Verity crouched beside the carved stones and pulled her journal tighter against her chest. The rain had started again. Three months of work sat in her lap, ink already bleeding through the edges of yesterday's entries. She needed somewhere dry to keep the notes safe. Somewhere close enough to work, hidden enough to stay hers. She hauled the canvas tent into the clearing before dawn. The wooden poles slid together easier than expected. She angled the entrance away from the path, tucked it between two birches where the canopy was thickest. Inside, she unfolded the desk surface and tested its weight with both palms. Solid. She set her journals down in a careful stack, then pulled out her latest transcription. The glyphs stared back at her, their wedge-marks catching the morning light. Now she could spread them out without fear. Now she could see what the patterns were trying to tell her. But the tent alone wasn't enough. She stepped outside and studied the monolith rising from the forest floor. Someone had carved it long ago, stacked the stones with intention. Words covered every surface, dense and deliberate. Most passersby would assume it was part of the original site. She walked the perimeter, measuring sight lines. From the main path, it blocked the tent completely. She dragged fallen branches across the gap between two trunks, then stepped back. The shelter disappeared behind stone and shadow. Her work could continue. The glyphs could keep their secrets a little longer. Then she noticed the ruins. Brownish burgundy stones scattered thirty paces east, half-buried in moss and decades of leaf fall. An archway still stood, one wall mostly intact. She walked closer and ran her hand along the weathered surface. The stone was dry inside, protected by what remained of the roof. She could move her oldest notes here, the ones too fragile for the tent's humidity. The setup would split her workspace, but it would also split the risk. If someone found one cache, they wouldn't find everything. She returned to the tent and gathered the first stack of journals. The forest had given her what she needed. Now the real work could begin.