The soil was warm beneath Jalen's fingertips—warmer than it should have been.
He didn't wear gloves. Gloves dulled the feel of the roots, and the roots—he'd learned—were sensitive. Not in the way people were. Not in a way that could be spoken. But they noticed.
If they didn't like you, they wouldn't grow.
He wasn't sure who had told him that. Maybe no one had. Maybe it was just something the land had taught him, slow and steady, over seasons that bled together without asking for names.
The plants always grew stronger near him. No one said it aloud, but the land had its favorites.
He turned the dirt carefully, palm pressed flat against the earth. Something living stirred beneath. Not a worm. Not a beetle. Just a sense—faint, almost forgotten-of motion.
The kind of motion that didn't disturb anything.
The kind that listened.
Jalen exhaled slowly. His breath brushed the surface of the soil. A few loose leaves clung to his wrist, damp with dew. He shifted his weight and began pulling weeds by hand, careful not to damage the shallow roots underneath. His fingers moved with the rhythm of someone who had done this a thousand times.
Not rushed…. Not idle…... Just steady.
Behind him, the hollow stretched into rows—clean, green, and quiet.
His field. His work. Not much, but enough to keep the guild contract valid. Enough to keep him from needing to leave Bramble Hollow. Enough to avoid hearing stories about system awakenings in the city or dealing with people who chased monsters and Memory drops like trophies.
Here, things grew. Slowly. Properly.
Usually.
He stopped.
There was a stillness—not from the land, but from the air itself.
The kind that arrived before thunder, but without the warning heat.
He looked up.
Nothing moved.
No wind. No birds. No sound.
Just pressure.
Something had shifted.
Not near. Not loud.
But it touched the edge of him, like a thought that wasn't his.
A single dry leaf twisted in the soil.
He blinked.
The moment passed.
The world resumed.
Somewhere farther down the field, a squirrel darted through the grass, startled by nothing. A breeze followed—too late to matter. The quiet folded itself back into normal.
Jalen stood, brushing earth from his palms.
He didn't say anything. Didn't think anything strange.
Not yet.
But the ground where he had been kneeling...
stayed warm.
The rest of the day passed without words.
He carted three bundles to the edge of the property and left them at the marked post for the guild pickup. Tied them with rough twine from the shed, checked the stamps twice, and stacked the bundles the same way he always did. Not because it mattered, but because habit had its own kind of rhythm.
Made stew. Ate it. Washed the pot with cold water drawn from the well. Dried it with the same old cloth he'd used for years. He didn't think about the silence—not really. It had been with him too long to feel out of place.
He watched the sun sink behind the ridge and listened to the frogs waking near the stream.
No system messages.
Not that he ever expected them.
He'd never been called. Never Awakened. The guild didn't care, as long as he kept his output steady and didn't talk too much.
Maybe that was for the best.
Power rarely came without a cost—and no one noticed the quiet ones when the ground stayed still.
Still, he wondered sometimes.
Not about why.
About when.
He didn't envy the ones who'd been chosen.He'd seen what it did to them—how their eyes changed, how their hands shook when they thought no one noticed.Some returned with riches. Some didn't return at all.
But the land... the land never asked anything of him.Not until recently.
Because something in the land had changed.
Not all at once.
Not in a way he could explain.
But the longer he stayed, the more he noticed it.
The soil didn't breathe the same way it used to.
He could remember when it did. Not literally. Not like lungs or wind. But there had been a kind of pulse beneath everything. A give. A quiet heartbeat in the dirt. Now it felt slower. Cautious. As if the ground was holding itself still.
He had mentioned it to Gilbert once. The man just shrugged and said maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was too many iron tools left out too long. Maybe Jalen needed to spend more time in town and less with his fingers in the earth.
Jalen hadn't brought it up again.
That night, it rained.
He didn't remember falling asleep—only waking up to the sound of it. A soft, cold tapping on the roof above his loft.
Jalen lay still beneath the thin blanket, staring at the ceiling.
The rain made everything feel thinner.
As if the distance between one thing and the next had worn down while he slept.
Like he could reach through the floorboards and touch the roots without leaving his bed.
He got up anyway.
The air smelled different outside. Clean—but not empty. Like something had been cleared away. He pulled his coat tight, stepping carefully through the slick grass toward the fields.
The field was soaked, but the ground didn't squish beneath his feet the way it should have. It held him firm and still. He breathed it in like someone who'd forgotten how.
It filled his chest and didn't leave room for anything else.
He checked the perimeter. No animals. No signs of rot.
The strange vines from earlier were gone.
Still, he felt watched. Not in a threatening way. Not quite.
But the kind of awareness that makes a person walk slower, just to be sure.
At the edge of the southern grove, just before the slope, he found something else.
A small, broken mound.
The Earth had shifted upward instead of sinking.
Not enough to notice if you weren't looking for it—
but the kind of thing the land only did when it was trying to forget something.
He crouched. Ran a hand over the surface.
There was a smell.
Not decay. Not quite.
More like... memory.
Like water that had dried up long ago, but left behind the shape of its path.
The scent was older than anything else in the grove.
Not wrong, exactly—but out of place.
He touched the soil again.
Warm like breath.
The ground beneath his hand felt like it had just exhaled.
Jalen's throat tightened. He stood quickly—and for a moment he expected to see a system message.
Some notification.
A log entry.
Hell, even just a warning!
But of course, nothing came.
Only the trees swaying in windless air.
Only the faint rustle of leaves—too quiet to name.
Only the steady sound of rain, soft against the canopy.
He waited longer than he meant to.
He lingered longer than he should have, listening for something he couldn't name.
Not words. Not a call.
Just a feeling that if he stayed still enough, long enough, the ground might answer him back.
Then, under his breath, he almost asked the ground what it wanted.
The words reached his tongue.
But he swallowed them.
He turned and walked back toward the house. His boots left dark impressions in the grass, but the soil beneath them stayed firm.
Watching.
Listening.
He returned just before dawn.
Behind him, the broken mound settled.
Not with gravity—but like something ancient trying to forget it had moved at all.
This time, however, he couldn't fall asleep.
By the time the sky lightened, he was already back in the field. Tools in hand. Knees in the dirt. Trying to lose the feeling that something had watched him all night.
However, the land no longer felt quite the same.It still accepted him. Still welcomed his touch.But something beneath the roots had shifted.
Jalen pressed his palm to the soil and waited.
Nothing stirred.No wind. No system ping. No voice in his head.
Then—
[Quest Received: Local Crop Threat – Investigate Spores]• Note: This message was not meant for you.• Objective: Investigate the unnatural fungal growth.• Status: Observation phase. Avoid direct contamination.• Reward: [Pending]
The message faded before he could react.
He sat back slowly, hand still half-buried in the warm earth.The words echoed in his head, even after they vanished.
Not meant for you.