Moonglade was not like other places.
The air tasted different here. Cleaner. Older. The trees did not simply grow, they stood, as if they had been planted by hands that understood what permanence meant. Durn had always felt at peace in this sanctuary. It was the one place where the weight of the world's imbalance lifted from his shoulders.
This time, it did not.
He found Archdruid Keeper in the grove of elders, reading beneath a canopy of silver leaves. The old night elf looked up as Durn approached, and his expression shifted, not surprise, but recognition. As if he had been expecting Durn to arrive with something troubling.
Durn placed the carapace fragments on the stone table between them.
Keeper studied them for a long time. His fingers traced the ridged edges, the dark sheen, the places where the shell had splintered into jagged points.
"Where did you find these?"
"Northern Feralas. Embedded in a dead panther."
Keeper said nothing. He picked up the largest fragment and held it to the light, the way one might examine a wound that had not healed properly.
"We have found similar pieces," he said at last. "In the Barrens. In Desolace. On the fringes of Un'Goro. Always the same, black shell, sharp edges, no known origin."
"What are they?"
Keeper set the fragment down. "We do not know. Not fully. But we know they come from the south. From a desert where the earth itself has begun to stir."
"And?"
"And we are watching. But watching may not be enough much longer."
Durn waited for more. None came.
He gathered the fragments and left the grove with more questions than he had arrived with. The Circle knew. The Circle was concerned. But the Circle was not acting.
Radomir was waiting at the edge of the sanctuary, leaning against a pillar of ancient stone.
"Well?"
"They know," Durn said. "But they will not say what they know."
"That bad?"
"That bad."
They left Moonglade together and turned east, toward the trade roads that led to Ratchet. Radomir had mentioned goblins there, contacts who might be able to procure the two diamonds he needed. Durn was not comfortable with goblins, but he trusted Radomir's judgment.
For two days they walked through the northern Barrens. The landscape opened up, the dense forests of Feralas giving way to golden savannah and red dust. The air grew warmer. The sky stretched wider.
On the third day, they found the camp.
It had been a Cenarion Circle outpost once. Durn recognized the markers, the layout, the remnants of prayer flags still hanging from a collapsed post. But the tents were torn. The supply crates were splintered. The ground was churned and blackened, as if something had erupted from below.
They picked through the ruins in silence.
Radomir found the first fragment. Then Durn found more. The same black shell, the same jagged edges, scattered through the wreckage like seeds.
Radomir held one up, his face unreadable.
"This is not the first time," he said quietly.
Durn shook his head.
He thought of the panther. The silent groves. The worried eyes of the Archdruid Keeper. The destroyed outpost at his feet.
Something was coming from the south.
And it had already begun to arrive.