Silvara stood at the forest's edge and watched the survey crew hammer stakes into the ground. Orange flags marked the boundary line where trees would fall. She counted the markers stretching into the distance. Her chest tightened. The permits she'd tracked said construction would start in three weeks. But survey crews came days before breaking ground, not weeks. She pulled the folded map from her coat pocket and spread it across a flat rock. Her handwriting covered the margins in cramped columns. Permit numbers. Filing dates. Estimated timelines. The medieval map underneath showed Fairhaven as it had been centuries ago, when the forest stretched across half the region. She'd traced the consortium's land purchases in red ink, circling each parcel as she discovered it. The circles formed a noose around the green area she'd labeled in careful script. But she'd missed something. The dates didn't match the stakes in the ground. Her calculations were wrong. Not by days. By weeks. The forest had days left, not the three weeks she'd counted on. She pressed her palm against the ancient paper and felt the last thread of her timeline snap. The crew foreman shouted orders near the oldest oak. Two workers drove a metal stake at its roots. The stake had a compass rose etched into its bronze cap. She recognized the design from the consortium's other projects. They marked their claims with those ornate survey markers before they cleared the land. The foreman checked his watch and waved the crew toward their trucks. Silvara folded the map with shaking hands. Her careful tracking meant nothing now. She had to find another way, and she had to find it today. She walked deeper into the forest until she reached the heart spring. The water still flowed from between gnarled roots shaped like an hourglass, the way it had for a thousand years. The trees here remembered when magic was common, when guardians were many. Now only she remained. She knelt beside the spring and touched the water. It warmed under her fingers. The forest was asking her a question she'd been avoiding since she first saw those red circles closing in. Would she fight alone and fail quietly, or would she risk the people she'd tried to protect by bringing them into danger? The survey stakes had taken her careful plan and broken it. She couldn't track her way out of this. She had to choose.