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The Grand Plaza could hold five thousand people when packed. Tonight, it held closer to seven thousand, bodies pressed together in the fading light, fear thick enough to taste.

Cressa stood near the back, hood pulled low over her face, trying to be invisible one last time. It would not work. She knew it would not work. But old habits died hard, and invisibility had kept her alive for twenty years.

The platform at the center of the plaza rose ten feet above the crowd, constructed of white marble that glowed in the light of enchanted lanterns. The Council stood arrayed across it in their formal robes, five elven lords and ladies who had governed Atheria for centuries. They looked like statues carved from ice and arrogance.

Lord Korran stood at the center.

He was exactly as Calix had described him. Distinguished. Authoritative. The kind of leader people wanted to trust because the alternative was admitting they had been deceived. His silver hair was pulled back from a face that showed age without weakness, and his voice carried across the plaza without effort or amplification.

"Citizens of Atheria," he began. "We gather tonight in crisis."

The crowd fell silent. Even the children stopped fidgeting.

Korran let the silence stretch, a masterful pause that built tension like a drawn bow. "For months, our beloved city has suffered. The blight spreads. Our crops fail. Our magic weakens. The Heartwood, source of all life in Atheria, is dying."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Fear given voice.

"We have investigated every possibility," Korran continued. "We have consulted our finest scholars. We have searched for natural causes, for environmental factors, for any explanation that might absolve those we wish to protect." His expression hardened. "We have found none."

Cressa's hands clenched beneath her cloak. She knew what was coming. Every fairy in the crowd knew what was coming.

"The blight is not natural," Korran said. "It is sabotage. A deliberate attack on the Heartwood by those who would see our great city fall."

The murmurs grew louder, angrier.

"The evidence is irrefutable. The corruption originates in the fairy district. It spreads through channels that only fairy magic can access. And those responsible..."

Movement to Korran's left caught Cressa's attention. Lord Riven stepped forward, his silver armor catching the light like a beacon. He stood at parade rest beside his mentor, gray eyes scanning the crowd with methodical precision.

Their gazes locked.

Even at this distance, even with the hood shadowing her face, he found her. His eyes narrowed fractionally, and Cressa felt the weight of his recognition like a hand around her throat.

He gestured to the guards positioned around the plaza's perimeter.

They began to move through the crowd, pushing people aside, heading directly toward her position.

Cressa's pulse spiked. She could run. Disappear into the alleys and never come back. But Calix was right. Running meant everyone else paid the price.

The guards formed a circle around her, hands on sword hilts. People backed away, creating a clearing in the packed plaza. Faces turned toward her, curious, frightened, already convinced of her guilt because the Guard had singled her out.

"Remove your hood," one guard commanded.

Cressa reached up with steady hands and pulled the fabric back. Let them see her human features. Let them see she was not what they expected.

The guard's expression flickered with confusion. "You are..."

"Nobody," Cressa said quietly. "I am nobody."

But Korran's voice rang out across the plaza, cutting through the murmurs. "Bring her forward."

The guards did not give her a choice. They formed an escort and marched her through the crowd toward the platform. People drew back as she passed, as if guilt were contagious, as if merely touching her cloak might mark them as collaborators.

Cressa kept her eyes forward and her breathing steady. She had survived worse than public humiliation. She would survive this too.

They stopped at the base of the platform. Korran looked down at her with an expression of calculated concern, a leader forced to condemn someone he wished he could save.

It was a masterful performance.

"Your name," he said gently.

"Cressa."

"Your profession?"

"Herbalist."

"And your race?" This question came with weight, with anticipation.

"Human." The lie came easily. She had told it so many times it almost felt true.

Korran's eyes narrowed. "Are you certain?"

Before Cressa could answer, the Heartwood screamed again.

This time, everyone felt it. The pain was not physical but magical, a wrongness that hit every enchantment in the city simultaneously. Lanterns flickered and died. Wards collapsed. The ground beneath them trembled, and this time there was sound, a deep groaning that came from beneath the plaza itself.

The crowd erupted into chaos. Screaming. Running. Trampling each other in their desperation to escape whatever was happening.

Cressa looked past Korran to the Heartwood itself, visible beyond the Council buildings. The massive tree dominated the city center, its branches spreading across half the sky. It had been green this morning.

Now it was gray.

Black veins crawled across its bark like infection, spreading visibly even as she watched. Leaves withered and fell in cascades, raining down on the plaza like ash. The corruption was not gradual anymore. It was accelerating.

"The tree," someone shouted. "The Heartwood is dying!"

Panic rippled outward from that realization. Atheria without the Heartwood was death. The magic that powered their lights, their wards, their entire civilization flowed from that tree. If it died, they all died.

The crowd turned on the nearest fairies with terrifying speed.

Cressa saw it happen in fragments. A woman with butterfly wings dragged from the crowd. A child with pointed ears crying as his mother tried to shield him. Violence sparked like wildfire, spreading faster than the guards could contain.

She moved without thinking. Pushed past the guards surrounding her and ran toward the child.

His mother was bleeding. The child was screaming. A man with a merchant's apron stood over them both, fist raised for another strike.

Cressa grabbed his arm. "Stop."

He turned on her with rage-bright eyes. "Fairy-lover. You are one of them, aren't you?"

"No." She met his gaze without flinching. "But they are innocent. The child is innocent."

The man shook her off and raised his fist again.

Golden light exploded from Cressa's hands before she could stop it. Pure. Blinding. Flooding the plaza with warmth and power that had nothing to do with corruption or blight.

The man stumbled backward, shielding his eyes. The crowd around them froze, staring at the impossible light radiating from a woman who was supposed to be human.

Cressa looked down at her hands, at the golden glow that painted her skin, and felt twenty years of careful hiding shatter like glass.

Riven's voice cut through the silence. "Seize her."