Marina felt it at dawn.

She was at the boundary stones running her morning check, the same sweep she did every two hours, when something hit the edge of her shadow magic like a finger tapping glass. Faint. Directional. Gone almost before she registered it.

She went completely still.

She pushed her magic toward where the tap had come from, down and outward, following the angle of it through the ground the way you followed a thread back to its source. The Grove's old channels ran beneath everything, deep and interconnected, and something had just used them.

Something small. Something warm. Something that felt like russet-red and sun-heated stone and...