Caelan woke to the sound of wood shifting.
Not the creak of the floorboards—that came later—but the quieter sound beneath it: the house settling, timbers responding to the cold before dawn. The Greenwake always did that in the hours before first light, as if the land exhaled and the buildings remembered they were only guests.
He lay still, eyes closed, counting breaths the way his father had taught him when he was small and storms rattled the shutters.
One.
Two.
The knock came on the third—soft, knuckle to frame, not door. His father never knocked on the door itself. Doors were for privacy; frames were for family.
"Cael," Rowan Hale said quietly. "Up."
Caelan opened one eye. The room was grey, the honest grey of early morning, before firelight and day argued over the space. The small window over his bed was fogged at the corners, breath from the night still clinging to the glass. Cold seeped up from the stone floor despite the rug his mother had woven years ago, the threads worn thin where he paced when he couldn't sleep.
"I'm up," Caelan said, though he hadn't moved.
There was a pause. The kind that meant his father was listening—not just to his voice, but to the house around it.
Then the door opened anyway.
Rowan stepped in without ceremony, already dressed for the day—leather boots laced tight, wool shirt tucked, belt worn smooth by years of tools and habit. His hair was still damp from a quick wash, darker at the temples. He carried a lantern in one hand, shuttered low, as if unwilling to wake the house all at once. The light painted the room in careful stripes, catching dust motes that drifted lazily, unconcerned with the hour.
"You weren't," Rowan said. Not a rebuke. A statement, as plain as saying the sky was overcast.
Caelan sighed and pushed himself upright, blankets sliding to his waist. He scratched at his forearm, where the chill always settled first. "It's early."
"It's late," Rowan replied, setting the lantern on the small table by the wall. The table wobbled, as it always had. Rowan nudged one leg with his boot until it settled. He glanced at the window. "Fog rolled in overnight. Birds went quiet an hour ago."
That made Caelan sit a little straighter.
Rowan didn't elaborate. He never did unless necessary, and even then only halfway. Estate hunters learned early that the land spoke in patterns, not words, and explanations were often just guesses dressed up after the fact.
Caelan rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. Fog didn't stop birds. Not properly. Not like that.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, feet finding the cold stone. He winced and flexed his toes. "You want me in the south field?"
Rowan shook his head. The motion was small, but decisive. "No."
That single word tightened something in Caelan's chest.
The south field was where he fit. Fences to mend, channels to clear, places where water pooled wrong and rot set in if you didn't catch it early. Work that made sense. Work with answers.
"If not there," Caelan said carefully, "where?"
"Eat first," Rowan replied. "Then we'll see."
Caelan frowned but didn't argue. He had learned which questions were worth pushing and which only earned silence.
Rowan's gaze lingered on him longer than usual. Not assessing strength or readiness—Rowan knew both by sight—but taking him in the way you checked a tool you'd used a thousand times and suddenly felt unsure about. His eyes flicked, just once, to Caelan's hands, then away again.
"You sleep?" Rowan asked.
"Enough," Caelan said.
Rowan made a noncommittal sound. He reached out and adjusted the shutter on the lantern, letting a little more light spill into the room. The beam caught on the small wooden charm hanging by Caelan's bed—a simple thing, carved from rootwood, no markings beyond the grain. Rowan had made it when Caelan was eight, after a winter when the ground refused to thaw and the crops came up thin.
Rowan steadied the charm with two fingers so it stopped swaying.
"Get dressed," he said. "Warm clothes. Bring the spare shirt."
"We're not going out, are we?" Caelan asked before he could stop himself.
Rowan hesitated.
It was brief. Anyone else might have missed it. Caelan didn't.
"No," Rowan said at last. "Not yet."
Those two words settled heavier than the fog outside.
Caelan nodded and reached for his clothes. As he pulled on his shirt, he became aware of a faint sensation beneath his skin—not pain, not warmth. Pressure, maybe. Like standing too close to a deep well, aware of the space beneath your feet even when the ground felt solid.
You didn't sleep enough, he told himself. That's all.
Rowan turned toward the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. He looked older like that, caught between leaving and staying, lines at the corners of his eyes deeper in the lantern light.
"If anything slows you today," Rowan said, voice level, practical, "say so. No sense forcing bad work."
"I will," Caelan replied.
Rowan nodded once and stepped out, pulling the door closed behind him. The latch clicked softly into place, familiar and final.
Caelan sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment after, pulling on his boots without tying them, listening to the house breathe.
Nothing moved.
Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, the fog pressed close to the windows and roof, patient and heavy—waiting.
Caelan finished dressing slowly.
Not because the clothes were difficult—he had pulled on the same wool shirt and patched trousers most mornings since he was fifteen—but because the house felt different when he stood. The air seemed thicker, as if it carried a weight it hadn't earned. Not enough to stop him. Just enough to notice.
He tied his boots carefully this time, double-knotted out of habit. His fingers moved without thought. He had tied these laces in the dark more times than he could count. When he stood, he rolled his shoulders once, easing a stiffness that hadn't been there yesterday.
The faint pressure beneath his skin lingered. It didn't pulse. It didn't ache. It simply was.
He ignored it.
Caelan reached for the charm by his bed, fingers brushing the rootwood once before letting it hang again. He told himself it was nothing—just a habit like checking the latch twice or stepping over the loose board in the hall. Still, he lingered a heartbeat longer than usual before turning away.
The corridor outside his room was narrow and familiar. The floor creaked at the third step. The wall bowed inward near the pantry door. The house smelled like damp wool, old wood, and yesterday's bread. It smelled like home.
Rowan was already in the kitchen, setting out breakfast with the quiet efficiency of someone who had long ago stopped thinking about the order of things. Bread cut thick and uneven. A small crock of honey, its lid sticky no matter how often it was cleaned. Porridge steaming gently in a chipped bowl that had survived longer than most tools.
"You're slow today," Rowan said without looking up.
Caelan pulled out the opposite chair and sat. "You woke me early."
"And you still took your time," Rowan replied, pushing the bowl across the table. "Means you're not rushing blind."
Caelan snorted softly and wrapped his hands around the bowl, grateful for the warmth. "Or that I'm tired."
Rowan gave a faint huff that might have been a laugh. Might not. "Eat."
They did, in the quiet that came easily to people who had shared more mornings than they could remember. The only sounds were the scrape of spoon against wood and the soft tick of cooling stone near the hearth.
Rowan's gaze drifted, not sharply, not accusingly—just often enough to be noticed. To Caelan's hands. To his posture. To the way he paused between bites, as if measuring something unseen.
Caelan felt it and pretended not to.
When his bowl was empty, he wiped it clean with the heel of the bread and stacked it neatly. Rowan noticed. He always noticed the small things, the habits that shifted when someone was off balance.
"You'll check the back room after," Rowan said. "Make sure the stores are sound. Air out the grain bins."
"They always are," Caelan replied.
"And you'll still check," Rowan said mildly.
Caelan nodded. Some rules didn't need defending.
Rowan stood and moved to the hearth, stirring the embers with the iron rod. The fire should have answered him. It didn't. Not at first.
Rowan frowned—not sharply, but with the quiet irritation of a man whose tools weren't behaving properly. He added kindling and struck a spark. The flame caught, slow and reluctant, then settled into a proper burn.
"Hm," Rowan muttered.
Caelan felt the shift then. Subtle, but clearer than before. Like a shelf settling unevenly under weight. Nothing breaking. Nothing falling. Just… off.
"You cold?" Rowan asked, not turning around.
"A little," Caelan said. It wasn't a lie. Just not the whole truth.
Rowan nodded and hung the poker back on its hook. He washed his hands at the basin, drying them on a cloth that had been patched too many times to count.
"Same work as always," Rowan said, pulling on his outer coat. "House, stores, tools. If anything's damp, deal with it. If anything's spoiled, mark it."
"All right."
Rowan paused at the door, fingers resting on the latch. He didn't open it right away.
He looked tired, Caelan realized. Not in the way of a man who hadn't slept, but the deeper kind—the weariness that came from paying attention too long, from noticing things that refused to explain themselves.
"Don't rush today," Rowan said at last. "No need to prove anything."
Caelan frowned. "I wasn't planning to."
"I know," Rowan replied.
The answer wasn't reassurance. It was acknowledgement.
Rowan opened the door. Fog pressed close, pale and heavy, curling inward as if curious about the warmth inside. He stepped into it, then hesitated, glancing back once more.
"Keep the kettle warm," he said. "I'll be back before midday."
Caelan nodded. "I will."
The door closed gently. The latch slid home.
Caelan stood alone in the kitchen, listening to the fire settle and the house resume its slow, familiar sounds. The pressure beneath his skin remained, quiet and patient.
Daily things waited to be done. Grain to check. Tools to oil. Floors to sweep.
He took a breath and began.
Outside, the fog did not lift.
Caelan started with the back room.
He always did. It was habit more than instruction, the way some people began a list from the top even when the bottom made more sense. The back room was cool and narrow, its single window shuttered against damp. Grain sacks lined one wall, stacked on pallets to keep them off the stone. Tools hung from pegs Rowan had driven in years ago—hooks for order, not display.
Caelan ran his hands over the sacks, pressing gently, feeling for heat or softness. All sound. All dry. He loosened the shutters a finger's width anyway, letting in a thin blade of fog-muted light.
The moment he did, the pressure under his skin shifted.
Not stronger. Clearer.
He froze, breath held, one hand still on the wood. The sensation gathered in his chest and shoulders, a quiet insistence rather than pain. Like standing in a room where someone else was waiting just out of sight.
Caelan closed the shutter again.
The pressure eased. Not gone—just dulled.
He frowned and leaned back against the wall, rubbing at his sternum through his shirt. You're imagining things, he told himself. He'd spent enough nights alone in the woods to know the difference between imagination and instinct.
This felt… in between.
He moved on, checking the grain bins, counting by habit. Each task grounded him, pulled his thoughts back into familiar shapes. He swept the floor, pausing to wedge a sliver of wood under the table leg that always rocked. He oiled the hinges on the pantry door.
Normal things.
Yet with each step, the house felt tighter around him. The walls closer. The ceiling lower than it had any right to be.
By the time he reached the main room again, his shoulders ached—not from work, but from the effort of staying still.
Caelan stopped near the door.
The latch was cold under his fingers. The fog beyond the wood pressed faintly against it, as if listening. He didn't open it. He knew better than that. Rowan hadn't said not to go out, exactly—but the weight in the house felt like an answer already given.
Instead, Caelan stepped back and leaned his forehead briefly against the doorframe. The wood was solid, familiar. The same frame his father had knocked on that morning. The same place Caelan had leaned as a child, counting heartbeats while waiting for storms to pass.
The feeling surged then.
Not panic. Not fear.
Pressure.
A slow, gathering insistence that had nothing to do with walls or rooms or houses at all. It felt like holding a breath too long, like standing ankle-deep in water while the tide crept higher.
This is wrong, Caelan thought.
Not the house. Not the fog.
Me.
He straightened abruptly, pulse quickening, and crossed the room to the small window over the wash basin. He pushed it open a fraction, just enough to let in air.
The change was immediate.
Cold, damp air brushed his face, carrying the scent of wet leaves and loam. The pressure inside him eased, not fully, but enough that he sucked in a sharp breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Outside, the fog curled through the yard, pale and quiet. He couldn't see the tree line from here—not really—but he knew where it was. He could trace it in his mind without effort: the first line of roots, the shallow rise of ground, the way the forest swallowed sound.
His chest tightened again—not with pressure this time, but with longing.
He closed the window slowly.
The pressure returned.
Caelan swore under his breath, low and startled. He had never felt like this before. Restless, yes. Impatient, often. But this—this was different. This felt like being somewhere you didn't belong, even if you'd lived there all your life.
He paced the room once, then twice, then stopped himself. The floor creaked under his boots, the sound loud in the quiet house.
"Get a hold of yourself," he muttered.
He tried to sit. The chair felt wrong beneath him. Too still. Too contained. He stood again almost immediately.
The pressure swelled, subtle but relentless, as if the house itself were asking him a question he didn't know how to answer.
Caelan closed his eyes and focused on what he knew.
The grain was sound. The fire was lit. The tools were in order. The house was safe.
He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, slow and measured.
It didn't help.
Instead, something else crept in beneath the pressure—a faint awareness, barely formed. A sense of direction without a destination. Like standing on a hill with your eyes closed and knowing which way the valley lay.
The woods, a part of him whispered.
Not words. Not exactly.
Just certainty.
Caelan opened his eyes and looked toward the unseen forest beyond the fog and walls. His hand curled unconsciously at his side, fingers flexing as if testing something invisible.
"I'm staying inside," he said aloud, as if the house—or himself—needed to hear it.
The pressure did not ease.
It waited.