The standing stones of Craigh na Dun did not just hum; they bled.
The stones didn't answer, but for the first time in years, the silence felt like a promise.
Suddenly, the ground gave way, not into a physical pit, but into a vision. Jamie saw his father, Brian Fraser, standing on this very spot decades earlier. Brian wasn't alone. He was facing a traveler—a woman with eyes like amber and skin the color of toasted honey. She wasn't Claire, but she wore a medical stethoscope around her neck like a silver serpent.
Local legends spoke of the Fuil nan Creagan —the Blood of the Crags. They said that when the moon hung like a silver sickle, the stones would weep a dark, viscous sap. But Jamie, kneeling in the damp heather, saw it for what it truly was: a tear in the fabric of time that was physically hemorrhaging.