Patch didn't calm down even after we left the distortion site.Her tail kept flicking sharply, like her instincts were firing warnings faster than her body could handle.
I circled the right-side mound again.Same grass.Same slope.But something underneath… shifted.
I knelt and pressed my palm to the soil.
A chill shot straight up my arm.Not cold—structured.Like touching the surface of a machine pretending to be earth.
The symbol flashed again.
This time longer.Half a second.A white curve crossing a straight line, forming something between a letter and a function.
It felt like trying to read a sentence before learning the alphabet.
Patch pawed the ground beside me, claws digging into the dirt.She wasn't trying to attack.She was trying to uncover something.
"Hey—slow down. What do you—"
The mound pulsed.
A long, slow exhale.Like the entire hill was breathing beneath us.
My shadow flickered in response, edges blurring like a corrupted frame.
Then the ground under my hand softened.
Not mud.Not sand.
More like skin shifting under pressure.
I jerked my hand away.
The soil hardened instantly, as if nothing had moved at all.
"…Okay. That was real."
The air tightened.Pressure rolled across the park, subtle but unmistakable—like a giant unseen hand pushing down.
Patch backed up, ears flat.Her eyes weren't on the mound anymore.
They were locked on the UFO sculpture.
I followed her gaze.
The metal plates…were vibrating.Not visibly—no shaking.Just a faint resonance, humming in the bones of the park.
A warning signal.Or a seal straining.
The symbol flashed again—third time today—burning cleaner, sharper.Almost readable.
A single thought hit me without sound:
"It's weakening."
Wind swept through the park, breaking the tension for just a moment.
But the truth stayed:
The mounds weren't just landscape.They were containment.
And something beneath them had started to wake up.