The moment Dawson stepped beyond the boundary of the moon-petal grove, the forest seemed to close in on him. The air grew heavier, thick with the scent of rot and cloying sweetness. Twisted, grasping roots snaked across his path, and the soft blue moss gave way to slick, black soil that tried to suck the boots from his feet. The whispering laughter he’d heard before grew louder, more malicious, seeming to come from the very bark of the trees around him. He ignored it, focusing on the simple, disciplined act of putting one foot in front of the other.

His survival training was a litany of rules that no longer applied. He found a stream, its water running clear over iridescent pebbles, but when he dipped a finger in, the liquid clung to his skin like oil and made his vision swim with dizzying fractals. He left it, his throat burning with thirst. He tried to hunt, but the creatures here were made of shadow and spite. Small, winged things with needle-like teeth swarmed him, and he spent a precious hour batting them away with his shield, their shrill cries scraping at his nerves. He was a fighter, trained for battlefields and dungeons, not this relentless, passive-aggressive warfare with nature itself.

Worse than the hunger or the thirst was the drain. The humming magic of this plane was a constant, leaching pressure against his soul. It wasn't an attack he could block or a spell he could resist; it was in the very air he breathed, a pervasive weariness that settled deep in his bones. Every swing of his sword felt heavier than the last. His shield became a leaden weight on his arm. His thoughts, usually clear and tactical, grew muddy and slow. Only the iron-clad discipline of his training kept him moving, kept him sane. He would find a defensible spot. He would check his perimeter. He would rest in short, alert bursts. He would not give in.

From the heart of her grove, Myfanwy watched. She needed no scrying pool; the trees themselves were her eyes. She saw the mortal stumble away from the clear stream, saw him flinch from the touch of a Dream-Thistle. She saw him methodically clear a small patch of ground, his movements brutally efficient, and settle with his back against a stone, shield raised even in rest.

At first, she felt a smug satisfaction. He was suffering. He was being worn down by the land itself, just as she had predicted. Any moment now, he would break. He would scream in frustration, or weep in despair, or make a fatal error born of panic. That was the way of mortals. They were fragile, emotional things, their resolve as brittle as dried leaves.

But he did not break. He endured. When a patch of phosphorescent fungi released hallucinogenic spores, he held his breath, pressed his face into his cloak, and waited with infuriating patience until the cloud dissipated. When the ground beneath him tried to soften into a mire, he tested it with the tip of his sword before each step, moving with a grim, graceless determination.

The cycle of the twin moons wore on. Myfanwy’s amusement soured into a strange, unfamiliar feeling. It was not respect—he was still a crude, ugly creature of iron and mud. It was… intrigue. He refused to despair. The Wilds threw their subtle horrors at him, and he met them not with magic or cleverness, but with a stubborn, brutish refusal to die. There was no artistry in it, no beauty, but there was a power she could not deny. He was a rock being battered by a storm, and while he was eroding, he was not yet crumbling. He was an anomaly, a thing of stubborn logic in a world of capricious chaos, and against her will, she found herself wanting to see how long the rock could possibly stand.

Her observation was cut short by a sound that did not belong in her grove. It wasn't the whisper of the trees or the chime of the flowers, but a wet, tearing crash from the ancient willows that marked her border. A wave of wrongness washed over the grove, a stench of decay and mindless rage that made the moon-petals recoil, their light dimming in protest.

Through the splintered trees stumbled a nightmare. It had the hulking frame of an owlbear, but it was a diseased, corrupted version of the creature. Patches of its feathers had sloughed off, revealing skin covered in pulsing, black veins. One of its owl-like eyes was a milky, blind orb, and a foul, dark slime dripped from its beak. A creeping blight had taken it, twisting its mind into a vessel of pure destruction. It bellowed, a guttural shriek that was half screech, half roar, and swiped a clawed arm at one of the oldest moon-petal bushes, shredding the glowing blossoms and leaving behind a smear of black ichor.

A cold fury, sharp and pristine, surged through Myfanwy. This was her sanctuary, a place of power nurtured for centuries. This blighted thing would not defile it. She raised her hands, and the air around her crackled. Tendrils of green energy coiled around her arms, and the roots beneath the owlbear’s feet began to writhe, thickening into thorny snares. She would bind it, crush it, and let the earth reclaim its rotten flesh.

But before her spell could take hold, a blur of motion shot past her from the edge of the woods. It was the mortal. Dawson moved with a speed she hadn’t thought his exhausted body capable of. There was no hesitation, no fear, only grim purpose. He didn’t run from the monster; he ran at it.

He bellowed a warrior’s challenge, a raw, human sound that cut through the creature's shrieking. Just as the owlbear reared up to bring its full weight down on the heart of the grove, Dawson slammed into it. His shield, a battered circle of steel and wood, met the beast’s charge with a deafening crack of impact. The force of the blow drove him back a step, his boots digging furrows in the soft earth, but he held. He grunted, muscles straining, and planted his feet, becoming an immovable wall of iron between the rampaging beast and her home.

The owlbear roared in fury, swiping with claws that could shear through oak. Sparks flew as they scraped against the shield’s surface. Dawson didn’t flinch. He moved with the beast, absorbing its frenzied attacks, his sword a flash of silver in the dimming light as he created an opening, stabbing deep into the creature’s blighted shoulder. The owlbear shrieked in pain and rage, its attention now fixed entirely on the mortal who dared to stand against it. Myfanwy stood frozen for a heartbeat, her spell half-formed on her lips, watching the crude, iron-clad man bleed for a place that had shown him nothing but contempt.

The shock held her for only a single, suspended heartbeat. The sight of the mortal’s dark red blood splattering onto the pale ground of her grove—a shield of flesh and steel protecting her home—shattered her stillness. The owlbear was a festering wound on the land, but the man was its cauterizing iron. A stubborn, bleeding, and unexpectedly noble fool.

"Mortal! Its leg! It favors the left!" she called out, her voice a sharp command that cut through the chaos. The green energy weaving between her fingers tightened, condensing from a wide net into a focused, piercing dart of power.

Dawson heard her. He didn't turn, didn't waste a single motion. He simply adjusted his footing. He met another claw swipe with his shield, the impact echoing with a deafening clang that made his teeth ache. Then, pivoting on his back foot, he rammed the shield’s heavy steel boss directly into the creature's left knee. There was a sickening, wet crunch as the joint gave way.

The owlbear shrieked, a high-pitched sound of pain and fury, and its weight slumped onto its uninjured leg. It was the exact opening Myfanwy needed. With a swift, downward thrust of her hands, she unleashed her spell. The ground beneath the owlbear's good leg tore open. Thick, thorny vines, hard as iron and covered in razored barbs, erupted from the soil. They coiled around the beast's ankle and calf, cinching tight and digging deep into its blighted flesh.

Trapped and unbalanced, the creature thrashed wildly. It turned its hateful, milky eye toward her, recognizing the source of its agony, but it was too late. Dawson was already moving. He lunged forward, ducking under a desperate, flailing claw, and drove his longsword upward with all the force his exhausted body could muster. The blade slid through the soft tissue under the owlbear’s beak, punching through gristle and bone and deep into its brain.

A final, gurgling sigh escaped the beast. Its massive body shuddered, went limp, and then collapsed, its dead weight tearing the vines from the earth as it fell. The corpse hit the ground with a heavy, final thud that seemed to shake the entire grove.

Silence descended, absolute and profound, broken only by the ragged sound of Dawson's breathing. He wrenched his sword free with a grunt and staggered back, leaning heavily on his shield for support. Blood flowed freely from a deep gash on his forearm where a claw had finally found its way past his guard. He was covered in sweat and grime, his armor smeared with the owlbear's foul, black blood. The adrenaline that had propelled him into the fight was gone, leaving only a visible, bone-deep exhaustion in its place.

Myfanwy stood perfectly still, watching him. The dead beast lay between them, a grotesque monument to their unwilling and brutally effective alliance. He had protected her sanctuary. He had bled for it. The rigid, transactional calculus of her world demanded that such an act be answered. A debt had been incurred.

She let her hands fall to her sides, the lingering green magic dissipating into the air. She walked toward him, her bare feet making no sound on the disturbed earth. He tracked her approach, his expression guarded, his grip still white-knuckled on the hilt of his sword. She stopped a few feet away, her gaze shifting from the weeping wound on his arm to his weary face.

"You are bleeding on my moon-petals," she said. The words held no scorn, only a flat observation. She tilted her head toward the heart of the grove, where a clean, smokeless fire danced within a circle of smooth river stones. "Come. The fire is warm. I have a salve for that."