The smoke began to coalesce into shapes—shadowy, towering figures that mimicked the trees they had just extinguished. They weren't ghosts, but of the land’s own fever.
Kaelen stood on the ridge, his lungs burning. In SoilyQue, the earth was supposed to be the source of life, but now it felt like the land was exhaling a long-held poison. As the smoke touched the edges of the village, the vibrant blues and purples of the flora flickered and died, leaving behind nothing but .
The sky over didn’t just turn grey; it turned heavy.
Kaelen gripped his spade, the tool vibrating in his hand. To clear the air, they wouldn't need wind; they would need to descend into the heart of the smoke and find where the earth had cracked. They had to heal the soil before the became the only thing left to breathe.
"It's the breath of the Old Core," his grandfather whispered, appearing beside him with a mask of woven roots pressed to his face. "The balance has tipped. We took too much from the deep soil, and now the dark is taking it back."
It wasn't like wood smoke or the exhaust of a machine. It was thick, oily, and moved with a predatory intelligence. It didn't drift with the wind; it crawled against it, draping itself over the bioluminescent crops like a suffocating velvet shroud.
/1 
