In daylight, the forest looked ordinary.
That was the lie of it.
Sunlight filtered through the branches in thin, patient lines, dappling the ground with gold and green. The damp smell of rot and moss from the night before had softened into something almost pleasant. Birds hopped between low branches, unbothered, and somewhere deeper in, water moved lazily over stone.
If I hadn't been there the night before, I might have laughed at myself.
We stood at the tree line without speaking. The road behind us hummed faintly with the sounds of the town going about its business-doors opening, voices calling, life continuing as it always had.
I took the first step.
I didn't decide to. My body simply moved, drawn forward by a quiet insistence I didn't yet know how to resist. A moment later, I heard Oisín behind me, his boots scuffing softly against the earth.
Neither of us questioned it.
The ruins revealed themselves slowly, as if daylight demanded patience. Moss dulled the stones, and without the night's shadows and strange warmth, they seemed smaller. Less important. Just another forgotten scatter of rock in a country full of them.
Still, my pulse quickened when I knelt beside the carvings.
I brushed my fingers along the etched lines, tracing shapes I recognised now without fully understanding. The figures were clearer in the sun-wolves caught mid-motion, jaws open, bodies half-turned, guarding smaller forms clustered close to their legs.
Protecting.
"They didn't carve these for beauty," I murmured.
Oisín didn't answer right away. He sat a few paces back, arms resting on his knees, watching the forest rather than the stones. His posture was loose, but his eyes never stopped moving.
My eyes lingered on the central slab. In daylight, the seam was barely visible. If I hadn't known to look for it, I might have missed it entirely.
"It looks harmless," I said.
"That's what worries me," he replied.
I glanced back at him. "You believe it, then?"
He exhaled slowly, gaze fixed somewhere between the trees. "I believe something happened here."
That was as close to certainty as he seemed willing to offer.
After a moment, he spoke again, quieter this time.
"My father used to talk about things like this when he drank."
I stilled.
"He'd say the land was watched once. Guarded," Oisín continued. "Not by saints or kings. By something older. Something that didn't need permission."
I turned fully toward him now.
"He said they were beasts," Oisín went on, his mouth tightening. "Men who could become wolves. That they bled for the land so the people didn't have to."
The words settled heavily between us.
"He said when they vanished, everything else fell apart," he said. "The land was left open. Easy to take."
I thought of the carvings. The clustered figures. The watching shapes.
"And did you believe him?" I asked.
Oisín huffed a short, humourless breath. "I thought he was drunk."
He hesitated, fingers digging into the dirt.
"But sometimes," he added, "I think if they'd still been here... maybe my mother wouldn't have left."
The sentence cut off sharply, as if he hadn't meant to say it aloud.
"She ran off with a British soldier," he said, voice flat. "He was stationed nearby. If those things were real-if the land was protected-maybe he wouldn't have been here at all. Or maybe she wouldn't have gone. Or maybe..." He shook his head once. "Maybe I wouldn't have had to grow up so fast."
I didn't know what to say to that. There was no comfort in contradiction.
I looked back at the stone beneath my hands, suddenly aware of how warm it felt again, even in the daylight.
"If they were protectors," I said slowly, "why did they disappear?"
Oisín's gaze flicked to me then, sharp and searching.
"Maybe," he said, "they were driven out."
The forest stirred. A breeze moved through the trees, carrying with it the faintest pressure against my skin-like a hand brushing past, testing.
I pulled my hand away from the stone.
Neither of us suggested leaving.
And that, more than anything, frightened me.
