path.

Gray waited until the small circle beside Teag’s name showed connected on the local chat.

TEAG: In position.

Camden rolled a heavy extension cord from the generator through the hidden passage into the trailer.

The brothers gathered near the shelter.

Gray looked at each of them.

“One run. Cut everything we need. Charge the batteries. Fifteen minutes if we can.”

“Twenty,” Camden said.

“Fifteen.”

“The chargers need—”

“Eighteen.”

“Deal.”

Kaelex looked toward the village. “This is a bad idea.”

“Yes,” Gray said.

Rylan picked up the circular saw. “Make it fast.”

Camden crouched beside the generator.

“Ready?”

No one answered immediately.

For days, they had treated the machines as if the world itself might hear them.

Camden pulled the starter.

The generator turned once and stopped.

He pulled again.

The engine caught.

The sound filled the hollow.

Even inside the enclosure, even behind the earth and logs, it seemed impossibly loud.

All five brothers froze.

Back home, the noise would have disappeared beneath traffic, mowers, air conditioners, trucks, and distant machinery.

Here, it was a mechanical animal waking in a world of axes and wagon wheels.

Camden listened.

The baffles softened the sharpest part of the exhaust note. The earth bank absorbed some of the rest. Beyond the hollow, the sound became a low, steady growl.

Still unnatural.

Still dangerous.

Gray looked at his phone.

No message from Teag.

“Move.”

The next eighteen minutes became the fastest work they had done since arriving.

Rylan cut boards and poles for hidden supports.

Kaelex drilled holes for wooden pins and a frame for a water bowl.

Camden connected the chargers, checked each battery, and prepared a small length of wire for the camp alarm.

Gray watched the time, and made certain no one added “one more thing” to the list.

Rylan added one more thing.

Gray caught him cutting a short board with a curved end.

“What is that?”

“Nothing.”

“It is clearly something.”

“A seat.”

“We have a log.”

“The log is a murderer.”

“You’re wasting battery.”

“It took nine seconds.”

“Who is the seat for?”

Rylan looked insulted. “People.”

“Which people?”

“Any people.”

Kaelex glanced at the curved board. “He’s making Olivia a bench.”

“I am making the camp a bench.”

“Does the camp have brown hair?”

Rylan pointed the saw at him. “Finish your holes.”

Camden looked up from the chargers. “Can we carve her name in it?”

“No.”

“Blue flower on the side?”

“No.”

Gray checked the time. “Two minutes.”

Rylan made the final cut.

Camden disconnected the tools. The generator ran another thirty seconds while he checked the battery indicators.

Then he shut it down.

Silence dropped into the hollow so quickly it felt physical.

The brothers listened.

Birdsong returned slowly.

Wind moved through the leaves.

Far away, thunder rolled beneath a cloud bank that remained nowhere near them.

Gray looked at his phone.

TEAG: Heard it. Much quieter from ridge. No people.

Gray breathed again.

GRAY: Return.

Camden rested one hand on the generator enclosure.

“That worked better than I expected.”

Kaelex came over and studied it. “Still too loud.”

“I said better. Not perfect.”

“We only run it when we have to,” Gray said.

Camden looked at the battery chargers.

“We’re going to have to.”

“Then we make every run count.”

By midday, the sleeping platforms were finished.

They covered the woven frames with folded moving blankets and rough wool cloth hidden beneath layers of local straw and dried grass. To anyone entering the shelter, the beds looked primitive.

They were primitive.

They were also dry, raised, slightly flexible, and better than anything the brothers had slept on since they arrived.

Teag climbed onto the narrow rear platform.

He stretched out fully.

His heels did not hang over the end.

He looked toward Rylan.

“This is acceptable.”

Rylan bowed. “Glad you like it.”

Camden dropped onto the lower platform beside Kaelex.

The ropes groaned.

Kaelex looked at him. “Get off.”

“You don’t own it.”

“It’s my bed.”

“Beds have been assigned?”

“They are now.”

Camden rolled onto his back and folded his hands behind his head.

“This is luxurious.”

Kaelex grabbed him by one ankle and pulled.

Camden slid off the bed and landed on the floor.

“Still better than sleeping there,” he said.

Outside, Gray and KK began the water station.

KK had built more complicated plumbing systems in crawl spaces barely large enough to turn his head. The camp system did not require copper, PEX, pumps, pressure tanks, electricity, or anything else they could not openly explain.

It required height.

Rylan and Teag began assembling the container: four plank sides Ry had cut earlier, fitted around a wooden bottom and reinforced with narrow strips at the corners. The joints were tight enough for a grain box, but they would never have held water on their own.

For that, Gray cut a piece from a roll of heavy plastic they had used to protect floors during a painting job two months earlier. They pressed it carefully into the container, folding it into the corners and leaving enough around the top to secure beneath a wooden rim. Once the rim and loose-fitting lid were in place, none of the plastic could be seen.

They lifted the covered container onto a stout frame near the shelter wall.

A short piece of modern tubing passed through the bottom. KK concealed it inside a split length of reed and hollowed wood before ending it in a small wooden spout above a shallow stone basin.

The visible valve was a wooden plug connected by cord to a foot lever.

Step down.

The plug lifted.

Water flowed.

Release.

The plug dropped back into place.

All they needed now was water to put in it.

Teag disappeared into the trailer and returned carrying an old five-gallon bucket KK had used for collecting scrap copper.

Kaelex looked at it. “Nobody can see that.”

“I know.”

Teag carried the bucket to the edge of the clearing and began wrapping thin green saplings around it. He bent them from the bottom to the rim, then wove smaller branches between them until most of the plastic disappeared behind a crooked wooden shell.

When he finished, it looked like a terribly made basket that should have leaked faster than anyone could fill it.

Kaelex studied it.

“That is awful.”

“It holds water.”

“It looks diseased.”

“From a distance, nobody’s going to question it.”

“From a distance, it looks worse.”

Teag lifted it by the handle proud as could be. Only a few narrow glimpses of the plastic showed between the woven branches. He would just have to smash mud in the gaps when he got to the creek.

Gray pointed toward the upper path. “Fill it before you start admiring it.”

The creek crossed the woods uphill from Eldergate, before the water passed anywhere near the village runoff that had fouled the well. It was clean enough for washing hands, clothes, tools, and anything else that did not go into their mouths.

They would still boil every drop used for drinking or cooking. None of them intended to survive being dragged through time only to die from something a fire could prevent.

Teag made several trips while the others finished the frame. Each time, he returned carrying the disguised bucket in one hand and complaining about how water had somehow become heavier since the last trip.

When the container was full, Kaelex tested the lever.

Water poured over his hands.

He released it.

The stream stopped.

Rylan watched.

“That is going to impress people.”

“It’s a plug on a string.”

“It is a plug on a string that knows when your foot moves.”

“It does not know anything.”

Camden stepped on the lever.

Water flowed.

He lifted his foot.

It stopped.

He stepped again.

Water flowed.

Kaelex looked at him. “Are you five?”

“This is satisfying.”

“It also saves water,” Gray said. “Nobody leaves it running while washing.”

Camden looked down at the wooden lever. “We invented the medieval touchless faucet.”

“We did not invent anything,” KK said. “People understand levers.”

“Do they have foot-operated sinks?”

“They could.”

“But do they?”

Kaelex did not answer.

Rylan smiled. “That means no.”

KK pointed at him. “It means people have more important problems than whether they have to pull a plug with their hand.”

“That is what makes comfort luxury.”

Camden returned to the trailer and came back carrying a half-used jug of Fast Orange hand cleaner.

Rylan looked at the bright plastic container. “You planning to leave that sitting there?”

“No.” Camden set it beside the basin. “But KK gets first use before we hide it.”

Kaelex looked at the black grease still worked into the lines of his hands, picked up the jug, and twisted the cap open.

“Best idea anybody’s had all day.”

They later poured some of the cleaner into a small covered wood pot Camden hastily whittled, leaving the labeled plastic jug hidden inside the trailer. The sharp citrus smell could not be disguised, but clean hands around here might be more out of place than the smell anyway.

Rylan carried his newly cut bench pieces toward the edge of the clearing.

Gray watched him.

“Where are you putting that?”

“Near the water station.”

“Why?”

“So people can sit.”

“People washing their hands?”

“People waiting.”

“For what?”

Rylan looked toward the path Olivia had taken the previous morning.

Then he looked back at Gray.

“For water.”

Gray stared at him.

Rylan stared back.

Gray let it go.

The food cabinet came next.

They built a narrow wooden box with woven sides for airflow and a tight lower panel. It hung from a crossbeam by two ropes, high enough to keep food away from mice and low enough to reach using a simple pull line.

Kaelex loaded the remaining bread, cheese, onions, and dried food inside.

Camden looked up at it.

“How much weight does that hold?”

“Enough,” Kaelex said.

“What if somebody climbed the rope?”

“Why would somebody climb the rope?”

“No reason.”

“Cam.”

“No climbing the food.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Everyone looked at him.

“Fine. I was thinking about it.”

Kaelex tied it high enough so it was just out of Camden’s reach.

Camden chucked the stick he was fidgeting with at him, “Hey.”

Kaelex smirked and walked away.

A few minutes later they stopped to eat beneath the afternoon sun.

The brothers sat on logs, stones, and Rylan’s unfinished bench while sharing bread, cheese, and the last of something wrapped in leaves that none of them could identify but Kaelex ate anyway.

“How many screws did you use, Rylan?” Gray asked.

“Six.”

“And the rest?”

“I threw them back in the bucket.”

“How many?”

“Well, I reckon four, Gray. I didn’t even need to take off a boot for that one.”

Gray leaned back against a tree. “Do you reckon, or do you know?”

Rylan grinned. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to get screwed by a screw.”

Gray held his gaze for another moment, then shook his head.

The brothers relaxed.

The camp had improved.

The shelter no longer looked like a pile of branches built around panic. The roofline had been extended and layered. A shallow trench now directed water around the sleeping area. The new beds waited inside. The generator sat hidden behind its earthen wall. The water station stood beneath the trees. Food hung safely overhead.

None of it was impossible.

Everything could have been built by people of this time.

They had wood.

Rope.

Stone.

Clay.

Leather.

Iron.

Human hands.

What they lacked was not intelligence.

It was the collected memory of every person who had solved the same problem during the next nine hundred years.

The brothers did not have to discover the principles.

They had arrived already knowing them.

Kaelex understood pressure and drainage because millions of people had learned from poisoned wells, failed pipes, frozen lines, broken pumps, flooded basements, and designs that did not work.

Rylan understood structure because generations of builders had tested joints, spans, loads, fasteners, and materials.

Camden understood power, wiring, and machines because entire industries had made the invisible force predictable.

Gray understood how all those parts fit together.

Even Teag had grown up surrounded by tools, measurements, diagrams, engines, weather reports, construction videos, and four older brothers who would explain things whether he asked or not, usually by yelling.

The villagers were not primitive.

Their world was simply unfinished.

Rylan tossed a piece of crust toward Camden.

Camden caught it and ate it.

“You realize,” Rylan said, “that this is the first lunch we’ve had at our new house.”

Kaelex looked around. “This is not a house.”

“It has beds.”

“So does a jail.”

“It has running water.”

“Again so does a jail”

Gray closed his eyes.

Teag looked toward the northern horizon.

The storm clouds had grown darker.

Sun still warmed the hollow, but the far sky looked like evening.

“You think that rider made it?” he asked.

No one needed to ask which rider.

Gray opened his eyes.

“I hope not.”

Rylan looked toward the village. “Someone else will come.”

“Eventually,” Gray said.

“When?”

“No idea.”

Camden held up his phone. “Merlin says a mounted messenger on medieval roads could travel—”

“Merlin doesn’t know these roads,” Kaelex said.

“Merlin provides estimates.”

“Merlin thought we were in a fictional scenario.”

“Technically still possible.”

Teag stood.

A faint wooden clack came from the upper path.

Every brother moved.

Kaelex’s hand went beneath his tunic toward the concealed pistol.

Gray held up one fist.

Wait.

Another clack.

Two sticks knocking together.

The low warning line.

Teag listened.

“No rock.”

Animal or someone stepping carefully.

A moment later, Wulf’s face appeared between the trees.

He crouched when he saw all five men staring at him.

Then Olivia stepped onto the path behind him.

She looked at the brothers.

Then at Kaelex’s hand beneath his tunic.

Kaelex slowly removed it.

Wulf pointed behind himself and spoke rapidly to Teag.

Teag understood enough to look annoyed.

“He saw the cord.”

Gray looked at Wulf. “How?”

Wulf pointed to the ground and mimed stepping over something.

Teag walked to the warning line and found it lifted gently over a small branch.

Wulf had spotted it before touching it.

Teag stared at him.

Wulf smiled.

“Okay,” Teagan said. “That’s actually good.”

Olivia entered the hollow carrying a basket.

She stopped after three steps.

Her gaze moved slowly across the camp.

The sleeping shelter.

The raised roof.

The water station.

The hanging food box.

The generator enclosure disguised beneath mud, bark, and logs.

The bench beside the water basin.

Then she looked at Rylan.

“When?” she asked.

Rylan spread his arms. “Today.”

Olivia’s eyes narrowed.

“Today?”

“Most of it.”

She looked toward the shelter again.

The previous evening, the camp had been a low, cramped mound beside the hidden metal walls she still did not understand.

Now the entry had a proper overhang. The wet ground had been trenched. The outer wall stood straighter. A woven screen concealed the passage deeper inside.

Wulf forgot caution first.

He ran to the water station.

Kaelex moved quickly enough to catch him before he climbed the frame.

“No.”

Wulf looked at him.

KK demonstrated the foot lever.

He pressed it.

Water flowed.

Wulf’s mouth opened.

Kaelex lifted his foot.

The water stopped.

Wulf stared at the spout.

He looked beneath the basin.

Then behind the frame.

Then at KK.

Kaelex pressed the lever again.

Water flowed.

Wulf stepped forward carefully and put his foot where KK’s had been.

The wooden lever lowered.

Water spilled over Wulf’s bare toes because his hands were not under the spout.

He jumped back.

Camden laughed.

Wulf glared at the water as though it had betrayed him.

Kaelex guided his hands beneath the spout and helped him press the lever again.

Wulf washed.

He released his foot.

The water stopped.

His face lit.

He pressed again.

Water flowed.

Released.

Stopped.

Pressed.

Flowed.

Kaelex looked at Gray. “This was a mistake.”

Wulf began laughing.

Olivia watched from the edge of the clearing.

Her expression softened despite herself.

Rylan came to stand beside her.

“Useful,” he said.

She glanced at him. “Wulf will empty it before sunset.”

“He’ll have fun doing it”

“You built a toy that gives water.”

“KK built it.”

“Then why do you look proud?”

“I supervised.”

Across the clearing, Kaelex said, “No, you didn’t.”

Rylan lowered his voice. “I provided morale.”

“Nope”

Olivia handed him the basket.

He took it.

“What did you bring?”

“Food.”

“I was hoping for gold.”

“You have mud.”

“I have a lot of mud.”

“Then you are wealthy.”

Rylan looked at her.

Olivia’s mouth moved at one corner.

Not quite a smile.

Closer than before.

He opened the basket. Bread, dried apples, two small pieces of smoked meat, and several folded cloths sat inside.

Rylan lifted one cloth.

“For the shelter?”

“For your wounds.”

He looked at his hands.

Cuts crossed his knuckles. One palm had blistered beneath a torn place in the glove he had tried not to let villagers see.

“They’re not wounds.”

Olivia took his hand before he could pull it away.

She turned it palm up.

Rylan forgot the basket.

Her hands were softer than he expected. Her thumb brushed the broken blister in his palm.

“This,” she said, “is a wound.”

“It is barely an inconvenience.”

“You make many words for a man who says little true.”

The words were simple.

The meaning was not.

Rylan met her eyes.

Olivia released his hand and took the cloth from him.

“Sit.”

Rylan looked toward the bench.

Olivia followed his gaze.

She studied the curved seat, the fitted legs, and the back angled just enough to make it comfortable.

“This was here yesterday?”

“No.”

“You made it today?”

“Maybe.”

“For washing?”

“Waiting.”

“For water?”

“Exactly.”

Olivia looked at the water station, where Wulf was still stepping on the lever while Kaelex tried to explain conservation.

Then she looked back at Rylan.

“You expect many people to wait here?”

“A good craftsman plans ahead.”

She sat.

The bench held her at exactly the right height.

Rylan remained standing.

Olivia patted the space beside her.

“Sit.”

He sat.

“Give me your hand”

She wrapped the cloth around his palm with practiced movements.

Rylan watched her work.

“You know,” he said, “where I come from, a woman tending a man’s wounds means she likes him.”

Olivia pulled the cloth tight.

Pain shot through his hand.

He winced.

“Where I come from,” she said, “it means the man was foolish.”

Camden walked past carrying a coil of rope.

“That translates perfectly.”

Rylan looked over his shoulder. “Keep walking.”

Camden kept walking.

Slower than necessary.

Olivia tied the cloth.

Rylan flexed his fingers.

“It’s good.”

“I know.”

“Confident.”

“I have wrapped many cuts.”

“Many handsome men?”

She stood.

“No.”

Rylan looked up at her.

Olivia took the basket from him and carried it toward the shelter.

He smiled to himself.

Then she looked back.

“Most were children.”

Camden made a choking sound from across the clearing.

Rylan pointed at him with his wrapped hand. “I will throw you in the creek.”

Olivia entered the shelter before he could see whether she was smiling.

Inside, she stopped again.

The raised sleeping platforms changed the space more than anything outside had.

Yesterday, the brothers had slept on damp earth beneath rough cloth.

Today, five beds filled the walls in a tight but orderly pattern. Blankets lay over woven supports. Supplies rested beneath them. A small shelf held bowls, knives, and folded cloth. The roof above had been reinforced so the central space was high enough to sit upright.

Olivia pressed one hand against the nearest platform.

It flexed.

She pressed again.

Rylan entered behind her.

“Bed,” he said.

“I know a bed.”

“Of course.”

She sat on the edge.

The rope surface shifted gently beneath her weight.

Olivia stood at once.

Rylan laughed.

“It moves.”

“It gives.”

“It is loose.”

“It is comfortable.”

“A bed should not move.”

“People move.”

“Not sleeping.”

“You’ve never slept with Teag.”

From outside, Teagan said, “I can hear you.”

Rylan leaned closer to Olivia. “Kicks all night long.”

“I do not.”

“Do to.”

Olivia sat again, more carefully.

The platform settled beneath her.

She tested it with both hands.

“How?”

“Branches. Rope. Weight spread across the frame.”

Her gaze followed the woven pattern.

“This would take many days.”

“With enough hands, less.”

“How many days?”

Rylan hesitated.

That was all she needed.

Olivia looked toward the fitted joints.

The wooden pegs were clean and even. The poles had been cut square beneath the places where bark had been rubbed back over them. The holes were round and consistent.

Too consistent.

Her eyes moved to him.

“You made all this today.”

“We work quickly.”

“You sleep little?”

“Lately.”

“Five men cut, carried, shaped, bored, fitted, and tied all this since sunrise?”

“We’re good.”

“You are very good.”

Rylan smiled. “Thank you.”

Olivia did not smile back.

She ran one finger along the underside of the platform.

Rylan’s smile weakened.

Her finger stopped near one of the hidden screws.

He had covered the head with a shallow wood plug and darkened it with mud.

The plug had shifted.

Only slightly.

A thin edge of black metal showed beneath it.

Olivia touched it.

Rylan reached past her and pressed the plug back into place.

“Rough spot,” he said.

She looked at his hand.

Then at his face.

“Rough.”

“Very.”

Behind them, Wulf shouted with excitement.

A rope moved through the roof frame.

The hanging food cabinet descended slowly into the center of the shelter.

Wulf stood outside pulling the line while Camden guided it.

Olivia turned.

The box stopped at shoulder height.

Camden opened it, placed the new bread and meat inside, closed the door, then pulled the other side of the rope.

The cabinet rose neatly into the overhead shadows.

Wulf stared upward.

Olivia stepped out of the shelter.

Camden demonstrated again.

The box descended.

Rose.

Descended.

Rose.

Wulf grabbed the rope.

Camden caught it before he could release the cabinet onto Kaelex’s head.

“Rules,” Camden said.

Wulf did not understand the word.

He understood Camden’s expression.

Olivia watched the rope pass over a wooden wheel fitted into the upper beam.

She stepped closer.

The wheel turned smoothly around a straight wooden pin.

A clay weight hidden behind the wall balanced part of the food box’s load.

Camden needed only a small pull to raise it.

Olivia examined the system without touching it.

“Who taught you this?” she asked.

Camden pointed at Kaelex.

“Not me,” Kaelex said.

Camden pointed at Gray.

Gray shook his head.

Camden pointed at Rylan.

Rylan looked offended. “Why me?”

Camden finally pointed at himself.

Olivia looked from one brother to the next.

“Who taught all of you?”

The question settled over the clearing.

Gray answered.

“Our family.”

It was true.

Not complete.

But true.

Olivia studied him.

Gray held her gaze without trying to charm her.

She looked toward the water station, the bunks, the food lift, the drainage trench, and the concealed entrance.

“Your family had such things?”

“Some,” Gray said.

“Where?”

“The western mountains,” Rylan answered.

Too quickly.

Olivia looked at him.

“Far west,” he added.

“Yes,” she said. “Always farther west.”

Rylan’s mouth closed.

Teag returned from the upper path with an armload of reeds and saved him from answering.

“Found good straight ones near the creek.”

KK took the reeds.

“For what?” Olivia asked.

Kaelex pointed to the fire area.

The old fire pit had been dug into the center of the shelter, where smoke escaped wherever it could and settled everywhere it could not.

KK and Gray had moved it to the outer wall.

A low stone chamber held the fire. Clay sealed the joints. A narrow passage carried heat beneath a stone-and-earth bench before rising through a concealed flue woven into the wall and disguised by bark above the roofline.

It was not complete.

But the principle was visible.

Olivia crouched beside the stone chamber.

“Fire goes here?”

“Yes,” Kaelex said.

She followed the covered path beneath the bench.

“Smoke?”

He pointed along the channel, then upward.

“Out.”

She placed her hand on the bench.

“Warm,” KK said.

Olivia looked at him.

Kaelex pointed to the fire chamber, then traced the path beneath the bench.

“Heat stays. Smoke leaves.”

Understanding entered her face slowly.

“You make the seat warm.”

“Yes.”

Rylan stepped beside her. “That one was my idea.”

Kaelex stared at him.

“It was not.”

“I supported it.”

“You said, ‘Can we make the chair hot?’”

“That is the same basic idea.”

“It is not.”

Olivia looked at Rylan. “You wanted a hot chair?”

“I believe in comfort.”

“You slept in mud.”

“And learned from it.”

She shook her head.

Then she smiled.

A real smile.

It changed her.

The tiredness remained. The shadows beneath her eyes did not disappear. Her patched clothes did not become finer. The hard life waiting in the village did not soften.

But for a moment, Olivia looked like the beautiful young women she was without the burdens of her life.

Rylan stared.

She noticed.

Her smile narrowed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You are looking.”

“I do that.”

“At everyone?”

“Not like that.”

The answer left his mouth before caution could stop it.

Olivia held his gaze.

The clearing seemed quieter.

Then Camden lowered the food cabinet too quickly.

The box struck him on the shoulder.

He yelped.

The moment broke.

Kaelex said “How did you manage to hit yourself?”

“I was improving the brake system.”

“There is no brake system.”

“That is why it needs improving.”

Wulf laughed so hard he had to sit down.

Olivia looked away from Rylan, but the smile remained.

They spent the next hour showing her only what could safely be shown.

The foot-operated water plug.

The counterweighted food lift.

The sleeping platforms.

The warm bench that would work once the clay dried.

The warning lines and how to safely get past the ones Wulf hadn’t seen yet.

The shallow drainage channel around the shelter.

Each device depended on simple things.

Height.

Weight.

Balance.

Leverage.

Airflow.

Water finding the lowest path.

Heat rising.

A pull becoming easier when carried over a wheel.

Olivia understood each principle once it was shown.

That made her suspicion worse.

These were not tricks.

They were not charms.

Nothing about them required a prayer, spell, or saint.

That meant someone had taught the brothers.

Someone had shown them ideas no one in Eldergate had seen.

And Rylan would not say who.

Wulf helped Teag reset the warning line he had found.

Teag showed him how the cord pulled the wooden cup and spilled stones onto a flat slab.

Wulf tested it once.

Clatter.

He tested it again.

Clatter.

Then he crawled beneath the cord without touching it.

Teag watched him.

“You’re going to be a problem.”

Wulf grinned.

Gray began covering the most modern-looking cuts around the camp with bark strips, wood plugs, and rough clay.

Olivia noticed that too.

She did not ask why craftsmen would hide the quality of their own work.

Rylan walked her toward the lower path as the afternoon began to soften.

Wulf remained behind for another minute, helping Teag arrange pebbles in the warning cup.

The northern storm clouds had spread wider.

They stood like mountains beyond the real hills, dark and distant.

Sunlight still warmed the woods.

Olivia paused where the path opened enough to see the sky.

“Rain at the lord’s hall,” she said.

“You know?”

She pointed north. “Storms gather beyond the chalk road. When clouds stand there, the upper lands flood.”

“How far is the manor?”

She considered the question.

“A hard day with one horse. Longer with men and wagons.”

Rylan looked at the clouds.

That was better than he had feared.

“Gault’s rider went there?”

“Perhaps.”

“And men would come back?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

Olivia looked at him.

“You ask as a man who wishes to greet them?”

“I ask as a man who prefers notice before armed guests arrive.”

“One day. Two. More if the waters rise.”

Distant lightning moved inside the clouds.

Rylan nodded.

“We have time.”

“Time for what?”

He looked back toward the hidden hollow.

“More comfort.”

Olivia folded her arms.

“You fear armed men, so you build warm seats?”

“A man thinks better when his butt is warm.”

Olivia stared at him.

Rylan kept his face serious.

She laughed once despite herself.

“You speak nonsense.”

“Some of my finest work.”

She stepped closer.

“Your hands do fine work.”

He glanced at the cloth around his palm.

“Your mouth hides it.”

Rylan’s smile faded slightly.

Olivia reached toward his chest.

For one hopeful and very stupid second, he thought she might pull him closer.

Instead, she touched the front of his tunic.

Beneath the rough local cloth, the shape of the modern shirt seam showed near his collar.

Her fingers followed it for less than an inch.

Straight.

Even.

Perfectly repeated.

Not sewn by a village needle in uneven light.

Rylan held still.

Olivia looked up at him.

“Far western mountains,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Robbed of all you carried.”

“Most of it.”

“Yet you build in one morning what village craftsmen would labor days to make.”

“We work together.”

“You bore holes smoother than an auger.”

Rylan said nothing.

“You shape timber without chips beneath it.”

Still nothing.

“You hide metal beneath wood.”

His eyes changed.

Only slightly.

Olivia saw it.

She lowered her hand.

Wulf called from the path behind them.

Olivia stepped back.

She did not look angry.

That would have been easier.

She looked disappointed.

And curious.

A dangerous combination.

“Olivia—”

“You helped Wulf beat the sickness, and gave the village water.”

“We did.”

“You have taken no coin, and you have harmed no one.”

“That’s right.”

She studied him for another long moment.

“Then I will not ask today.”

Relief came too quickly.

Rylan knew she saw that too.

Olivia turned toward Wulf.

Before she left, she looked over her shoulder.

“But tomorrow, Rylan of the western mountains, you will need better lies.”

She walked down the path.

Wulf hurried after her, then turned and waved toward the hollow.

Rylan remained beneath the trees.

Teag came to stand beside him.

“What did she say?”

Rylan watched Olivia disappear.

“She likes the bench.”

Teag waited.

“And?”

“She knows.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“That seems bad.”

“It could be worse.”

“How?”

“She could know everything.”

Teag looked at him.

“She doesn’t,” Rylan added.

“You sure?”

Rylan thought of her finger against the hidden screw plug.

“No.”

They returned to camp.

Gray was inside the shelter arranging supplies beneath the beds. Kaelex knelt beside the unfinished stove. Camden was trying to teach Wulf paper rock scissors.

Gray looked up when Rylan entered.

“How suspicious?”

Rylan stopped.

“What?”

“Olivia.”

“You knew?”

“She has eyes.”

Kaelex spoke without looking away from the clay joint he was smoothing. “She had eyes when you told her five robbed men from the mountains built all this before lunch.”

“I did not tell her that exactly.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That we work quickly.”

Camden winced. “That is weak.”

Rylan pointed at him. “You dropped the food box on yourself.”

“That does not make your tales any stronger.”

Gray came out of the shelter.

“Did she see anything modern?”

“No tools.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Rylan hesitated.

Gray’s expression tightened.

“One screw head. Part of it. The plug moved.”

Kaelex looked at him. “Six screws.”

“I used six.”

“And hid five.”

“I hid all six. One shifted.”

Gray rubbed both hands over his face.

“What did she say?”

“That she won’t ask today.”

Camden looked impressed. “That is more threatening than asking.”

“She said I need better lies tomorrow.”

Teag sat on the new bench.

“I think Ry should tell her the truth.”

The camp went still.

Rylan looked at him.

Gray answered first. “No.”

“She already knows something.”

“She knows we are hiding things,” Gray said. “That is not the same as knowing we came through a glowing hole in a mountain with a truck full of tools.”

“She protected us,” Teag said.

“So far.”

“She stood against Gault.”

“So far.”

“She brought us food and clothes.”

“So far.”

Teag’s jaw tightened.

Gray saw it.

His voice softened.

“I’m not saying she’s our enemy.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying once we tell someone, we can’t take it back.”

Rylan sat beside Teag.

The bench shifted beneath their combined weight but held.

“She won’t accept another mountain story.”

Kaelex stood and wiped clay from his hands.

“Then tell her part of it.”

“What part?” Camden asked. “We’re foreign contractors who lost our paperwork in a solar-powered time tunnel?”

“No.”

“We’re craftsmen from a distant land.”

“That is already the lie.”

“Distant beyond the sea,” Teag said.

“She’ll ask which sea,” Rylan replied.

“Distant beyond several seas.”

Camden nodded. “The farther-west strategy.”

Gray looked toward the trail Olivia had taken.

“We decide together.”

Rylan nodded.

That mattered.

Whatever he felt when Olivia smiled, whatever he wanted to tell her, the secret did not belong only to him.

It belonged to all five.

Their home.

Their family.

Their only advantages.

Their only possible path back.

Gray looked around the improved camp.

“Finish the stove. Check every modern piece we used. Nothing visible.”

The brothers returned to work.

The sun lowered.

The northern clouds swallowed the horizon, but no rain touched Eldergate.

Far away, beneath those clouds, Martin bent low over the neck of a fresh horse while rain struck his face hard enough to blur the road.

The animal stumbled through water that ran ankle-deep between the ruts.

Behind him, the manor had disappeared inside the storm before he had ridden half a mile.

Ahead lay flooded fields, a swollen ford, and a full day’s road to Eldergate if the horse survived.

Martin pulled his cloak tighter.

Sheriff William had told him to ride.

So he rode.

At the manor stables, Sir Odo watched water pour from the roof in sheets.

Eight horses stood saddled beneath the covered yard.

None could safely take the southern road.

A stable master stood beside Odo, shouting to be heard above the storm.

“The lower bridge is covered. The ford beyond Saint Aldhelm’s field is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Or beneath the river. Same result.”

Odo looked toward the gate.

“Unsaddle them,” Odo said.

A man behind him shifted. “The sheriff said we leave today.”

“We leave when the road will carry eight horses.”

“And the messenger?”

Odo watched lightning spread white across the clouds.

“The messenger left before the river broke its bank.”

The first horse was led back into its stall.

Odo touched the scar beside his mouth.

Back in the sunny woods, Olivia waited until Wulf had gone ahead before stopping beneath an oak.

She opened her hand.

A small black object lay in her palm.

She had found it pressed into the moss beside the new sleeping platform.

It was no longer than the smallest joint of her finger.

Straight.

Hard.

Evenly shaped.

One end narrowed to a sharp point. The other spread into a flat round head marked by a perfect crossed cut.

Not a nail.

Not any nail she had seen.

No hammer had shaped it.

No village smith had made lines so exact.

Olivia turned it between her fingers.

Sunlight caught along its dark surface.

Behind her, hidden among the trees, five men from the far western mountains continued building a home that should have taken weeks.

Olivia closed her hand around the screw.

Tomorrow, she would ask again.

And this time, she would not lose herself in Rylan’s eyes or let him smile his way around the truth.

The warning stones fell before sunrise.

They struck one another outside the shelter with three hard clacks.

Gray opened his eyes.

For half a breath, he did not know where he was.

Then something large crashed through the woven entrance, knocked over Rylan’s unfinished bench, and sent the shallow washbasin skidding across the packed earth.

Gray sat up.

A wild boar stood inside the shelter.

It was not the largest boar he had ever seen, but it was large enough.

Coarse black-brown hair rose along its spine. Mud caked its legs and snout. Two pale tusks curved from its lower jaw, neither long enough to impress a hunter nor short enough to ignore. It stood between the entrance and the sleeping platforms, breathing hard and staring at five men who had all awakened at once.

No one moved.

The boar snorted.

Camden slowly lifted his head from the folded cloak he had used as a pillow.

“Oh,” he whispered.

Kaelex was already awake beside the stove, one hand braced against the floor.

“Do not,” Gray said quietly.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I wasn’t talking only to you.”

Across the shelter, Rylan eased one hand toward the knife beside his bed.

Gray saw it.

“Ry.”

Rylan stopped.

The boar took two quick steps sideways.

Its shoulder struck the new water-station frame. The wooden container shifted above them. Water sloshed against its plastic-lined walls.

Teag lay frozen on the highest sleeping shelf, directly above the animal. His blanket had fallen partly over his face, but his eyes were visible and very awake.

Camden looked from the boar to the suspended food cabinet.

Then to Rylan.

Rylan looked back.

The same thought crossed both faces.

Gray knew it before either spoke.

“No.”

Rylan whispered, “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

Camden pointed carefully at the boar. “That is several meals.”

“Probably more than several,” Rylan said.

Kaelex turned his head slowly. “You two are not killing that thing in here.”

“That’s a lot of bacon standing in our kitchen,” Camden said.

Rylan looked at the tusks. “One clean shot.”

Gray stared at him.

Rylan lowered his voice even further. “Or not a shot. Knife behind the shoulder.”

“He will take you for a ride before you get a chance to end him.” Kaelex said.

Rylan considered the distance between himself and the boar.

“Cam suggested it.”

“I suggested food. You added knife fighting.”

The boar lowered its head.

All five brothers went still again.

It scraped one hoof against the packed earth.

Kaelex spoke without looking away from it.

“You shoot or stab that thing in here, it’ll bleed all over the beds, the walls, the food, and everything else we built yesterday.”

“We could drag it outside,” Rylan said.

“After it bleeds out in our bedroom?”

Teag looked down from the shelf.

“This is not my bedroom.”

“The pig is under your bed,” Camden said. “That makes it your bedroom.”

Gray kept his voice calm.

“We get it outside. You and Cam can track it later.”

Rylan looked offended. “After we already had it?”

“You don’t have it. Currently I’d say it has us.”

“Semantics.”

Kaelex shifted one knee beneath himself. “Hunt it in the woods. More sporting that way.”

Rylan looked at Camden. They both smiled in agreement.

“Not as convenient but more fun,” Camden agreed.

The boar jerked its head toward their voices.

Camden stopped talking.

Gray studied the shelter.

The animal had entered through the outer opening after tripping the warning line. The falling stones and the sudden movement inside had frightened it deeper into the shelter. Now the entrance lay behind it, but the overturned bench, washbasin, and a collapsed section of woven wall had made the route narrow and unfamiliar.

The boar could leave the way it had come.

The trick part is to convince it to leave without charging one of them first.

Gray looked toward the concealed passage leading into the trailer.

The boar stood directly across it.

None of them could reach the passage without crossing the animal’s path.

Almost none of them.

Gray raised his eyes.

Teag was already studying the roof supports.

“I can reach the trailer.”

The boar snorted beneath him.

Gray followed the route with his eyes.

Teag’s shelf had been built along the rear wall. From there, he could crawl across the narrow support above Camden’s bed, step onto the beam over Kaelex’s platform, cross the top of the interior partition, and reach the concealed passage without touching the floor.

In theory.

In practice, the route was made of unfinished wood, rope lashings, narrow ledges, and things built to hold evenly distributed weight rather than a climbing spider monkey.

Kaelex followed his eyes.

“He can make it.”

Teag pulled the blanket away and moved onto his knees.

Gray lowered his voice. “Slow.”

“That was the plan.”

“Do not fall.”

“I hadn’t planned on that either.”

Teag crawled to the end of his shelf.

The wood creaked.

The boar’s head snapped upward.

Teag froze with one hand on the roof brace.

For several seconds, the shelter held only the animal’s breathing and the faint drip of water from the overturned basin.

Then Teag moved again.

He stretched one foot across the gap to Camden’s bed platform.

Camden watched him.

“Don’t step on my blanket.”

Teag stared down at him.

“There is a wild pig six feet from your head.”

“It’s my good blanket.”

“It’s not even a blanket, it’s a sweatshirt.”

“Context matters and currently it is being used as a blanket.”

Teag planted his foot on the edge of the platform and transferred his weight.

The board bowed.

The boar shifted.

Gray held one hand low.

Everyone stay still.

Teag grabbed the overhead brace, swung his other leg across, and crouched above Camden.

A loose piece of bark broke free from the roof and fell.

It struck Kaelex on the shoulder.

Kaelex closed his eyes.

Rylan pressed both lips together to keep from laughing.

The boar turned toward the sound.

Kaelex did not move.

The animal sniffed twice, decided he was not a threat, and looked away.

Teag stepped onto the beam over Kaelex’s bed.

“Feet,” Kaelex whispered.

“What?”

“Your feet are filthy.”

Teag stared at him.

“You are worried about mud?”

“I built that bed yesterday.”

“The walls are made of mud.”

“That is different mud.”

Teag crossed over him, one hand gripping a roof pole and the other pressed against the trailer’s hidden side.

The narrow top of the partition waited ahead.

It was only a hand’s width across.

Teag lowered himself onto it.

The boar moved again, circling beneath him.

Its back brushed one of the bed supports.

The entire frame shuddered.

Teag clung to the roof brace.

Gray’s heart stopped for one beat.

The boar gave another irritated snort and pushed its nose toward the suspended food cabinet.

Rylan watched it.

“It smells breakfast.”

“So do I,” Camden whispered.

Gray pointed toward the entrance.

Rylan nodded.

While the boar investigated the food scent, Teag edged along the partition and reached the concealed access panel beside the trailer door.

He lifted the wooden latch.

The counterweight hidden behind the wall took part of the panel’s weight. It rose quietly enough that the boar did not notice.

Teag slipped through.

The panel settled behind him.

Kaelex let out a slow breath.

Gray looked at the others.

“Now we build a lane.”

“With what?” Camden whispered.

“Whatever Teag gives us.”

Inside the trailer, something shifted.

Then came a muffled metallic clatter.

The boar’s head lifted.

Teag’s face appeared through the opening above the concealed passage.

He held a folded tarp.

Gray pointed toward Camden.

Teag lowered it carefully.

Gray caught one corner.

The boar looked toward him.

He stopped.

It returned to sniffing beneath the food cabinet.

Teag disappeared again.

He returned with a narrow scrap of plywood almost as tall as he was.

Getting the plywood through the opening proved more difficult.

He angled it once.

It caught.

He turned it.

The corner struck a roof pole.

The boar spun around.

Everyone froze.

Teag held the plywood suspended above them, arms trembling.

The boar stared at the plywood.

Then at the brothers.

Then at the entrance.

Its body tightened.

The animal had reached the same conclusion they had.

Something was about to happen.

“Teag,” Gray whispered. “Now.”

Teag shoved the plywood through.

Rylan caught it by one edge.

The lower corner struck the floor with a dull thump.

The boar squealed and lunged.

Rylan snapped the plywood upright.

The boar struck it with its shoulder.

The impact drove Rylan backward into the wall.

“Little help,” Rylan grunted.

Kaelex grabbed the top edge of the plywood and braced himself.

The plywood bowed between them.

Gray moved to the other side, spreading the tarp in front of him and keeping it angled so the boar saw a startling blue poly tarpaulin wall rather than a corner to attack.

The animal backed away, tossing its head.

Camden remained on his bed platform with nowhere useful to go.

“Am I part of this plan?”

“Not yet,” Gray said.

“That feels insulting.”

Teag appeared again.

This time he held a cordless reciprocating saw.

No blade was attached.

Camden’s face brightened.

“Oh, yes.”

Kaelex looked at the saw.

“No blade?”

Teag shook his head.

“Battery?”

Teag squeezed the trigger for half a second.

The saw buzzed violently in his hand.

The empty blade clamp snapped back and forth in a blur.

The boar jumped.

Teag released the trigger.

Everyone looked at the animal.

The boar looked at the saw.

Camden smiled.

“Give me that.”

Teag lowered it by the handle.

Camden caught it.

Gray pointed at him.

“Wait for my signal.”

Camden nodded.

Teag went back into the trailer once more and returned with masonry string and a half eaten granola bar KK no doubt let sit on a shelf sometime when fetching a tool last week.

Rylan looked at granola bar.

“Where did you get that? Don’t waste it.”

Kaelex was still easing his way towards Gray.

“I wondered where that got to.”

Teag tied the masonry string tightly around the folded end of the wrapper, then tossed the spool over a roof beam near the entrance. He fed out more line until the granola bar hung in the open air just beyond the doorway. He jiggled it up and down.

The boar lifted its snout.

Its attention fixed on the dangling piece of granola.

The plan took shape quickly.

Kaelex and Gray stretched the tarp from the sleeping platforms to the damaged wall, blocking the boar from retreating deeper into the shelter.

Rylan held the plywood like a broad shield, using it to narrow the remaining space.

Teag stayed above them, holding the bait in the doorway.

Camden climbed from his platform onto the edge of the stove bench; the reciprocating saw held against his chest.

The boar stood in the middle of the shrinking lane.

Its eyes moved from the tarp to the plywood.

Then back to the bait hanging near the opening.

Gray spoke quietly.

“Teag, move the bait.”

Teag pulled the rope.

The granola bar bounced.

The boar followed it with its nose.

“Again.”

Teag pulled.

The bait wiggled again.

The boar took one step.

Then another.

Rylan shifted the plywood behind it.

Kaelex moved the tarp forward.

The shelter narrowed around the animal.

It noticed.

The boar spun.

Its head came toward Rylan.

Rylan planted one boot behind him.

“Here we go again.”

“Brace yourself,” Gray said.

The boar charged.

Rylan angled the plywood.

The animal’s tusk struck the lower edge and scraped across it.

Kaelex hauled the tarp tighter, closing the path toward the beds.

The boar backed into the only open lane.

Gray looked at Camden.

“Now.”

Camden squeezed the trigger.

The reciprocating saw erupted.

The sound filled the shelter—a hard mechanical growl unlike anything in the woods. The motor whined. The empty clamp hammered back and forth. Camden pressed the metal shoe lightly against the bench, adding a violent wooden rattle.

The boar screamed.

It spun away from the noise. Forgetting about Rylan.

Teag yanked the bait up.

Rylan swung the plywood inward.

Kaelex dropped the tarp behind the animal.

For one second, the boar stood facing the sunlight with nowhere else to turn.

Then it ran.

It exploded through the opening, and tore across the clearing.

Gray released the tarp.

Rylan lowered the plywood.

Camden followed the animal outside with the saw still running.

“Keep going!” he shouted.

The boar needed no encouragement.

It charged between the trees, crashed through a patch of hazel, and vanished down the slope.

Camden released the trigger.

The saw wound down in his hand.

A final mechanical clack then sudden quiet.

“That,” he said, breathing hard, “worked perfectly.”

Rylan came out behind him carrying the plywood.

“Perfectly would not include the part where it hit me.”

“You’re alive.”

“My standards are higher than that.”

Kaelex stepped into the clearing with the tarp wrapped around one arm.

“You two can track it after breakfast.”

“You just scared the good breakfast halfway to the village,” Rylan said.

“More Challenging.”

Teag lowered himself from the roof edge and dropped to the ground.

Gray came last.

He looked over the damaged entrance, the overturned bench, and the spilled basin.

Then he looked at Camden.

Camden looked like mom just caught him riding four-wheeler without a helmet.

Gray followed Cams stare, someone stood on the path.

Cam slowly lowered the saw.

Olivia had one hand pressed against the trunk of an oak where she had thrown herself aside to avoid the boar.

Her eyes stared straight at the contraption in Camden’s hand.

No one spoke.

Camden slowly moved the saw behind his leg.

Olivia looked at him.

He moved it back into view.

Rylan set the plywood against the shelter wall.

“Before you ask,” he said, “the pig was already angry.”

Olivia did not look at him.

“What is that?”

Camden looked down at the saw.

“This?”

Her expression suggested there was no other possible object under discussion.

Rylan stepped closer.

“A tool.”

Olivia’s eyes moved to him at last.

“For what work?”

Rylan glanced at the saw.

“Many kinds.”

“It has no edge.”

“No.”

“No teeth.”

“Not at the moment.”

“No handle for turning.”

“It does have a handle.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rylan smiled.

Olivia did not.

He tried again.

“It frightens pigs.”

Camden nodded. “Very effective.”

Olivia stepped into the clearing.

Her gaze moved over the five brothers.

Teag was still standing near the roof with mud on his knees. Kaelex held a tarp that looked far too evenly woven beneath its coating of dirt. Camden held a black-and-red tool made of shaped metal and material she had no name for. Gray watched her with the resigned expression of a man who already knew the argument was lost.

Rylan alone appeared willing to keep fighting it.

Olivia approached Camden.

He held the saw away from his body.

She reached toward it, then stopped before touching the housing.

“How did it make that sound?”

Rylan answered.

“There are small springs inside.”

Camden looked at him.

Rylan did not look back.

Olivia studied the battery beneath the handle.

“And the springs turn without a hand?”

“They are wound and set before.”

“Made in the western mountains?”

“Naturally.”

“How far west?”

Rylan opened his mouth.

Olivia reached into the fold of her cloak.

His answer died before leaving him.

She opened her hand.

The single screw lay across her palm.

Small.

Black.

Perfectly shaped.

Morning light caught along the crossed cut in its head and the even threads winding down its shaft.

Rylan looked at it.

Then at Gray.

Gray closed his eyes briefly.

Olivia held the screw between two fingers.

“I found this beside the sleeping place you built.”

No one answered.

“It is not a nail,” she continued. “No hammer shaped it. No village smith cut these lines. They are too even.”

Kaelex looked toward Rylan.

Rylan looked as though he were searching the trees for an explanation that had not yet been used.

Olivia saw it.

“Do not.”

His eyes returned to her.

“Do not what?”

“Do not smile and find another tale to tell.”

Rylan’s mouth closed.

She stepped nearer.

“You came to Eldergate in clothing no weaver knows. Your boots bear shapes no cobbler makes. You carry supplies though you say you were robbed. Your brother brings light without flame. Another makes water move inside a wooden box that hums. You built in one day what men here would require weeks to finish.”

Her eyes moved to Camden’s saw.

“And now this thing moves without hand, wheel, animal, wind, or fire.”

Camden lowered it.

Olivia looked back at Rylan.

“Every truth I ask from you is wrapped in another story.”

Rylan’s expression changed.

“We never meant to hurt you.”

“I know.”

The answer surprised him.

Olivia closed her fingers around the screw.

“If I believed you meant harm, I would not have come alone.”

Gray glanced toward the path.

“Alone?”

Olivia looked back.

“Wulf waits beyond the stream. I told him to remain there until I knew whether five fools had set fire to their hut.”

“We didn’t set it on fire,” Camden said.

Kaelex pointed at the damaged entrance. “Pig.”

“I saw the pig.”

Olivia faced Rylan again.

“I brought you food when I knew nothing of you. I brought clothing. I hid you from Gault. I placed Wulf in Camden’s care.”

Camden looked down.

“I stood beside you when the well was opened. I have said nothing of the lights, the sounds, or the things I do not understand.”

Her voice remained steady.

That made it worse.

“And still you speak to me as though I am a child who can be turned in a circle until I forget where I stood.”

Rylan shook his head.

“That is not what I think of you.”

“Then tell me what you do think.”

He looked at her.

For once, no quick answer came.

Gray stepped forward.

“Ry.”

Rylan did not turn.

Gray’s voice softened.

“Enough.”

Rylan let out a breath.

“You’re right,” he told Olivia.

She waited.

“We lied.”

“I know.”

“We had reasons.”

“I know that also.”

Her certainty left him nowhere to hide.

Gray looked at his brothers.

Then toward the path where Wulf waited.

“We need a minute.”

Olivia nodded.

“I have given you several days.”

Rylan almost smiled.

This time he stopped himself.

She noticed.

Something in her expression softened, though not enough to rescue him.

Gray led his brothers inside the damaged shelter.

Olivia remained in the clearing.

Camden carried the saw with him.

The moment they passed through the entrance, Kaelex took it from him and removed the battery.

Camden looked offended.

“What?”

“You were waving it around.”

“There was a pig.”

“The pig left.”

Gray turned toward them.

“Focus.”

They gathered near the concealed trailer passage.

Through the broken outer entrance, Olivia remained visible beside the oak, her arms folded beneath her cloak.

Rylan looked at her.

“She’s not going to tell anyone.”

Kaelex leaned against the woven wall. “You know that?”

“She could’ve told Gault three times already.”

“That is not an answer.”

“She trusted us with Wulf,” Camden said.

Kaelex looked at him.

Camden shrugged. “That means something.”

“It does,” Gray said.

Teag lowered himself from the shelf and rubbed one muddy knee.

“Wulf won’t tell.”

Kaelex looked toward him. “He’s ten.”

“He kept us secret before Olivia even knew what we were.”

“He screamed the first time he saw us.”

“He came back with bread.”

Rylan added, “Olivia stood between Gault and half that village.”

Gray watched her through the opening.

“We show them this, there’s no taking it back.”

“No taking back what?” Camden asked. “She just saw a cordless saw chase a pig.”

“She doesn’t know about the truck,” Kaelex said. “Or the trailer. Or the phones. Or everything we have inside.”

“She knows enough to keep asking,” Rylan said.

“And enough to give Gault a story that gets us burned,” Kaelex replied.

“She won’t.”

“You keep saying that.”

Rylan finally turned from the entrance.

“Because I believe it.”

Kaelex held his gaze.

The argument between them was not anger.

It was fear wearing different work clothes.

Gray understood both sides.

They needed language.

Food.

Information.

Warnings from the village.

Someone who understood the roads, the customs, Gault, Renard, and the thousand dangers the brothers did not yet know existed.

Two suspicious witnesses were dangerous.

Two trusted allies might keep them alive.

“We show them,” Gray sighed.

Rylan studied him.

“We’re telling them?”

“We’re showing them enough.”

Camden’s face brightened.

Gray pointed at him.

“Enough does not mean everything.”

Kaelex looked toward the trailer. “What about the marked stones?”

“Not today,” Gray said. “We tell them the symbol may be connected. That’s all. We talk about the gate and the stones tomorrow, after everyone has had time to understand the truck.”

Camden nodded reluctantly.

Rylan looked toward Olivia.

Gray followed his gaze.

“Bring her in.”

Rylan stepped outside.

Olivia straightened when he approached.

“We’re going to tell you.”

She searched his face.

“The truth?”

“All of it that we understand.”

“That sounds like another careful answer.”

“It is,” Rylan admitted. “There are things inside that could get all five of us killed if the wrong person knew. There are things we don’t fully understand ourselves.”

Olivia looked past him toward the shelter.

“And Wulf?”

Rylan glanced back at Gray.

Gray nodded.

“Him too.”

Olivia considered that.

“If you show him wonders, he will speak of them in his sleep.”

“Then we’ll make sure he understands how dangerous the secret is.”

“He understands danger better than many grown men.”

Rylan could not argue with that.

Teag came out and moved toward the stream.

Olivia watched him go.

“You trust me with your youngest brother?”

Rylan looked offended on Teag’s behalf.

“He’s eighteen.”

“Is that young among your people?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Teag called from the path.

Rylan watched him disappear.

“It depends which brother you ask.”

Olivia’s attention returned to the saw.

“What is it truly?”

“A reciprocating saw.”

She stared at him.

“That explained nothing.”

“It cuts wood and metal when a blade is attached.”

“And today?”

“Today it frightened a pig.”

“That part I understood.”

Rylan held out his hand.

The screw still rested in her palm.

She looked at his hand.

Then placed the screw in it.

“You lost this.”

“We apparently did.”

“How many more do you possess?”

Rylan thought of the overturned bucket in the trailer.

“Enough that losing one didn’t frighten us until you found it.”

Olivia’s expression tightened.

“That may be the most troubling answer yet.”

Teag returned with Wulf.

The boy entered the clearing at a run until Olivia raised one hand.

He slowed immediately.

His eyes went to the damaged shelter.

“What happened?”

“Pig,” Camden called from inside.

Wulf looked disappointed that he had missed it.

“Was it large?”

“Enormous,” Rylan said.

Kaelex stepped into view behind him. “Medium.”

“It nearly killed me.”

“It hit plywood.”

“Plywood I was holding.”

Wulf looked at Olivia. She placed both hands on his shoulders.

“What they are about to show us cannot be spoken of in Eldergate.”

Wulf’s excitement faded enough for understanding to enter.

“Not even Aldith?”

“Not even Aldith.”

“Why?”

Olivia looked toward the brothers.

“Because men such as Gault would fear it. Men who fear something often destroy it before asking what it is.”

Wulf nodded slowly.

He knew that lesson already.

Gray stepped into the clearing.

“This secret protects more than us. If anyone learns where the camp is or what is hidden here, they may come with enough men to take it.”

Wulf lifted his chin.

“I will not tell.”

Gray watched him for a moment.

“I believe you.”

The brothers led Olivia and Wulf into the shelter.

They had both visited the outer living space before, but this time it looked different because the brothers no longer tried to guide their eyes away from certain walls.

Gray stopped beside the wooden panel near the rear.

It looked like part of the mud-chinked partition. Moss covered its edges. A shelf stood in front of it holding folded cloth, two wooden cups, and the small clay pot containing the Fast Orange.

Gray removed the cups and pulled a concealed cord.

A counterweight shifted behind the wall.

The entire panel lifted.

Olivia stepped back.

Behind it waited a narrow dark passage.

The walls were not woven wood.

They were smooth black metal.

Wulf stared.

“What is that?”

“Our wagon,” Rylan said.

Olivia looked at the black surface.

“That is not a wagon.”

“It Really is,” Kaelex said. “Just not like any wagon you’ve ever seen.”

Gray entered the passage first.

Camden followed and opened the trailer door.

The hinges moved with a smoothness no village hinge possessed.

Before Olivia could adjust to the darkness, Camden reached inside and pressed a switch.

White light filled the trailer.

Olivia gasped.

Wulf grabbed her hand.

Neither ran.

That was more courage than the brothers had expected.

The inside of the trailer appeared piece by piece beneath the electric lights.

Metal shelves.

Plastic bins.

Tool cases.

Coiled wires.

Lengths of pipe.

Boxes of fittings.

The miter saw strapped near one wall.

The table saw secured farther inside.

The muffled shapes of equipment under tarps.

Battery chargers.

Work lights.

A hundred handles, cases, cords, and manufactured edges that could not belong in Eldergate.

Olivia stood in the doorway.

Her face had gone pale.

Camden remained near the switch.

“No flame,” he said.

She looked at him.

“The light?”

“Made by electricity.”

She waited.

Camden realized the word meant nothing.

“Small particles moving through metal wires.”

Kaelex leaned past him. “That explanation ain’t helping.”

“It’s accurate.”

“It sounds like trapped lightning.”

Olivia’s eyes widened further.

“No trapped lightning,” Gray said quickly. “It is something people learned to make. People like us. No spells. No spirits.”

Wulf slowly raised one hand toward the nearest wall.

“May I?”

Gray nodded.

The boy touched the painted metal with his fingertips.

He drew them back.

Then touched it again.

“It is smooth.”

“Factory smooth,” Camden said.

Olivia stepped inside at last.

The trailer floor shifted slightly beneath her weight.

She looked down.

Rylan stayed near her without touching her.

“This came with you?”

“Yes.”

“From the western mountains?”

Rylan shook his head.

“No more western mountains.”

Something passed through her expression.

Relief, perhaps, that he had finally stopped trying.

“Then from where?”

Gray answered.

“A place called Pennsylvania.”

Olivia repeated the word carefully.

“Is it across the sea?”

“Farther than that,” Camden said.

Kaelex looked at him. “Technically, not in the direction she means.”

“You explain it.”

Kaelex looked toward Olivia.

“We’re not only from another land.”

Gray finished it.

“We are from another time.”

Silence filled the trailer.

Wulf looked from one brother to another.

Olivia did not move.

Rylan watched disbelief arrive, resist, and then lose ground beneath the evidence surrounding her.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

Gray leaned against the workbench.

“In our world, by our counting, the year was two thousand twenty-six.”

Olivia waited.

Camden tried another approach.

“Many hundreds of years after this.”

“How many?”

“We don’t know the exact year here,” Camden said. “But probably close to nine hundred.”

Wulf’s mouth opened.

Olivia stared at them.

“Nine hundred years?”

“Approximately,” Camden said.

Kaelex elbowed him.

“What?”

“Stop making it worse with big words.”

“I said one.”

Rylan stepped closer to Olivia.

“We were driving through the mountains near our home. There was a strange light across the road. Green, like fire without heat. The road changed. It folded somehow.”

Camden raised one finger.

“That is not physically—”

Gray looked at him.

Camden lowered the finger.

Rylan continued.

“The light swallowed the truck and trailer. A moment later, we came down in a field near the standing stones. The men you saw searching the woods spotted us there.”

Olivia looked around the trailer again.

“And you did not choose to come?”

“No,” Gray said.

“Can you return?”

The brothers exchanged glances.

That answer hurt more than the others.

“We don’t know,” Gray said.

Olivia looked at Rylan.

He gave her the truth without decoration.

“We don’t know how.”

Wulf stepped farther into the trailer.

His fear had already begun losing to curiosity.

“What is that?”

He pointed at a tape measure clipped to Rylan’s work belt.

Rylan looked down.

“This?”

Wulf nodded.

Rylan pulled it free.

“It measures things.”

“With numbers?”

“Yes.”

He extended the metal tape.

Wulf’s eyes followed it.

Rylan stretched it nearly six feet across the trailer.

“Each mark tells distance.”

Wulf reached toward it.

Rylan let him touch the yellow surface.

Then he pressed the release.

The tape snapped back into the case.

Wulf jumped so hard he struck Olivia’s arm.

Camden laughed.

Wulf stared at the tape measure.

“Again.”

Rylan grinned.

Olivia pointed at him.

“Do not encourage him.”

“Too late.”

Rylan extended the tape again.

Wulf watched more closely.

When it retracted, he laughed.

The sound loosened something inside the trailer.

Gray let out the breath he had been holding.

Camden picked up a flashlight.

“This one is safer.”

Kaelex looked at him.

“Safer than what?”

“The tape measure.”

“It has batteries.”

Camden handed the flashlight to Wulf and showed him the switch.

Wulf pressed it.

A bright beam struck the trailer wall.

He nearly dropped it.

Then he swung it toward the ceiling.

Toward the floor.

Across Kaelex’s chest.

“Not in the eyes,” Gray said.

Wulf immediately pointed it at Rylan’s boots.

Olivia watched the beam.

Her hand rose slowly through the light as though she expected to feel heat.

“It does not burn.”

“No,” Camden said.

Camden took the flashlight back before Wulf discovered strobe mode.

Olivia stopped beside a row of cordless tools.

She saw drills, drivers, batteries, chargers, and cases marked with words she could not read.

Her hand hovered near the reciprocating saw.

“This is the thing from outside.”

“Yes,” Camden said.

“And this?”

She pointed to a cordless drill.

Kaelex lifted it.

“This makes holes. Drives screws.”

Olivia looked at Rylan.

Then at the drill.

Kaelex placed a bit in the chuck and squeezed the trigger lightly.

The bit spun.

Olivia stepped back.

Wulf leaned forward.

“Can I hold it?”

Five voices answered at once.

“No.”

Wulf frowned.

Kaelex removed the battery and handed him the drill.

“Now you can.”

Wulf held it with both hands.

It was heavier than he expected.

He raised it toward a scrap board and made the sound himself.

“Brrrrrr.”

Camden nodded.

“Natural talent.”

Olivia ran one finger along a drill bit.

“So this made the holes in the wood yesterday.”

Kaelex nodded.

“And the dark nail?”

“Screw,” Rylan said.

“The screw.”

“We used that drill to put it in.”

Olivia looked at the rows of cases and containers.

“How many screws?”

Rylan glanced toward the bucket.

“More than four.”

“That answer I believe.”

Camden opened one of the phones.

The screen lit.

Olivia’s attention snapped toward it.

Camden held it out.

“This is a phone.”

Wulf looked doubtful.

“What does it do?”

“Before we came here? Almost everything.”

Kaelex grunted.

“Except survive water.”

“That was one phone.”

Gray intervened.

“It lets people speak across long distances. It stores words, pictures, music, maps, and other information.”

“Can it speak to your home?” Olivia asked.

Camden’s enthusiasm faded.

“No.”

He showed her the top corner.

“No connection. No signal. Whatever carried voices between them does not exist here.”

Olivia looked at the glass.

“So it is broken?”

“Not entirely.”

Camden opened the camera and turned it toward Wulf.

The boy’s face appeared on the screen.

Wulf stared.

The face stared back.

He moved left.

The image moved left.

He leaned close.

His own enormous eye filled the display.

He shouted and stumbled backward.

Camden nearly dropped the phone laughing.

“There is a boy inside it!”

“No,” Olivia said, though she sounded less certain than she wanted.

Camden turned the screen toward her.

Now her face appeared beside Wulf’s.

She stopped breathing.

Rylan watched her see herself.

Not as a wavering image in water.

Not as a dim shape in polished metal.

Every line, every escaped strand of hair, every expression held in clear light.

She lifted one hand to her cheek.

The woman on the screen did the same.

Camden pressed the shutter.

The phone clicked.

The image froze.

Olivia stepped toward it.

“What happened?”

“I saved the picture.”

“You trapped it?”

“No. It’s only light remembered.”

Kaelex looked at him.

“That explanation was almost good.”

Camden looked pleased.

Olivia took the phone carefully.

The image did not move now.

She touched the screen.

Her finger slid across her own face.

Wulf crowded beside her.

“I look small.”

“You are small,” Olivia said.

“I am nearly grown.”

“You are ten.”

“In our time, that argument continues until thirty,” Rylan said.

Gray looked at him. “Mostly just with you.”

Camden showed them other photographs.

The first few were ordinary enough to the brothers that they had nearly forgotten how impossible they were.

The Ghost Creek truck parked outside a farmhouse.

The trailer in a gravel drive.

A bathroom remodel with walls open and pipes exposed.

Kaelex standing beside a furnace.

Camden holding a fish toward the camera.

Teagan asleep in the truck with his mouth open.

Gray at a family cookout, turning away as someone took the picture.

Rylan standing beside a hanging trophy 10 point buck he shot.

Wulf laughed at the picture of Teagan sleeping.

Teag reached over and swiped past it quickly.

“Ignore that.”

“Go back,” Wulf said.

“No.”

“Go back.”

Olivia almost smiled.

Then Camden reached photographs of home.

Green Pennsylvania ridges beneath summer sunlight.

Cornfields.

Barns.

Snow covering a yard and the roof of a house.

Christmas lights around a porch.

Five brothers standing with their parents.

The humor left the trailer.

Olivia studied the photograph.

“Is this your mother.”

Rylan looked at her.

“Yeah.”

“And a father.”

“Yeah.”

“Are they living?”

“They were when we left.”

The words settled heavily.

Wulf looked at the photograph.

“They do not know where you are.”

“No,” Gray said.

Olivia handed the phone back to Camden.

The anger that remained in her expression changed shape.

She had thought the brothers concealed power.

Now she understood that they also concealed grief.

Rylan moved beside her.

“We didn’t lie because we thought you were foolish.”

“Then why?”

“Because back home, if five men walked into a village and said they came from nine hundred years in the future possessing impossible devices, people would think they were crazy.”

Camden nodded. “Or dangerous.”

Kaelex added, “Here, they might burn us.”

Olivia did not deny it.

“Gault would.”

“Yes,” Gray said. “And the sheriff might use it as a reason to take everything.”

Olivia looked around the trailer.

“He would not understand any of this.”

“He would understand power,” Rylan said.

“And value,” Kaelex added. “Steel. Tools. The truck. Even the plastic.”

Gray stepped nearer.

“We can help people with what we know. But if too many learn what we have, we stop being craftsmen. We become something men fight over.”

“Or fear,” Camden said.

“Or worship,” Rylan added.

Kaelex looked toward him.

“No one is worshiping you.”

“Not with that attitude.”

Wulf had wandered toward the front of the trailer.

A narrow pathway led between the trailer and the covered side of the truck.

Teag saw where he was looking.

“Want to see the truck?”

Wulf’s eyes widened.

Olivia turned.

“There is more?”

Camden opened his arms toward the trailer.

“This is only the trailer.”

Kaelex began moving first.

He checked the outer camouflage through a narrow viewing gap, then released the hidden panel leading to the truck.

Morning light entered in thin green strips through branches and moss.

The truck sat beneath its covering of mud, tarp, and forest debris.

Up close, with the concealment pulled partly aside, its shape became impossible to mistake for anything built by village hands.

Wulf touched the door.

“What is it made from?”

“Mostly steel,” Kaelex said.

“How many horses pull it?”

“None.”

Wulf looked beneath it.

“Then men push it?”

“No.”

Camden patted the hood.

“There is an engine inside.”

Olivia gave him the same expression she had given the word electricity.

Kaelex opened the driver’s door.

The interior smelled faintly of old coffee, mud, vinyl, and the world they had left.

Wulf climbed in before anyone told him he could.

He stared at the dashboard.

The steering wheel.

The seats.

The screens.

The mirrors.

The cup holders.

The air vents.

The seat belts.

He touched everything at once.

Olivia remained outside.

Rylan stood beside her.

“You can look.”

“I am looking.”

“You can sit inside.”

“I prefer solid ground that’s not going to spontaneously disappear me.”

“Fair”

Wulf climbed into the driver’s seat.

Kaelex caught the back of his tunic before his muddy feet reached the dashboard.

“Easy.”

“What does this wheel do?”

“Turns the wagon.”

“What does this do?”

He reached toward the turn-signal lever.

Camden leaned across the seat.

“That—”

Wulf pressed the center of the steering wheel.

The horn blasted.

Birds erupted from the trees.

Olivia jumped against Rylan.

Teag ducked.

Gray spun toward the path.

Kaelex snatched Wulf’s hand from the wheel.

Silence rushed back.

Wulf stared at them.

Then at the steering wheel.

Camden began laughing.

Rylan looked down at Olivia.

She realized one hand was gripping the front of his tunic.

She released it.

Olivia straightened her dress.

Rylan tried not to smile.

She smiled first.

Only a little.

“Say nothing.”

“I didn’t.”

“The wagon shouted,” Wulf whispered.

“It does that,” Kaelex said.

“Why?”

“To warn people.”

Wulf looked delighted.

“May I—”

“No,” all five brothers and Olivia shouted.

Wulf climbed into the back seat with Teag.

Camden joined them and pulled out his phone.

“I have one more thing.”

Gray looked at him.

“One.”

Camden opened his AI model.

“This is Merlin.”

Olivia stared.

“You named the black mirror after a sorcerer?”

“Let the record show I objected,” Gray said.

“Considering our circumstance, I found it fitting. It answers questions,” Camden continued.

“Like a priest?” Wulf asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Like a scholar?”

“Sometimes.”

Kaelex leaned against the truck.

“Yes, because like a scholar, if it doesn’t know the answer to the question it will just make something up.”

Camden ignored him.

“Ask it a question.”

Wulf thought carefully.

“Ask whether Rylan is ugly.”

Rylan turned.

“Why is that your first question?”

Wulf shrugged. “I know the answer. I wish to see if Merlin is wise.”

Camden typed.

The model processed for several seconds.

Then text appeared.

Camden read aloud.

“Without visual information or agreed standards of appearance, I cannot determine whether a person named Rylan is ugly.”

Wulf looked disappointed.

“It does not know.”

Camden continued.

“Physical attractiveness is subjective and varies by culture and individual preference.”

Wulf frowned.

“It uses many words to avoid truth.”

Kaelex nodded. “Yep, like a scholar.”

Olivia looked toward Rylan.

“Perhaps it needs more information.”

Rylan pointed at her. “You were on my side yesterday.”

“I was less informed yesterday.”

The brothers laughed.

The tension that had entered with the screw finally began to leave.

Camden opened the glove compartment and found a crushed package of fruit snacks shoved beneath a folded registration paper.

He held it up.

“One surviving treasure.”

Kaelex examined the expiration date.

“Still good.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s mostly sugar. It’ll outlive us all.”

Camden opened the package.

The wrapper tore with a sharp sound.

Wulf stared at the bright colored pieces.

“What are they?”

“Fruit,” Camden said.

Kaelex looked at him.

“Fruit-shaped sugar.”

Camden handed one to Wulf.

The boy smelled it.

Then put it in his mouth.

His expression changed instantly.

Olivia saw it.

“What?”

Wulf chewed faster.

“It is the finest food ever made.”

“It is not food,” Gray said.

Wulf held out his hand for another.

Olivia took one first.

She examined the soft red piece.

Rylan watched her eat it.

Her eyes widened despite every effort to prevent them.

“Well?” he asked.

She chewed slowly.

“It is a burst of flavor, like a berry, but so much sweeter.”

Camden handed her another.

She accepted it.

They returned to the trailer after covering the truck again.

Camden played music at the lowest possible volume through the Bluetooth speaker.

A guitar sounded.

Then a man’s recorded voice filled the trailer.

Olivia froze.

Wulf looked behind the speaker.

“There is a singer inside.”

“No,” Camden said. “It is a remembered voice. Like the picture, but sound.”

“Is he living?”

Camden looked toward Gray.

“He was when the song was first made,” Gray said. “Not now.”

Wulf listened more carefully.

“Then the dead sing in your time.”

Rylan leaned against a shelf.

“That perspective makes it sound creepy.”

The song continued softly.

Wulf began tapping one foot.

Olivia noticed and stopped him with a look.

Then, several beats later, her own fingers moved once against the edge of the workbench.

When the song ended, the trailer seemed too quiet.

Olivia stood among the tools and lights of a world that would not exist for centuries.

Her anger had not disappeared entirely.

Neither had her fear.

Gray switched off the overhead lights.

The sudden darkness made Wulf gasp.

Then Camden turned on a work light, leaving the trailer in a softer glow.

Gray faced Olivia and Wulf.

“No one can know.”

Olivia nodded.

“I understand.”

“Not Aldith. Not Oswin. Not anyone in the village.”

“I said I understand.”

Gray looked toward Wulf.

The boy stood straighter.

“I will not speak.”

“Even if Gault asks?”

Wulf’s face hardened.

“Especially if Gault asks.”

Gray looked at Olivia again.

“There are still things we aren’t showing you.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Rylan spoke before she could.

“Not because we intend to lie again. Some things are dangerous. Some we need for emergencies. Some would only frighten you before there’s reason.”

Olivia considered that.

“Things more dangerous than a wagon that shouts?”

Kaelex glanced toward the locked cases.

“Yes.”

She followed his glance but did not press.

“We also don’t understand everything,” Camden said. “The light that brought us here. Strange symbol we’ve encountered. The standing stones. We know they may be connected, but not how.”

Olivia looked toward Teag.

He had unconsciously touched the place beneath his tunic where he kept the first carved stone.

She noticed.

But did not asked.

Not yet.

Rylan opened the concealed door leading back into the shelter.

Morning sunlight entered through the damaged outer wall.

Beyond it, the ordinary woods waited.

Birds called.

Leaves moved.

Olivia stopped beside Rylan before stepping out.

“You could have told me sooner.”

“I know.”

“You should have.”

“I know.”

“You made me believe I was foolish for questioning you.”

Rylan shook his head.

“No. I knew you were smart enough to see through us. I just hoped I had more time before you did.”

“That is not better.”

“No.”

She studied him.

The screw remained in his hand.

He held it out.

Olivia closed his fingers around it.

“Count them next time.”

Rylan looked toward Gray.

Gray had heard.

Olivia stepped into the shelter.

Wulf followed with Teag, still asking questions about the truck horn.

Camden began covering the tools.

Kaelex checked the weapon cases one more time.

Gray lowered the counterweighted panel.

The trailer disappeared behind wood, mud, moss, and ordinary shadows.

Within moments, the impossible house became a rough woodland shelter again.

Olivia stood in the clearing and looked back at it.

Yesterday, she had believed five strangers were hiding secrets.

Now she knew they were hiding a world.

She turned toward the brothers.

“In your box paintings, your home looked peaceful.”

Gray chuckled at her phrasing. “Mostly”

“Will you try to return?”

The brothers fell quiet.

Teag touched the carved stone beneath his tunic.

Gray answered for them.

“We will return home.”

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.