Ynys Rós, the Isle of Thorns
Mist clung low over the waters surrounding Ynys Rós, veiling the isle in a gray shroud that smelled faintly of salt, peat, and elder bark.
Even the sea seemed to hush in its presence, its waves softened by superstition.
Where once stood a scattered grove and crumbling stone huts, there now rose a great ringfort of oak and granite, fused with living root and shaped stone.
The Caer Nemeton, the College of the Druids, had been reborn.
Tall palisades interwoven with hawthorn and rowan bristled outward, each branch sacred and bound in ogham-etched iron.
Inside the ringfort, life thrived in silence. Students, some boys and girls, others grizzled wanderers and widows who had seen too much of war, sat in stone amphitheaters beneath open sky.