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Kaelen gripped his spade, the tool vibrating in his hand. To clear the air, they wouldn't need wind; they would need to descend into the heart of the smoke and find where the earth had cracked. They had to heal the soil before the became the only thing left to breathe.
The sky over didn’t just turn grey; it turned heavy.
The smoke began to coalesce into shapes—shadowy, towering figures that mimicked the trees they had just extinguished. They weren't ghosts, but of the land’s own fever.
"It's the breath of the Old Core," his grandfather whispered, appearing beside him with a mask of woven roots pressed to his face. "The balance has tipped. We took too much from the deep soil, and now the dark is taking it back."
