The mire answers back.
A spell leaves a trace in the parish. Small willow bundles splinter, selected growth blackens, ash settles, and ripples spread where a seed reaches water.
The second step in Shaun’s chosen order gives the spells something to act on beyond their targets. We kept this pass small and concrete: a family of brittle props, patches of growth that can char, and water that responds at the real point of contact.
Small things can break
Nine brittle willow bundles sit beside the existing routes and clearings. A seed that actually crosses one throws off a few splinters and leaves a low blackened stump. Ground Remembers breaks nearby bundles when its eruption lands. A shot above a bundle or stopped by the ruin leaves it intact.
Twenty-seven nearby clumps can char. Bloom does this on its first damage pulse; later pulses do not keep piling up duplicate responses. The blackened growth and broken props last until the match restarts. There are no extra soul rewards.
Before the traces
The protected 0.5.12 build ran the same camera and casts. Its spells have the ember art and sound from the previous increment, but the new brittle props and charred aftermath are absent. We have not changed the terrain heights, collision or routes.
Water answers at the surface
A descending seed can disturb the mana font or a flooded hollow. Small drops rise and concentric ripples spread at the actual water height. Their footprint is clipped at the shoreline, so the ring does not simply draw across the dry ground around it.
The response follows the swept projectile segment and preserves its existing collision and damage. Area spells can also stir a wet point within their affected space, with solid cover checked. Water gets a disturbance rather than a dry scorch patch.
Grain carried into the game
The brittle bundle and splinter were made from scratch in Blender. They are small meshes: 378 and 26 triangles. A first export lost the procedural wood material and appeared too pale in Godot. We preserved that rejected candidate, then baked the original grain, normal detail and roughness into 512 pixel maps.
The studio render shows the resulting source. Direct Blender and release-app computer-use inspection is still pending because the Mac locked during this increment. The rendered game fixtures, Blender renders and independent pack checks completed; we have not labelled the unavailable UI check as passed.
A bounded layer of consequences
Scorch and ash follow the real terrain. At most sixteen scorch patches live for thirty seconds, while twelve fragment or water bursts form a separate short-lived pool. Pause freezes their motion and restart restores the selected props and clears the effects. This pass adds no physics debris, whole-tree destruction or terrain craters.
The complete regression passed 1,029 assertions, including 46 reaction checks and the existing spell, control, soul, courier and ritual coverage. The exact Mac pack passed 218 asset and exclusion checks plus the 46 focused checks. Release startup, signature, archive integrity and preserved checkpoints also passed. No new sustained performance or human art, sound and combat acceptance is claimed.
Next in the agreed order: attack anticipation, contact and recovery for the current creatures, plus a readable Brute area slam. Roaming and leashed neutral camps follow after that.