Apollo felt the bow vibrate against his back in harmony with the gold in his veins, both responding to this clear manifestation of Poseidon's power. He kept his expression carefully neutral, though his mind raced with implications.

The connection was stronger than he'd realized, Cale's dormant heritage responding to the symbols of his divine ancestor with increasing intensity.

"What in all hells was that?" Thorin demanded, rounding on Cale with undisguised suspicion. "First the water, now this stone, what aren't you telling us, boy?"

"Nothing!" Cale protested, scrambling to his feet. Sand clung to his knees, pale against the dark fabric of his trousers. "I don't know why these things are happening!"

"Leave him alone," Mira stepped between them, her earlier dreaminess hardened into protective fury. "He's as confused as the rest of us."

"Is he?" Thorin's thick eyebrows drew together, his gaze shifting between Cale and Apollo with growing suspicion. "Strange things have followed us since we entered this forest, but they've gotten stranger since we found that spring. Since the water reacted to him."

"That doesn't make it his fault," Mira insisted.

"No? Then whose fault is it?" The dwarf's voice rose, echoing through the suddenly still forest. "These aren't coincidences. Shells appearing in a forest. Salt in the air a hundred leagues from the sea. Stones that light up at his touch. He's attracting something, and I want to know what before it gets us all killed!"

"You're being ridiculous," Mira shot back. "Cale hasn't done anything wrong!"

"I didn't say wrong," Thorin growled. "I said dangerous. There's a difference."

The argument spread, voices rising and falling as the group fractured along invisible lines. Nik sided with Mira, his loyalty to Cale unshaken despite his own obvious unease. Renna remained neutral, her hunter's pragmatism keeping her focused on survival rather than blame.

Cale himself stood silent, his face pale beneath its tan, fingers still tingling from contact with the ancient stone.

Through it all, Lyra watched, not just Cale, but Apollo. Her green eyes moved between them with that same calculating assessment, piecing together a puzzle whose shape was becoming clearer with each strange occurrence.

"Enough," Apollo said finally, his voice cutting through the arguments. "Blame solves nothing. We need to keep moving before dark."

The bow pulled him eastward with renewed urgency, its guidance no longer gentle but insistent, almost demanding. Whatever waited ahead had grown more important, more immediate with each step they took.

They continued in tense silence, the group no longer a cohesive unit but a collection of individuals bound by circumstance rather than trust. Thorin walked apart, his axe no longer secured at his back but held loosely in his hand, ready.

–

The silence weighed on Apollo's shoulders as heavily as the bow across his back. No one had spoken since Cale's hand had touched the carved stone, lighting it up like a beacon in the growing dark. The group moved in fragmented formation now, their earlier cohesion shattered by suspicion.

'They're breaking apart,' Apollo thought, watching Thorin's rigid posture ahead. The dwarf's shoulders were bunched beneath his pack, one hand never straying far from his axe. 'Just when we need unity most.'

Thorin spat on the ground, his voice carrying back to them all. "I don't trust any of this. First the water responds to him, now stones light up at his touch? What's next, trees bowing as he passes?"

"Leave him be," Mira snapped, positioning herself protectively beside Cale. Her injured arm was cradled against her chest, but her good hand rested meaningfully on her knife. "He's done nothing wrong."

"He's done nothing he understands," Nik added, his usually cheerful face uncharacteristically serious. "That doesn't make it dangerous."

Renna moved ahead of them all, her hunter's instincts driving her to scout their path rather than engage in the argument. She slipped between trees with practiced ease, occasionally pausing to examine something on the ground before continuing.

The bow pulsed against Apollo's spine, more insistent than ever. It wasn't merely guiding him now but demanding, its vibration intensifying with each step east until it felt like a living thing pressing between his shoulders.

The sensation bordered on pain, a constant, rhythmic thrumming that matched the quickening pace of the gold in his veins.

He caught Lyra watching him, her green eyes missing nothing, not the way his hand occasionally reached back to adjust the bow's position, nor the slight wince that crossed his face when its vibration peaked. She shifted her gaze to Cale, then back to Apollo, her expression unreadable.

'She's connecting us,' Apollo realized. 'Seeing patterns I'd rather remain hidden.'

"The soil's changing," Renna called back, her voice cutting through the tense silence. She knelt, fingers sifting through what lay beneath the sparse underbrush. "It's... sand?"

Apollo moved forward, the bow's thrumming intensifying as he joined the hunter. She was right. The dark forest loam had given way to something paler, coarser, unmistakably sand that crunched beneath his boots. Not the fine-grained, white sand of beaches, but something rougher, mixed still with soil and forest debris yet undeniably out of place this far inland.

"More shells too," Renna added, holding up a spiral the size of her thumbnail. "And look at this." She pointed to what Apollo had mistaken for a twisted root, a piece of driftwood, bleached and smooth, half-buried in the sandy soil.

As they pressed on, the transformation became impossible to ignore. Patches of sand expanded, connecting like islands joining to form a continent across the forest floor. Shells appeared with increasing frequency, not just tiny specimens but larger conchs and scallops that would normally require proximity to the sea.

Mira bent to retrieve a strand of dried seaweed, turning it wonderingly between her fingers. "It's beautiful," she murmured, her earlier defensiveness momentarily forgotten. "But how? We're nowhere near the coast."

"It's a curse," Thorin muttered, kicking at a particularly large conch with the toe of his boot. "This whole forest is wrong. Now it's trying to become something else entirely."

Cale had grown increasingly restless as they traveled. His steps quickened, then slowed, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

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