In the moss-veiled glades of the Elderwood, where the sunlight shimmered through ancient branches like golden mist, the young fawn Ayel skipped beside her grandmother, nose twitching at the scent of clover and cedar.

"Tell me again," Ayel pleaded, eyes wide, "about the Humanfolk."

Her grandmother, a gnarled doe with bark-colored fur and eyes deep as tree hollows, chuckled softly. “You always ask on the cusp of spring.”

Ayel nuzzled her side. “Please?”

The old doe sighed, easing down beside a bubbling stream. “Long ago, before even the Stone Trees rose from the ground, the Humanfolk walked the world. Not padded like us, or feathered like the Skykin, or rooted like the Moss-Singers. No, they were strange — bare-skinned, clumsy on two legs, and loud as storm fire. But they built things, made things, things that defied the breath of the world.”

“Like spells?” Ayel whispered.

“Worse,” the old one said. “They carved mountains. Drained lakes. Stole the sun with towers and fed on fire. The world was not enough for them — they tamed it, and in doing so, began to unravel it.”

Ayel frowned. “But why would they do that?”

The grandmother shook her antlers, slow and tired. “Because they were always hungry. Not for food, but for more. More land, more sky, more time. They never stopped to listen to the wind or the stars. They forgot the language of leaves.”

“Where did they go?”

“No one knows,” the old one whispered. “Some say they destroyed themselves, buried under the weight of their own making. Others believe the Earth, weeping, folded them into myth to keep the rest of us safe.”

Ayel leaned close, fascinated. “Have you ever seen one?”

A silence. Then, the grandmother turned her gaze eastward, to where the ruins of the Iron Hills loomed like broken teeth.

“When I was no older than you,” she murmured, “I saw a thing in the ashfall. A shape unlike any beast. It moved stiffly, breathing smoke, its eyes glowing red. It did not speak. But it stared at me for a long while, as if it remembered something it had forgotten.”

Ayel shivered.

“They were not all cruel,” the grandmother added after a moment. “Some loved. Some wept. They wrote songs so powerful they still echo in the bones of the earth.”

“Will they come back?” Ayel asked, ears flattening.

The old doe nuzzled her gently. “Perhaps. But if they do, let us hope they return not as makers of ruin — but as seekers of balance.”

The forest hushed around them; the stream murmuring secrets to the stones. And far beyond, where vines crept over crumbled steel, something ancient stirred in the silence — the last hum of machines and memory.

A whisper.

A footstep.

A legend, breathing again.