The peat keeps you the way a story keeps a bad listener: too close.

The third stake finds no firmness. The blank is only a label with an opinion. It takes your boot, not your life. You go sideways, then down to a knee, then into a cold so complete it is almost a room. The gap you refused to learn with your eyes learns you with your sock.

You do not vanish on this page. Sable’s rule holds in the fen as well as in the hall: Tansy has a plank, Holt has a voice that can sand paint off a stall, Quill will not step the peat and does not need to. They haul you out at the boardwalk, streaming, alive, embarrassed in front of a wren.

You will be sore tomorrow. You will taste peat in your nose at supper. The Atlas sheds a flake with your hurry on it—a small snow of almost-reed. Brask’s line still waits like a bad idea that did not get tired.

Next dry hour, if you are allowed, you will mark the gap with Quill. Hard lesson. Incomplete.

THE END

What you learned: “Waste” on a map is often a choice, not a measurement. Peat and wetland water punish hurry the way a bar punishes a kelpie-chaser—without needing a monster. Getting hauled out muddy is the grade; the Atlas and the fen still need you to try again with your sleeve to yourself.