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.

We stayed longer than we meant to.

The sun had shifted by the time I noticed it, light thinning through the trees as the afternoon wore on. The forest didn't press in the way it had at night. It felt almost companionable now, like it was listening rather than watching.

I sat back against a low stone, knees drawn up, while Oisín remained where he was, close enough that I could feel his presence without having to look at him. There was an ease to it that surprised me. We had no history to lean on, no shared childhood, no expectations to meet.

"That's why people talk," I said eventually. "Because there's nothing else to do."

Oisín gave a faint, noncommittal sound.

"The town's small," I continued. "It feeds on itself. Everyone knows who you are before you've decided it for yourself."

He glanced at me then. "And who are you meant to be?"

I smiled, though it didn't quite reach my eyes. "Someone agreeable. Someone who doesn't cause trouble. Someone who stays."

The last word lingered.

He looked back toward the trees. "They don't like people who leave either."

"No," I said. "They like people who want to leave even less."

That earned a short breath of laughter from him-surprised, as if it had escaped without permission.

We talked then, not about anything important at first. About neighbours who pretended not to see one another in the street. About the way the priest spoke as if guilt were a shared language. About how everyone swore things were better now, because the country was free.

"Independent," Oisín said, tasting the word. "That's what they call it."

I nodded. "My father says it like he's convincing himself."

"Mine used to," Oisín replied. "Before he stopped talking much at all."

Silence settled again, heavier this time but not uncomfortable.

"When I was younger," I said, "I remember the adults going quiet when the radio came on. Especially if it was about the North."

His jaw tightened slightly. "Same."

"They'd lower their voices," I went on. "As if we couldn't hear them anyway. As if not saying it aloud would keep it from crossing the border."

"And now?" he asked.

"Now they pretend it's not their problem," I said. "That it's contained. That violence knows where it's meant to stay."

Oisín picked at the dirt with his fingers. "Violence never stays where it's told."

I studied him then, really studied him. The way he carried himself like someone used to watching for danger. The way his eyes tracked movement without effort. Protective, always. As if the world were something that had already proven itself unreliable.

"Do you ever think," I asked quietly, "that all of it seeps into the ground?"

He looked at me sharply. "What do you mean?"

"All the unrest," I said. "The wars, the famines, the grudges no one admits to carrying. As if the land remembers even when people pretend not to."

He was silent for a long moment.

"My father said that too," he admitted. "That the land holds on to things. That it knows who's loyal to it and who isn't."

I felt a strange warmth spread through my chest at that-not comfort exactly, but recognition.

"I don't want to stay," I said suddenly.

The words surprised me with their force.

Oisín didn't look shocked. He only nodded, as if I'd finally said something honest.

"I don't think I do either," he replied. "But leaving doesn't always mean escaping."

We sat there, two people shaped by the same place in different ways, bound by something neither of us had asked for. The forest hummed softly around us, alive with small sounds, indifferent and attentive all at once.

When Oisín finally stood, he offered me his hand without hesitation.

I took it.

For a brief, disorienting moment, it felt like the ground steadied beneath us-as if the land itself approved of the connection.

I didn't mention it.

Neither did he.

And that was how I knew this was becoming something more than coincidence.