The forest is holding its breath. Bob feels it in the way the air presses against his ears, in the way the moss under his knee gives no sound. His fingers close around the object—cool, smooth, not stone, not metal. It thrums against his palm like a second heartbeat. Petunia’s growl starts low in her chest, a vibration Bob feels through the ground before he hears it. He looks up. She’s fixed on a point between two pines, her hackles raised, her whole body a drawn bow. Something moves there. Not with the wind—the wind is still—but against it, a seam of darker dark shifting sideways through the trees. Bob’s breath catches. He can’t look away. Fifty yards back, Johnny Maverick watches from the trail. His guitar hangs silent at his side. A string snapped a moment ago—no reason, no warning—just a clean break that rang through the quiet like a gunshot. He hasn’t moved since. The object in Bob’s hand pulses once. Twice. A rhythm. Not random. Petunia’s growl deepens. Her front paw lifts, hovers, sets down an inch forward. She’s not warning anymore. She’s positioning. Bob’s thumb finds a groove in the object’s surface. It fits, like the thing was shaped for him. The pulse quickens under his skin. The shadow in the trees stops moving. And then, from somewhere deep in the woods, a sound: not animal, not machine. A low, harmonic note that seems to come from inside Bob’s own chest. Johnny’s head snaps up. He knows that tone. It’s the same frequency that’s been haunting his dreams for weeks. Petunia’s growl becomes a single, sharp bark. The shadow shifts again—closer now. Bob scrambles to his feet, the object clutched tight in his fist. He doesn’t know what he’s holding. But he knows he can’t let go. Not yet. Not while something out there is waiting for him to drop it.