By morning, the forest had returned to being just a forest.

That was the strangest part. No scorched earth, no broken stone, no sign that anything had shifted at all. The ruins sat quietly in my mind like a dream I couldn't shake-too detailed to be imagined, too unreal to be trusted.

I didn't mention it to anyone.

At breakfast, my mother talked about the weather and the price of bread. My father folded the paper with more force than necessary, muttering about men in Dublin who'd never set foot west of the Shannon. The radio murmured in the background, something about America, something about change.

I nodded where I was meant to. Smiled when expected.

But my thoughts kept circling back to the same thing.

Oisín.

He was everywhere once you started looking for him. Or perhaps he always had been.

I saw him that afternoon down by the quay, unloading crates slick with seawater. Oysters, someone said nearby, their tone dismissive. Dirty work. Lonely work. But the men unloading beside him moved with the ease of people who trusted one another with their lives, hands steady, movements practised.

Oisín didn't speak much. When he did, it was brief, efficient. No wasted words.

People watched him the way they always did-from a distance that pretended not to be interest.

"He's the one with the English mother," a woman murmured near me, as if the sea itself might overhear.

Not English, exactly. That was the version smoothed for public consumption.

The real story had sharper edges.

She'd run off when Oisín was still small. Taken up with a British soldier stationed nearby, uniforms and promises and the illusion of escape. She'd left in the night, they said. Never looked back. Letters stopped coming after a year.

His father had stayed.

That was almost worse.

A good man once, by all accounts. Quiet. Solid. The sort who fixed fences without being asked and showed up early to Mass. After she left, something in him broke loose. Drink took its place where responsibility had lived, and the house hollowed out around him.

Oisín left school early. Earlier than anyone else I knew. People said he'd been clever-too clever to waste himself the way he had. They said it with the same tone they used for weather damage or illness. A pity, not a problem.

He went to the coast. Oyster fishing. Long days bent over cold water, hands raw and cut, the tide dictating when you worked and when you starved. Solitary hours. Honest money. The kind of work that fed mouths without earning respect.

But it paid.

Enough to keep the lights on. Enough to put shoes on his sister's feet before they wore through. Enough to make sure she stayed young a little longer than the world would have allowed otherwise.

I saw the sister once-Máire, I thought her name was-running along the road with her hair unbraided, laughing freely in a way Oisín never did. He watched her from the doorway like a guard, not a brother. Protective. Alert.

That night, I dreamed of water closing over my head.

Not drowning. Floating. Suspended in a dark that felt like a held breath.

When I woke, my skin felt wrong-too tight, as if it didn't quite belong to me. The sensation faded by midmorning, leaving only unease behind.

I told myself it was nothing.

That evening, as the light softened and the town settled into itself, I found Oisín again without meaning to. He stood at the edge of the road near the fields, looking toward the forest as if it might look back.

He noticed me watching.

There was no accusation in his expression. Only surprise, and something like recognition-though neither of us had earned it yet.

"We didn't imagine it," I said, before I could stop myself.

"No," he replied. "We didn't."

The word we landed heavier than it should have.

Behind us, the land waited. Quiet. Patient.

And for the first time, I wondered who else had begun to feel it stirring.

I remember the sound first.

Not a crash or an explosion, but something deeper-like the earth shifting its weight. A low vibration rolled through the ground beneath my boots, subtle enough that I might have dismissed it if the stones hadn't answered back.

The carvings began to glow.

Not brightly. Not theatrically. A dull, internal light seeped into the etched lines, tracing the figures as if remembering them into existence. The wolves-men-things caught between forms shimmered faintly, the stone warming beneath my palms until I had to pull my hands away.

My heart hammered so hard it hurt.

"This isn't possible," I whispered, though the words felt childish the moment they left my mouth.

The forest responded with silence.

Then the ground shifted again. A shallow tremor, just enough to unbalance me. I staggered back, boots slipping on damp leaves.

Oisín caught my arm without thinking.

His grip was firm, steady. Protective in a way that felt older than either of us.

"Stay behind me," he said.

"I don't-"

Another tremor cut me off. This one stronger. Somewhere nearby, birds burst from the trees, wings thrashing wildly as they fled into the dark. The air thickened, pressure building in my ears like the moment before a storm breaks.

The slab at the centre of the stones pulsed.

Light leaked through the seam, pale and cold, illuminating the clearing in brief, uneven flashes. The forest around us seemed to recoil, shadows stretching and twisting unnaturally as if trying to pull away.

Fear surged through me, sharp and undeniable.

And beneath it-excitement.

A terrible, electric thrill curled low in my stomach, humming through my veins. I felt awake in a way I never had before, every nerve alight, every sound painfully clear. My breath came too fast, too shallow.

"Oisín," I said, gripping his sleeve, "do you feel that?"

He nodded once, jaw clenched. His eyes never left the stone.

"I feel something," he said. "And I don't like it."

The slab shifted with a sound like stone grinding against bone.

A crack split the seam wider, light spilling out in a thin, blinding line. Heat washed over us, not burning but heavy, pressing into my chest until I gasped.

Images flashed behind my eyes-too fast to grasp fully. Running. Teeth. Blood darkening soil. The sound of howling carried on wind that smelled of iron and rain.

I cried out, dropping to my knees.

Oisín was beside me instantly, crouched low, one arm braced in front of me like a shield. His body was tense, coiled, as if ready to fight something he couldn't see.

"Look at me," he said sharply. "Don't look at it. Look at me."

I did.

The light flickered.

The rumbling subsided, retreating back into the earth as suddenly as it had come. The seam sealed itself with a final, resonant thud, the glow fading until the stones were nothing more than stone again-cold, inert, ancient.

The forest exhaled.

Crickets resumed their song. Leaves rustled. Somewhere in the distance, laughter drifted faintly from the party, unaware that anything had happened at all.

I realised I was shaking.

Oisín didn't let go of me until I stopped.

When he finally stood, he offered me his hand. I took it, surprised at how reluctant I was to break the contact.

"We don't tell anyone," he said.

It wasn't a suggestion.

I nodded. "No one would believe us."

"That's not why," he replied.

I searched his face for an explanation and found none-only resolve, heavy and unearned, like he'd stepped into a role he didn't know the name of yet.

As we walked back toward the lights of the party, I glanced over my shoulder.

The stones sat quietly in the darkness.

Waiting.

In daylight, the forest looked ordinary.

That was the lie of it.

Sunlight filtered through the branches in thin, patient lines, dappling the ground with gold and green. The damp smell of rot and moss from the night before had softened into something almost pleasant. Birds hopped between low branches, unbothered, and somewhere deeper in, water moved lazily over stone.

If I hadn't been there the night before, I might have laughed at myself.

We stood at the tree line without speaking. The road behind us hummed faintly with the sounds of the town going about its business-doors opening, voices calling, life continuing as it always had.

I took the first step.

I didn't decide to. My body simply moved, drawn forward by a quiet insistence I didn't yet know how to resist. A moment later, I heard Oisín behind me, his boots scuffing softly against the earth.

Neither of us questioned it.

The ruins revealed themselves slowly, as if daylight demanded patience. Moss dulled the stones, and without the night's shadows and strange warmth, they seemed smaller. Less important. Just another forgotten scatter of rock in a country full of them.

Still, my pulse quickened when I knelt beside the carvings.

I brushed my fingers along the etched lines, tracing shapes I recognised now without fully understanding. The figures were clearer in the sun-wolves caught mid-motion, jaws open, bodies half-turned, guarding smaller forms clustered close to their legs.

Protecting.

"They didn't carve these for beauty," I murmured.

Oisín didn't answer right away. He sat a few paces back, arms resting on his knees, watching the forest rather than the stones. His posture was loose, but his eyes never stopped moving.

My eyes lingered on the central slab. In daylight, the seam was barely visible. If I hadn't known to look for it, I might have missed it entirely.

"It looks harmless," I said.

"That's what worries me," he replied.

I glanced back at him. "You believe it, then?"

He exhaled slowly, gaze fixed somewhere between the trees. "I believe something happened here."

That was as close to certainty as he seemed willing to offer.

After a moment, he spoke again, quieter this time.

"My father used to talk about things like this when he drank."

I stilled.

"He'd say the land was watched once. Guarded," Oisín continued. "Not by saints or kings. By something older. Something that didn't need permission."

I turned fully toward him now.

"He said they were beasts," Oisín went on, his mouth tightening. "Men who could become wolves. That they bled for the land so the people didn't have to."

The words settled heavily between us.

"He said when they vanished, everything else fell apart," he said. "The land was left open. Easy to take."

I thought of the carvings. The clustered figures. The watching shapes.

"And did you believe him?" I asked.

Oisín huffed a short, humourless breath. "I thought he was drunk."

He hesitated, fingers digging into the dirt.

"But sometimes," he added, "I think if they'd still been here... maybe my mother wouldn't have left."

The sentence cut off sharply, as if he hadn't meant to say it aloud.

"She ran off with a British soldier," he said, voice flat. "He was stationed nearby. If those things were real-if the land was protected-maybe he wouldn't have been here at all. Or maybe she wouldn't have gone. Or maybe..." He shook his head once. "Maybe I wouldn't have had to grow up so fast."

I didn't know what to say to that. There was no comfort in contradiction.

I looked back at the stone beneath my hands, suddenly aware of how warm it felt again, even in the daylight.

"If they were protectors," I said slowly, "why did they disappear?"

Oisín's gaze flicked to me then, sharp and searching.

"Maybe," he said, "they were driven out."

The forest stirred. A breeze moved through the trees, carrying with it the faintest pressure against my skin-like a hand brushing past, testing.

I pulled my hand away from the stone.

Neither of us suggested leaving.

And that, more than anything, frightened me.