Ash woke before the bell, which was rude of his bones.

They ached anyway, so there was no point pretending he’d fallen awake on purpose. He lay on his side in the dark little room, listening to the building settle around him—the creak of the rafters, the muffled stamp of a horse below, the soft scrape of someone in the yard throwing a log onto the inn’s main fire.

His mind did not go back to sleep.

It went to the council house instead: to Osric’s chalk-dusted hands, to Farlan’s red face, to Sera’s steady eyes and Tavi’s thin shoulders. To Hesta’s spoon rapping words into order. To his own mouth, saying things it would have been easier not to.

A week, Hesta had said. We meet again in seven days.

Seven days of waiting. Seven days of half-heard rumors and half-formed fears.

Seven days with the caravan somewhere between “maybe limping” and “maybe overturned and feeding the river fish.”

He stared at the ceiling until it resolved into rough boards instead of a blank dark.

“Useless,” he muttered at himself, and pushed upright.

The air bit cold outside the blankets. He winced as his feet found the floor, then reached for his boots. Leather stiff, laces stubborn—small morning enemies he knew how to fight.

When he opened the shutter a crack, the light outside was a thin grey, barely morning. The village street was mostly empty: a dog nosing at a discarded wrapping, a woman from the far lane hurrying toward the well, breath streaming.

And above it all, cutting across the pale sky like a thrown stone, a small brown bird.

Kindle skimmed low over the rooftops, then rose, wings beating hard, toward the road that led out of the Crossroads and up toward the hills beyond Brookfell’s ridge. It disappeared into the distance, a speck swallowed by the light, then reappeared moments later, arrowing back the same way.

Ash watched it make the trip twice more, the same line, the same turn.

“Showing off,” he murmured. “Or trying to tell someone thick-headed something obvious.”

The bird, being at a distance and a bird, made no comment.

Ash narrowed his eyes in the direction it had flown.

The road to Hallow Bridge lay that way, up past Brookfell and along the Graybend river. That was where Perrin had seen the caravan stuck—broken axles, cursing teamsters, profit and pride both trapped in the snow.

If someone went and looked with their own eyes, they’d know. They’d know if grain was coming at all, or if they needed to stop telling themselves there was a might in it.

Someone.

Not the boys. Not Joran or Hett or any of the other apprentices. Not Sera or Kalen; Brookfell could ill afford to spare them, and the road would eat them raw.

Someone who knew winter roads and the difference between a snowbank and a deathtrap. Someone who’d argued with Crumb at crossroads and lived to complain about it.

“Absolutely not,” Ash told the empty room.

He sat on the pallet for a while longer, boots laced, coat unbuttoned, arguing with himself in his head.

You’re not young enough.

You’re not dead yet.

If you go and the road takes you, they lose another memory.

If nobody goes and the caravan’s lying in a ditch, they might lose more than memory.

They’ll say you’re trying to be him.

You’re not. You’re trying to be yourself.

When his thoughts had gone in enough circles to leave a little groove, he stood, grabbed his staff, and shrugged on his cloak.

If he was going to entertain a mad idea, he might as well see how it sounded out loud.

The mill’s wheel turned slower in the mornings, before the day’s grain arrived.

Ash found Osric in the lower room, bent over a scale, weighing out a sample from one of Deller’s bags. A thin dusting of flour clung to the miller’s hair like early frost.

“You’re going to turn into a sack if you stay in here much longer,” Ash said by way of greeting.

Osric grunted without looking up. “At least then I’d know exactly how much I held.”

“Not as much as you think,” Ash said. “More than you fear. You know. Like usual.”

Osric tipped the grain back into the bag and marked something in chalk on a slate. “If you’ve come to bring more metaphors,” he said, “take a number. I’m still working through yesterday’s.”

Ash leaned his staff against the wall and perched on an upturned crate. “I’ve come,” he said, “to talk about roads.”

Osric’s shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly.

“The caravan,” he said.

“And what we don’t know about it,” Ash replied. “Which is most of it.”

Osric set the slate down with a soft clack. “We had this part of the conversation at the council,” he said. “Perrin’s seen enough to make me assume the worst until we hear better.”

“That’s just it,” Ash said. “He’s seen enough to make us afraid. Not enough to make us sure.”

Osric turned at that, wiping his hands on a cloth. His eyes looked older today, the green of them dulled by too little sleep.

“Are you asking me to pray for better word?” he said. “Because if the saints didn’t listen to Crumb, they’re not likely to pick up when I knock.”

“I’m asking,” Ash said carefully, “what you’d think about someone going to Hallow Bridge.”

The words hung in the air between them. Osric stared at him.

“In this weather,” he said flatly. “On that road.”

“Yes,” Ash said.

Osric barked a humorless laugh. “That’s a fine idea,” he said. “Maybe we can find a lunatic with no sense of his own limits.”

Ash met his gaze and didn’t look away.

“Oh, no,” Osric said. “Absolutely not.”

“I haven’t even asked yet,” Ash said mildly.

“You don’t need to,” Osric snapped. “I know that look. It’s the same one you got when Crumb said, ‘Let’s see what’s on the other side of that ridge,’ and you said, ‘Fine, but we’re bringing extra bandages.’”

“It’s the look,” Ash said, “of a man who is very tired of sitting in rooms arguing about maybes while a piece of the story is sitting out there in the snow.”

Osric’s jaw worked.

“What,” he said, each word hard, “do you think you’re going to do if you get there? Hitch yourself to a broken axle and drag the caravan up the hill?”

“No,” Ash said. “I’m going to look. I’m going to talk. To see if the wagons are moving at all. To see if there are other traders diverting their loads to different routes. To find out whether the blight Perrin heard about is as bad as it sounds. To bring back more than superstition and rumor for you to put in your ledger.”

Osric rubbed a hand over his face, leaving a pale streak through the flour. “You’re not as steady as you were,” he said quietly. “Your leg—”

“Still works,” Ash said. “Slowly. Like the wheel. You trust the wheel with your whole village. You can trust my leg with one road.”

“And if it slips?” Osric asked. “If you fall? If the weather turns and you end up a frozen lump in a ditch somewhere, how does that help us? We lose the only man left who remembers half of Crumb’s stupid ideas and the better half of his good ones.”

“That’s a kind thing to say,” Ash said. “If wildly inaccurate.”

Osric ignored that. “We lose your stories,” he went on. “We lose the piece you carry that none of us can see because we weren’t there. And we gain what? A clearer picture of how we’re going to starve?”

“We gain,” Ash said, “knowing whether we’re walking toward a cliff with our eyes closed, or whether there’s a path we’re not seeing.”

“There’s always a cliff,” Osric muttered.

“And I’ve stood at more of them than you.” Ash’s voice sharpened. “I know the difference between a path that looks bad and holds, and one that looks fine and crumbles. You said yourself yesterday that we’re making these decisions with half our vision. Let me go and widen it.”

Osric’s gaze dropped to the floor, then to Ash’s staff.

“You’re not Crumb,” he said abruptly.

Ash’s chest tightened. “I know,” he said. “Trust me. I know that better than anyone in this valley.”

“Then stop trying to follow the shape of his shadow,” Osric said. “Every time there’s a crisis, you lot look at that hill and say, ‘What would he have done?’ and then you all go and try to reenact it. He’d have gone to the bridge. He’d have gone to Marrowgate. He’d have found a way. Well, he’s not here. And you’re not him. Maybe the way this time is staying home and counting properly.”

“I’m not doing this because I think he would,” Ash said. “I’m doing it because I can’t bear the thought of us choosing a path based on guesswork when there’s a piece missing I might be able to fetch. That’s me, Osric. That’s how I’ve always been. You know it. ‘Crumb says left, Ash says wait, let’s see if the bridge is out first.’ Remember?”

Osric’s mouth twitched despite himself. “I remember you saying, ‘Let’s camp and argue about it till morning.’”

“And we’re going to do that now,” Ash said. “Seven nights of it. And maybe that’s right. Maybe we need the arguing. But I can’t sit through all seven knowing there’s a chance—just a chance—that I could bring you something more solid than rumors about broken axles.”

He shifted on the crate, knee complaining.

“I’m not asking your permission,” he added, more gently. “You’re not my keeper. But I am asking your judgment. If I bring this to Hesta, to the council—if I stand up in that room and say, ‘Let me go’—do you think I’m being brave, or reckless, or just old and restless?”

“Yes,” Osric said.

Ash blinked. “That’s helpful.”

Osric leaned back against the table, arms folded, the lines round his eyes deep.

“You’re being all three,” he said. “Brave, because the road’s no friend to you anymore. Reckless, because you’re not admitting that properly. Restless, because you don’t know how to sit still when things are bad; you have to move, even if the moving doesn’t change anything.”

Ash opened his mouth to protest. Closed it again.

“Also,” Osric added, “you’re being yourself. Which is the only thing that’s ever worked for you.”

“That sounds dangerously like permission,” Ash said.

“It’s not,” Osric replied. “It’s… knowing you. And knowing I can’t tie you to the millstones, much as I might like to. If you’re set on this, you’ll go in your head even if your body stays. At least if you go on your feet, there’s a chance you bring something back.”

He sighed, a long breath that seemed to sink him into his own boots.

“If you’re going,” he said, “you’re not going alone.”

Ash arched an eyebrow. “I’ve walked roads on my own since before you were tall enough to see over a grain sack.”

“And you’ve always walked them better with company,” Osric said. “You said yourself the other day that people need to know heroes misjudge. Well, so do old men. You fall, you need someone to haul you up again. I’ll not let you turn yourself into a martyr on my conscience.”

“Who did you have in mind?” Ash asked dryly. “Farlan? He’d frighten the snow back onto the mountain. Joran’s too green. Hett’s too talkative. Liora would kill me before we left the square.”

“Liora,” Osric said pointedly, “needs to be asked before you go running off anywhere. I’m not going to be the one to tell her you left without a word.”

Ash winced. “I wasn’t planning to leave without a word,” he said. “What do you take me for?”

“A man who forgets he’s liked,” Osric said. “And who forgets that some of us have already buried one friend who thought the road needed him more than we did.”

The words landed between them. They stood for a moment in the quiet hum of the mill, the wheel outside creaking, the river whispering under its ice.

“All right,” Ash said at last, quietly. “I’ll talk to her.”

“And as for company,” Osric added, “I don’t know yet. Someone young enough to pull you out of a drift, old enough not to do anything too stupid. We’ll think on it before the next council. If Hesta doesn’t laugh you out of the room first.”

“Thank you,” Ash said.

“Don’t thank me,” Osric muttered. “If this works, they’ll all write songs about your noble last journey and forget I ever tried to talk you out of it.”

“If it doesn’t,” Ash said, “you can tell them ‘I told you so’ every year at the Vigil.”

Osric didn’t smile. But his eyes warmed a fraction.

“Get out of my mill,” he said. “I’ve got honest grain to argue with. Go find Liora before I decide to chain you to the weigh scale.”

Pathfinder’s Crumb was between rushes.

The morning loaves had mostly gone out under arms and in baskets: coarse rounds, flatbreads, a few coveted honey crusts. The next batch were still rising under cloth. The air inside was warm and yeasty, a small rebellion against the cold.

Liora stood at the back table, forearms dusted with flour, working dough into tight, smooth balls. Each one got the same attention, even the ones destined for the “ugly shelf” where the price was lower and the gratitude higher.

Ash watched her for a moment from the doorway, the angle of her shoulders, the way she leaned into the work just enough. She had always reminded him of a candle flame: bright, flexible, but stubbornly upright.

“If you’ve come to tell me Farlan has a new opinion about my stories,” she said without turning, “you can take it back outside and let the wind have it.”

“I’ve come,” Ash said, “to tell you I’m thinking of being foolish.”

She paused mid-roll and looked up.

“Good,” she said. “You’re more bearable when you admit it.”

He came in and closed the door against the chill, the bell giving a tired jingle.

He waited until she’d finished the tray she was working on. She slid it onto the rack with the others, wiped her hands, and gestured with her chin toward the little table near the window.

“Sit,” she said. “If you fall over while you’re telling me, I’ll never forgive you.”

He sat. She poured him a cup of something hot from the pot near the oven—barely tea, but warm—and sat opposite, folding her hands on the table.

“All right,” she said. “Show me the foolishness.”

He wrapped his fingers around the mug.

“I want to go to Hallow Bridge,” he said. “To see the caravan with my own eyes.”

Her face didn’t change for a heartbeat. Then, very slowly, her brows drew together.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“Yes.”

“In this weather.”

“Yes.”

“On that road.”

“Yes,” he said again. “Do you want to ask about my leg next, or are we saving that for later?”

She ignored the dryness. “Have you talked to Osric?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said I was brave, reckless, restless, and myself.”

“That’s not a no,” Liora muttered. “That’s three insults and a compliment.”

“He also said I shouldn’t go alone,” Ash added.

“Oh, did he?” Her jaw tightened. “And who are you taking? One of Mara’s boys? Tavi? Shall we send the Brookfell girl out to look at the broken wagons she’s pinned her hopes on?”

He winced. “No. Saints, Liora, of course not. I haven’t decided who I’d ask. Osric and I were going to think on it.”

“You were going to think on it,” she corrected. “He was going to stand in his mill and grind his teeth.”

Ash took a sip of the hot drink. It scalded his tongue enough to remind him he was alive.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “because if I bring this to the council first, you’ll hear about it third- or fourth-hand, twisted into something it isn’t.”

“And what is it?” she asked. “In your own words.”

He looked at his hands.

“It’s me,” he said slowly, “not wanting us to sit here and make a choice between half-loaves and empty tables based on stories that might not be true. Perrin saw wagons stuck ten days ago. He heard about blight ten valleys from here. That’s already gone stale. If the caravan’s truly broken, we need to know so we stop counting it in our heads. If it’s merely limping, maybe there’s a chance to talk to the drivers, to see if they’ll reroute, to find out what they’ve heard from other towns. We’re blind in that direction. I… know how to walk where we’re blind.”

Liora’s gaze did not soften.

“You also know,” she said, “what happens when paths look solid and aren’t.”

“I do,” he said. “That’s part of why I trust myself more than some boy who’s never seen a mountain fall.”

She leaned back, folding her arms.

“Do you remember,” she said quietly, “the winter Crumb decided to go to Harrenford in thaw?”

“Yes.”

“He promised me he’d be back by planting,” she said. “He promised me he wouldn’t take any stupid risks. He promised me he’d write if he had to stay longer.” Her mouth twisted. “He kept the last one, I suppose. He wrote. Just not from where I expected.”

Ash said nothing. He saw the letter in his mind’s eye: the creased, dirt-stained page that had come with the trader who carried the news home. Crumb’s handwriting thin and shaky toward the end. Sorry about that. Looks like my timing was worse than I thought.

“I stood in this room,” Liora went on, “with that letter in my hand and the ovens cold, and I thought, ‘That’s what I get for letting a man whose whole life is walking roads make another promise about coming home.’”

Her eyes glinted. “And now you’re sitting at that same table, telling me you want to go and walk one more road.”

He let the words sit a moment before he answered.

“I’m not promising you I’ll come back,” he said. “I’m not young enough or arrogant enough to do that. The road doesn’t sign contracts. What I’m promising is this: if I stay, I’ll sit by the fire hearing ‘perhaps’ and ‘unless’ and ‘maybe’ and knowing there was a piece of ‘is’ I might have brought you. And I don’t know how to bear that.”

She stared at him, breathing slow.

“I’m tired,” she said at last. “Of losing men to paths. Crumb. My father before him. My brother, to a war someone else started on the other side of the hills. Now you want to add your name to that list?”

He felt the sting of that and did not dodge it.

“I’m tired,” he answered quietly, “of watching roads kill people in their beds because we were too frightened to look beyond our own hill.”

They sat with that, the two truths grinding against each other like millstones.

A loaf cracked in the oven as its crust split. The sound made them both flinch.

“Who else knows?” Liora asked.

“Just you and Osric,” he said. “And Kindle, if you count whatever it thinks it’s been doing flying that road like a stitched seam.”

Her mouth quirked despite herself. “Of course you blame the bird,” she said. “You always did like signs that didn’t talk back.”

“I like signs that don’t argue,” he said. “Humans are terrible at being omens.”

She snorted.

“What are you actually proposing?” she asked. “In practical terms. How far, how long, how foolish.”

“Hallow Bridge,” he said. “No further, unless there’s some reason that makes itself clear when I get there. It’s… four days hard walking in summer. In this weather, call it six there and six back, if the drifts aren’t too bad. That’s a fortnight, give or take. If I leave within the next three days, I could be back before the Vigil. Or send word ahead with any trader I meet if I’m delayed.”

“A fortnight,” she said. “On roads Perrin said are closed, in stretches. With a leg that complains when you climb the hill to the Circle.”

“I’ve walked with worse,” he said. “And I won’t be alone. Osric and I will find someone to come with me. Two someones, if we can spare them.”

“And if the snow comes down harder the day you leave?” she asked. “If the Graybend floods under the ice? If you break that leg you’re so fond of and your companion has to choose between dying beside you and leaving you under a tree so they can bring us back your news?”

“Then,” Ash said, voice low, “we’ll have made a choice knowing the risks and taken them anyway. Like every time we ask Osric to carve a sack in half. Like every time you tell a story that cracks someone’s illusion. There is no path without cost. You know that.”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare use my own arguments on me,” she said.

He raised his palms, conceding.

“I’m not asking you to tell me it’s safe,” he said. “I’m asking you whether, when I stand in that council room and say, ‘Let me try,’ you will stand there and say, ‘He’s not chasing glory. He’s trying to fetch back something the rest of us can’t reach.’ Because they’ll listen to you.”

She looked down at her flour-dusted fingers.

“I’m not sure I believe that,” she said. “I’m the one they want to tell them bedtime stories about Crumb, not send them into storms.”

“You’re the Candlekeeper,” he said. “You decide what gets lit. They know that. If you say, ‘This is folly,’ they’ll lean that way. If you say, ‘This is costly sense,’ they’ll squint harder.”

She gave a short, helpless laugh.

“You and Osric,” she said. “You and your cursed insistence on dragging me into the middle of your arguments.”

“You started it,” he said. “You made yourself the person who remembers aloud.”

She rubbed her hands on her apron.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said abruptly. The words came out more naked than she’d meant them to.

He felt them like a hand around his ribs.

“I don’t want to go,” he said, just as plainly. “I like my bed and my bad tea and your oven. I like grumbling at Farlan from the safety of a chair. I don’t enjoy the idea of freezing my tail off on a hillside while some stubborn mule refuses to move because the saints thought it would be funny. But liking comfort and avoiding pain are not the same as knowing what’s right. And if I’ve learned anything from all the years of walking beside idiots with large hearts, it’s that comfort makes cowards faster than any enemy.”

She stared at him for a long time.

Outside, the church bell down in the square rang once—midmorning—its tone thin in the cold.

At last, Liora sighed.

“If I stand with you,” she said slowly, “I’m not doing it because I think the road owes us anything. I’m doing it because if we decide to be cowards, I want to know it wasn’t because no one offered to be brave.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Ash said.

“And if you die,” she added, “I reserve the right to be very angry at you for a very long time. Possibly in public. Possibly at every Vigil until I join you wherever you are.”

“I look forward to being scolded in the afterlife,” he said.

She reached across the table and smacked his knuckles lightly, leaving a ghost of flour on his skin.

“Go,” she said. “Before I change my mind. Osric’s right—you need someone young on that road. Make sure it’s someone you’re willing to listen to when they tell you you’re walking too far in one day.”

“I never walk too far in one day,” he protested.

She gave him a look that said he had, and often.

As he got to his feet, Kindle appeared at the high window, a small brown smudge against the glass. It pecked once, then hopped along the sill, following the line of the road in miniature.

Liora squinted at it.

“If that bird’s going with you,” she said, “I want it to come back in one piece too. I’ve grown used to having my omens in a predictable shape.”

“I don’t own it,” Ash said. “It goes where it wants.”

“Then ask nicely,” she replied.

He nodded gravely at the window.

“If you’re taking requests,” he told the bird, “I could use good weather and quiet feet.”

Kindle tilted its head, then launched itself into the air, disappearing into the washed-out sky.

They met at the Circle that evening because there wasn’t anywhere else big enough for the three of them and all the unsaid things they carried.

The hill was slick in patches, the snow churned by many boots and then refrozen. Ash took it slowly, breath clouding in front of him, staff testing each uncertain patch. Liora came from the bakery road, cloak tight, a lantern swinging from her hand. Osric trudged up from the mill, shoulders hunched, hands buried deep in his coat.

They arrived at almost the same moment and stepped through the ring of stones together.

The fire pit in the center was cold, a shallow bowl of ash and blackened wood. The stones themselves wore caps of snow like old men’s hair.

Ash stood in the middle and turned to face them.

“You’ve both heard it now,” he said. “What I’m thinking.”

Osric scratched at his beard. “Thinking,” he said. “Not decided.”

“I’m past the threshold,” Ash admitted. “My feet are already halfway on the road in here.” He tapped his chest. “The rest is… whether I do it with everyone knowing, or just slip out like a thief.”

“You’re not slipping,” Liora said. “If you go, you go under the bell’s hearing. Hesta’s, too.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I want us to stand together when I say it.”

Osric snorted. “You want us to make you look less mad,” he said.

“I want,” Ash replied, “people to see that this isn’t one old man trying to play Pathfinder. It’s three of us—” he nodded to them— “who have the clearest picture of his footprints, deciding whether to walk in any of them or not.”

They were quiet at that.

A gust of wind slipped over the hill, ruffling Liora’s hair, tugging at Osric’s coat. The lantern flickered.

“You know what they’ll say,” Osric murmured. “Farlan and the rest. ‘He’s trying to be Crumb. First he tells us our hero slipped, now he wants to go slip in his place.’”

“Then we say,” Liora answered, “that Crumb is buried. That Ash walks in his own name. That if the road wants to kill someone, it doesn’t care about the story it takes them from.”

Ash smiled at that, thin but real.

“Will you say it?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“Will you?” he asked Osric.

Osric hesitated longer.

“I’ll say,” he said finally, “that we’re not sending him out for glory. We’re sending him out because I’d rather make decisions with one fewer ‘perhaps.’ And I’ll say that if he dies, it won’t be because we pushed him up there on a pedestal and told him to jump. It’ll be because he chose it with his eyes open, and we chose to let him.”

“That’s more honest than most memorials,” Ash said.

Osric’s mouth quirked. “If you come back,” he said, “I reserve the right to tell you I think you were an idiot anyway.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” Ash replied.

Liora set the lantern down on the nearest stone. Its light painted the snow in warm circles.

“Who?” she asked. “For the road with you.”

They both looked at Ash.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Someone sure-footed. Someone who knows how to listen more than they talk. Someone whose family won’t curse my name forever if the road takes them.”

“So no one,” Osric said dryly.

Liora pinched the bridge of her nose.

“We’ll think,” she said. “Between now and the council. Names will come. Maybe someone volunteers. Maybe Hesta has ideas. Maybe Brookfell does.” She glanced toward the shadow of their hill, invisible beyond the dusk. “They might have a hand to spare more than we think.”

“They don’t,” Ash said. “But they might insist anyway.”

He stepped back, feeling the crunch of old ash under his boot.

“For now,” he said, “I just wanted you to know. And to stand here”—he looked around the ring—“where he stood. Where we all have. So that when we talk about paths next seven-day, we remember the ground under our feet.”

Liora reached out and brushed her fingers over the nearest stone. The melt-line at its base showed where fires had licked up season after season.

“You’re not going to stand on the wood crate in the council house,” she said, “are you? When you make this speech.”

“No,” Ash said. “I leave the furniture-climbing to memory. I’ll stand on the floor with everyone else.”

“Good,” Osric said. “Less distance for you to fall when Hesta throws her spoon at you.”

They stayed a little longer, the three of them in the circle, talking through smaller details. When to leave, if the answer was yes. What to take. How to handle it if they reached Hallow Bridge and found not wagons but a story they hadn’t imagined.

Nothing was decided. Not yet. But the proposal had been spoken aloud in the cold air, shared between more than one chest.

As they turned to go, Kindle dropped out of the dim sky and landed on the center of the fire pit, right where the next blaze would be lit.

It hopped twice, scratched at the ash, then lifted off again, circling once around Ash’s head before vanishing into the dark.

Liora watched it, shivering despite her cloak.

“If that’s not approval,” she said, “it’s a very inconvenient coincidence.”

“Birds don’t approve,” Osric said. “They just look for crumbs.”

“Then we’d better make sure there are some left when you come back,” Liora said to Ash.

He looked down at his feet, at the faint marks their boots had left in the thinning snow.

“Deal,” he said.

They went down the hill together, their three sets of footprints tangling on the path. Behind them, the Circle waited—stones, ash, and the memory of a man who’d once stood there and said, This way.

Ahead of them, the council house bell would ring again in six days.

When it did, Ash would stand there, with Osric’s numbers and Liora’s stories and Kindle’s silent insistence somewhere behind him, and he would say:

Let me walk. Let me look. Let me bring back what I can.

Not as a replacement.

As a man with one more road he was willing to put his feet on for the sake of the people who would have to live with the path they chose.