They found the first anomaly just past the orchard, a tree with bark like polished metal and leaves made of glass. It hadn't been there yesterday. The trunk was rooted deep in the earth, and the air around it shimmered faintly, like heat off a road. When Lucy reached out to touch it, a pulse of light radiated outward, and for a moment, they all heard a melody that didn't belong to any human instrument. Then silence.
"It's spreading," Rose said. "The memory. The Vault, it wasn't just inside us. It rewrote something. The island's changing with us."
Grace knelt beside the tree, fingers brushing its roots. "It's not wrong. Just different. Like it was waiting for a reason to evolve."
Jude knelt beside her. "Then this is what comes next. Not apocalypse. Not rebirth. Transformation."
By evening, more anomalies had surfaced.