By late afternoon, the light over the Crossroads had the thin, exhausted quality of a candle burned too low.

Liora could feel it in the bakery. The windows were pale squares, not much use to see by; most of the real work was done in the reach of the oven’s glow and the lamplight over the counter. Outside, the snow in the street had turned to a grey crust, trodden and refrozen, throwing back what little brightness the sky had left.

Inside Pathfinder’s Crumb, warmth clung stubbornly to the air. The last batch of the day sat on the cooling racks: a row of plain rounds, two pans of oat flats, and a tray of small, uneven rolls that she would tell anyone were “for practice” and then slip into hands that didn’t have coin.

She was shaping dough for the morning when the bell over the door rang.

Sera stepped in first, cloak dusted with snow, Tavi on her heels. The girl’s hair was braided back in a hasty plait, wisps escaping around her face. She looked thinner in this light, like someone had sketched her in charcoal and forgotten to go back and fill in the lines.

“Right on cue,” Liora said. “I was about to send your names up the chimney for the saints to come collect you if you hadn’t shown your faces today.”

Sera smiled, the expression tired but real. “We wouldn’t miss a day while we’re still in walking distance,” she said. “We’re heading back tomorrow or the next. Wanted to settle our account.”

“You’ll do that by outliving this winter,” Liora said briskly. “The rest we can tally in crumbs.”

She wiped her hands and reached for a loaf from the “ugly” shelf—one that had risen a little sideways, crust darker in patches. It would taste no different. She set it on the counter.

Tavi’s eyes fixed on it the way they always did, with a mixture of hunger and something like reverence. Bread meant more when you’d watched it thin.

“How far will this have to stretch?” Liora asked, keeping her tone light.

“Four days, if we’re careful,” Sera said. “Six, if we’re saints. We’re hoping for something between.”

“We’re not saints,” Tavi muttered softly.

“Speak for yourself,” Liora said. “I’ve seen you hand your last bite to your brother before. That counts for something on someone’s ledger, even if it’s not Osric’s.”

The door opened again. Cold slid in along with Farlan’s eldest boy, Hen, shaking snow from his cap. He looked around, spotted Tavi and Sera, and smirked in the way of boys who have been listening to grown-ups talk too much.

“Ma says we’ll be down to half loaves soon,” he announced to no one in particular. “Says if Brookfell weren’t hanging off us like burrs, we could eat properly.”

Liora’s spine stiffened.

“Ma should come say that herself,” she said. “If she wants to start a conversation in my bakery.”

Hen shrugged, enjoying the attention. “Da says we’ll be lighting candles to Crumb and asking him why he gave our bread away to people who can’t manage their own fields.”

“Hen,” Liora said quietly, “do you like having both eyebrows?”

The boy blinked. “Yes?”

“Good,” she said. “Because if you keep repeating half-chewed words in my shop, I’ll take a candle and singe them off. Then you can tell your da the Candlekeeper did a worse thing to you than any Brookfell mouth has done to our bins.”

That got a laugh from the two women at the window and from old Rellen in the corner, who was nursing his daily crust and tea. Hen flushed, torn between indignation and the sense that he’d walked into deeper water than he meant.

He grabbed the small loaf Liora had set aside for his family and stomped out, the bell ringing indignantly behind him.

The bakery felt quieter in his wake.

Tavi’s cheeks had gone pale under their windburn. She stared at the counter as if it might lower its eyes first.

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly.

Liora blinked. “For what?”

“For… hanging off you,” Tavi whispered. “Like a burr. For taking your bread. We’re trying to manage our fields. We just… the ground…” She trailed off, words eaten by shame.

Sera put a hand on her shoulder. “Tavi,” she began.

“No,” Liora said.

She came around the counter, wiping her hands on her apron, and crouched so she was level with the girl.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You are eleven years old.”

“Twelve,” Tavi muttered automatically.

“Even better,” Liora said. “You are twelve. You are allowed to take bread from people who have enough to share without apologizing for the whole hill you live on. If Farlan has complaints, he can bring them to the Circle and shout at people his own size.”

Tavi’s throat bobbed.

“But they’re right,” she said wretchedly. “We carved his words over our door. We came here with emptier packs than last year. We keep asking. What if they… what if you… get tired of us?”

Sera closed her eyes briefly. “Tavi—”

Liora put a hand up, asking silent permission. Sera let out a breath and nodded.

“There’s tired,” Liora said, “and there’s done. I’m tired of blight. I’m tired of thin soup. I’m tired of listening to Farlan talk like Crumb owes him fresh bread from beyond the grave. I am not done with Brookfell. Or with you.”

Tavi’s eyes shone, but she didn’t blink.

“And if some people are?” the girl asked.

“Then they get to sit at the Vigil,” Liora said, “and look you in the face when we decide together how much hurt we’re willing to carry. If they want to say, ‘We’re closing our fists while you go hungry,’ they’ll have to do it where the fire can hear. That does things to people’s courage.”

Sera’s hand tightened on Tavi’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Liora rocked back on her heels. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “You haven’t heard what half-bread does to my temper.”

That earned a small, unwilling snort from Tavi. The girl swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Here,” Liora said, standing. She went to a shelf behind the counter and took down a narrow beeswax candle, its wick still white and unburned. She came back and held it out.

“We’ve been doing this, since he died,” she said, to both of them. “It’s not a formal thing, just… a habit. For the week before the Vigil, every house lights one candle each evening, just after dark. We call them watch lights. One flame, one room, one hour where we remember he was a person in the middle of winter, not just a story we drag out on special days.”

Sera took the candle carefully, like it might break. “We don’t have extra wax to burn,” she said. “Not really.”

“This one’s mine,” Liora said. “Not the bakery’s. If anyone complains, I’ll singe their eyebrows too.”

Tavi smiled, small and quick.

“Light it tonight,” Liora said. “Think whatever you need to think. About him. About promises. About being tired. You don’t owe the flame anything in particular. Just… don’t sit in the dark and pretend you’re alone.”

“Thank you,” Sera said again, and this time Liora let her.

As they turned to go, Kindle appeared on the sill outside, a smear of brown against the grey. It hopped along the narrow stone, pecked at a fleck of ice, and then tilted its head, black eyes bright.

Tavi saw it and stopped, hand on the door latch.

“It really does come and go as it pleases, doesn’t it?” she murmured.

“Yes,” Liora said. “Like sense. And storms.”

Kindle flicked its wings, as if offended by being compared to either, then launched itself into the air. It flew low over the square, then up toward the hill, vanishing into the flattening light.

Tavi watched it go, something unreadable on her face.

“We’ll see you at supper,” Sera told Liora. “Lys said she’d let us chop something in exchange for stew.”

“Tell her I said not to make you earn every mouthful with blisters,” Liora replied.

The bell jingled as they left. The cold rushed in and then was gone again.

Liora went back to her dough. For a while, the only sounds were the slap of it on the table and the faint, contented mutter of the oven.

She did not see that, halfway between the bakery and the inn, Tavi hesitated when her mother detoured toward the well to talk to Zora.

She did not see Kindle reappear on the fountain’s edge, hop twice, and dart up the street toward the hill.

She did not see Tavi follow it with her eyes, jaw tightening, then slip away around a cart, candle clutched to her chest.

By the time Ash reached the bottom of the inn’s stairs that evening, the common room was caught halfway between supper and gossip.

Bowls clinked. Farlan’s voice rose and fell in the corner like a badly tuned bell. Lys wove between tables with a pot of thin stew, topping up those who had coin and looking the other way when those who didn’t tipped theirs at just the right angle.

Ash took his usual spot near the hearth, easing himself onto the bench with a sigh that was low but heartfelt. Kindle, perched on the mantel, cocked its head at him as if evaluating his posture.

“Don’t start,” he told it. “I’ve already had Osric and Liora today. My quota of disapproving looks is full.”

The bird hopped closer, eyeing the bit of crust he’d palmed from his plate. He broke it in two and held out a piece. Kindle snatched it neatly, crumbs dusting the air, then took off toward the rafters, where it disappeared into shadow.

Ash let his shoulders relax. The warmth from the fire soaked into his knees, almost enough to make him forget how they’d feel in the morning.

He was halfway through his stew when Sera came in.

She moved fast, cloak unfastened, hair escaping its knot. Her eyes swept the room once, sharp and searching.

“Lys,” she called, too loudly for the space. “Have you seen Tavi?”

The innkeeper turned from the table she was serving. “Not since you went to the well,” she said. “I thought she was with you.”

Sera’s fingers tightened on the doorframe.

“She said she was going inside,” Sera said. “I went to fill the bucket. When I came back… she wasn’t on the steps. I thought she’d come in here.”

“She’s not upstairs,” Kalen rasped from his corner. He’d been mending a strap by the window. His face was suddenly all hollows and sharp edges. “I checked.”

A silence fell around them, thick and instant.

“She knows better than to wander,” Lys said, but there was worry under her words. “Maybe she’s at the bakery?”

“I just came from there,” Sera said. “Liora said she left with me.”

Ash had set his bowl down. He pushed himself to his feet.

“How long?” he asked.

Sera looked at him as if only just noticing he was there.

“An hour?” she said. “Two? I was at Zora’s longer than I meant. We started talking about nets. I assumed—” Her voice thinned.

“An hour in this cold,” Ash muttered. Dusk had already fallen; the light outside was the blue of old bruises. “All right.”

He grabbed his staff from its place by the hearth.

“Where would she go?” Lys asked, moving toward them. Her eyes flicked automatically toward the square, then uphill.

“Not home,” Kalen said. “She’d never try to walk the whole way in the dark. She knows the road.”

“Does she?” Ash murmured. “She knows it from above. In stories. On good days.”

He thought of Kindle’s path that morning, stitching the sky toward the hills.

“Someone saw her,” he said. “Someone always does.”

They swept the square in a fast, purposeful circuit, asking, checking doorsteps, peering into shadows. It didn’t take long to find a trail of sorts: Mara’s youngest, panting from being hauled out of the wash basin by his ear, said he’d seen Tavi “going up, toward the Circle, with a bird.” Hen, intercepted at the corner, added—with a roll of his eyes—that she’d looked “all stormy, like she’d eaten a lemon peel.”

“That fits,” Ash muttered.

“The hill, then,” Sera said, breath frosting. “She wouldn’t go further.”

“Children in pain do all sorts of things they ‘wouldn’t,’” Ash said. “But yes. That’s where we start.”

Hesta, alerted by Lys, met them at the base of the Circle path, shawl thrown over her shoulders, spoon still tucked into her belt like a command staff.

“Take two lanterns,” she said, pressing one into Ash’s hand and another into Sera’s. “We’ll send folk along the lower paths in case she’s wandered sideways. No one goes alone. Call if you find so much as a mitten.”

“I should come,” Kalen said.

“You should stay,” Hesta replied, not unkindly. “If she comes back on her own, she’ll need someone at the inn who isn’t frozen solid.”

Sera looked like she wanted to argue. Instead, she took the lantern and started up the path at a near-run.

Ash followed, his staff finding the spots his eyes couldn’t, breath loud in his ears. The snow on the hill had been churned by many feet over the last few days and then refrozen, slick as old worry. More than once he had to catch Sera’s elbow as she skidded.

Lantern-light pushed at the dark, but didn’t master it. Beyond their circles of pale gold, the world was shapes and suggestion.

At the top, the Circle stones loomed, white shoulders hunched under the snow. The fire pit was a dark mouth in the center.

“Tavi!” Sera called, voice cracking. The sound skated off the stones and vanished into the cold.

No answer.

Ash raised the lantern, turning in a slow circle. Snow glinted back in uneven patches where footprints had stepped and melted and refrozen. Newer marks—lighter, closer together—cut across the older churn, heading toward the far edge of the hill.

“Here,” he said.

Sera came to his side, lantern swinging. He knelt, joints complaining, to look closer.

A child’s tracks. Smaller than a woman’s, lighter than a man’s. They led not back toward the village, but toward the path that sloped down on the far side, in the direction of Brookfell.

“She wouldn’t,” Sera whispered.

“She might,” Ash said softly. “If she thought she was… solving something by it.”

Sera’s knuckles whitened around the lantern handle.

“She thinks she’s a burden,” she said. “She thinks… if we ask less, we’ll be liked more.”

Ash grimaced. “Then we’ve all been more clumsy with our words than I thought.”

A gust of wind rolled over the hill, tugging at their cloaks. Ash hunched his shoulders against it.

“Down,” he said. “Careful. Follow the prints. If they vanish, we stop and shout before we follow our own feet into a ditch.”

They started down the far slope.

The path here was narrower, less worn. Most villagers favored the main route when they went to Brookfell on purpose. This was a shepherd’s cut, steep in places, where loose stones hid under snow.

The lantern-light bounced with each step, throwing moving shadows. The dark pressed close, a patient animal. The sky had no stars; the clouds were a low, unlit ceiling.

Halfway down, Sera’s foot slid. Ash grabbed her arm, pulling her back from a sudden drop where the path had sheared away in an old slide.

“She came this way?” Sera panted, staring at the void. “Saints, Tavi…”

Ash held the lantern out. The small tracks led right up to the broken edge, then veered off sideways at the last moment, as if some flick of instinct or mercy had tugged them elsewhere.

“Good,” he murmured. “She’s got more sense than some of the adults I’ve known.”

They followed the sidelong route, hearts banging an uneven rhythm. The wind grew teeth. Snow began to spit from the low sky, fine and mean.

Ash’s leg ached. His fingers had gone numb long ago. Sera’s breath rasped.

They stopped twice to shout her name. Once, they thought they heard an answering sound, but it might have been the wind.

At last, when Ash’s lantern flame guttered dangerously in a sudden gust, he said, “Stop.”

Sera whirled on him. “We can’t—”

“If we keep going like this,” he said, voice firm, “we’ll both be on our backsides at the bottom of a ravine, no good to anyone. We need to think.”

“Thinking won’t keep her warm,” Sera snapped.

“Neither will two broken ankles,” he retorted. “Light.”

He held his lantern close to hers, shielding both flames with his hands until they steadied, the wicks burning brighter. For a moment their fingers overlapped, the heat of the metal and their skin fighting the cold together.

“She came this way,” Sera said, voice shaking. “She’s out here somewhere. Alone. In the dark.”

“We don’t know that,” Ash said. “She might have made it to one of the old herder’s huts. She might have turned back and we missed her in the churn. She might be sitting under a tree cursing us all for not finding her faster.”

“Very funny,” Sera said, but some of the wildness in her eyes eased.

A flutter of movement caught the edge of Ash’s vision.

He looked up.

A small brown shape whipped past the lantern-light, then doubled back and landed on a bare branch a little way down slope. Kindle peered at them, feathers puffed against the cold, then hopped along the branch, flicking its wings impatiently.

“Of course,” Ash muttered. “Try walking one road without you making a comment.”

Sera frowned. “What?”

“Our little omen’s decided to join us,” he said. “Look.”

She followed his gaze. Kindle took off again, flying not straight down the path but diagonally, toward a stand of scrub where the hill folded into a shallow dip.

It vanished into the shadows there.

Sera’s grip tightened on the lantern.

“That’s a coincidence,” she said, breathless.

“Maybe,” Ash said. “Maybe not. Either way, there’s a hollow there that might break the wind. If I were a frightened twelve-year-old and I’d realized halfway down a bad hill that I’d made a worse decision, I’d look for a place like that to hide.”

“How do you know that?” Sera asked.

“Because I’ve been a frightened… well, not twelve, but close enough,” Ash said. “Come on.”

They edged toward the dip, using the staff to test the ground. The snow grew deeper where it had drifted, crunching around their boots. The lantern-light picked out the shape of low, scrubby bushes and a cluster of stones.

“Tavi?” Sera called, voice breaking.

For a heartbeat, there was only wind.

Then, very softly, “Ma?”

The sound came from the hollow.

Sera stumbled forward, nearly falling as the ground fell away more than she expected. Ash caught her cloak and steadied both of them as they slid the last short distance into the dip.

There, pressed into the sheltered curve of earth beneath a thornbush, knees pulled to her chest, was Tavi.

Her cloak was dusted with snow. Her hands were bare, wrapped around something she held tight against her middle. Her face was streaked with tears, frozen in thin lines.

When the lantern light fell fully on her, she squinted, then began to sob in earnest.

Sera dropped to her knees and pulled her into her arms.

“Tavi,” she breathed. “Saints, girl, what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” Tavi hiccuped against her shoulder. “I… I was. I thought…” Her words tangled.

Ash crouched nearby, joints protesting, and held the lantern low so the little hollow filled with a trembling, fragile gold.

Kindle sat on a stone at the edge of the dip, head cocked, as if taking inventory.

“You’re frozen,” Sera whispered into her daughter’s hair. “Your hands—”

She pulled back enough to take them in her own. The fingers were red and stiff around their prize.

“Open,” Sera said gently.

Reluctantly, Tavi loosened her grip.

The beeswax candle Liora had given them lay in her palms. The wick was unburned. A thin crack had formed along its length from the cold and the tight hold.

“I didn’t want it to break,” Tavi said, shoulders shaking. “You said… you said we shouldn’t sit in the dark pretending we’re alone. I thought… I thought if I kept the candle safe and went home alone, then… then you wouldn’t have to feed me anymore.” She swallowed hard. “They wouldn’t be angry. We could break the beam and no one would say Brookfell hangs off you.”

Sera shut her eyes, pain twisting her features.

“Oh, Tavi,” she whispered. “Oh, my foolish, brave girl.”

Ash’s throat burned.

“You thought,” he said quietly, “that if you took yourself off the table, the numbers would look kinder.”

Tavi nodded miserably.

“And when it got dark?” he asked.

“I didn’t think it would get so dark,” she said. “The hill looks smaller from the village. And then the wind came, and I… I couldn’t see the path anymore, and the snow… and there was a drop, and I thought, ‘If I fall, Ma will have two fewer mouths to worry about,’ and then I thought, ‘I don’t want to die in a ditch.’ So I sat here. With the candle. I was going to wait until it felt… right, and then light it. But I was scared if I lit it, I’d have to blow it out again and I didn’t know which was worse.”

She crumpled back into Sera.

Sera held her like she was trying to mend a crack in pottery with her bare hands.

“Listen to me,” she said, voice fierce through her tears. “You are not a number. You are not a sack on Osric’s slate. You are my daughter. If the Crossroads has room for promises, it has room for you. If they don’t—” Her voice broke on anger. “If they don’t, then they don’t deserve half the stories they tell about themselves.”

Ash looked away for a second, giving them the illusion of privacy.

Kindle fluttered onto a branch just above them, feathers puffed. It shook itself, showering snow.

“You’ve got a good head,” Ash said to Tavi, when she peeked over Sera’s shoulder. “It’s just gone too fast for your feet today.”

“I heard what Hen said,” Tavi muttered. “About us being burrs. About Crumb giving away your bread. I didn’t want to be a burr.”

“A burr,” Ash said, “is something that sticks to you and gets you into places you never meant to go. Crumb picked up plenty of those in his life. He never once tried to shake them off.”

Tavi sniffed, unconvinced.

“We should get you warm,” Sera said. “We’ll argue about metaphors later.”

She tried to stand, but the ground was uneven and her knees had gone numb. Ash shifted, offering his shoulder. Between the two of them, they got Tavi upright and out of the hollow.

The climb back up the slope was slow. Ash went first, lantern held low, staff testing each patch. Sera and Tavi followed, their movements clumsy with cold and fatigue.

Halfway up, a gust of wind nearly blew the lantern out. The flame guttered, shrinking to a thin, frightened tongue.

“No,” Tavi gasped.

Without thinking, she cupped her hands around the glass, breath steaming, shielding it with her own chilled fingers.

The light steadied.

They climbed the rest of the way like that: Ash holding the handle, Tavi guarding the flame, Sera’s hand on her back.

By the time they reached the Circle, other lanterns bobbed on the hill—Hesta’s, Mara’s, Zora’s, a handful of others who’d come up from the village to help search.

Sera let out a long breath when she saw them. Tavi sagged with relief and embarrassment as Mara hurried over with a blanket.

Hesta’s eyes were sharp as she looked the girl over.

“We found one mitten by the lower path,” she said. “Figured the rest of you would show up eventually. You all right, child?”

Tavi nodded, teeth chattering.

“Next time you feel like solving all our problems,” Hesta said dryly, “come talk to me first. I’ve got a list I’d rather you start with than freezing yourself on a hill.”

That earned a thin smile from a few of the grown-ups, tension bleeding.

Ash’s legs felt like someone else’s. He leaned on his staff and tried to stretch his back without making a show of it.

Liora arrived moments later, breath steaming, apron still on over her cloak. She took one look at Tavi wrapped in the blanket, candle clutched in her hands, and paled.

“I turned my back for half an hour,” she said hoarsely. “Half an hour.”

“It wasn’t you,” Sera said at once. “It was all of us. And Hen’s mouth.”

“We can shave Hen later,” Liora muttered. She stepped closer, crouching so she was level with Tavi.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I meant the candle to make you feel less alone. Not more.”

Tavi’s eyes filled. “I didn’t want to break it,” she whispered.

Liora smiled, small and sad.

“You didn’t,” she said. “Look.”

She touched the crack gently with one flour-roughened finger.

“See?” she said. “Still whole enough to burn.”

She took a deep breath, then reached for the lantern.

“May I?” she asked Ash.

He handed it over.

Liora set the candle on the flat stone nearest them. Her hands were steady as she brought the lantern close and tipped it, coaxing the flame against the white wick.

It caught slowly, then bloomed into a small, sure light.

They all watched it for a moment.

“First watch light,” Liora said softly. “A little early. A little sideways. That seems fitting.”

The dark pressed around them, thick and patient. The candle’s glow pushed a small circle back, not much, but something. Tavi’s face, lit from below, looked younger and older at once.

“We’re all caught in it, you know,” Liora said, not just to the girl. “The dark. The not-knowing. We keep thinking someone else will walk far enough ahead to tell us where the cliff is. Crumb. The council. The saints. All we’ve got, most nights, is a handful of foolish people holding small lights and hoping they’re enough to keep the next step from breaking under us.”

She glanced at Ash. He raised an eyebrow.

“You’re including yourself in that handful,” he said.

“I’m up to my elbows in wax and bad decisions,” she replied. “I’d be lying if I pretended otherwise.”

Tavi looked from the candle to Ash to her mother.

“Are you going to go?” she asked suddenly. “On the road. To the broken wagons. I heard you talking. In the inn. You and Osric.”

Ash blinked. “You have very impolite ears,” he said.

She flushed, but didn’t back down. “Are you?”

He could have lied. Said it wasn’t decided. Said it was just talk.

He thought of Chapter 9 in his notebook—not that he’d call it that—about what they didn’t tell. He thought of this girl, who had tried to remove herself from the ledger as if that would make the math kinder.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “If they let me. If the council agrees. I mean to ask.”

Tavi’s fingers tightened on the edge of the blanket.

“Is it very dark?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s bright enough to hurt your eyes. Sometimes it’s fog. Sometimes it’s so ordinary you forget you’re on the edge of anything until something gives.”

“And you’re going anyway,” she said.

“I am,” he replied. “Because I can’t stand making choices for a hundred and seventy people based on shadows on a wall.”

She nodded slowly, as if that made sense in a way that hurt.

“Then I hope,” she said, voice small but clear, “someone holds a candle for you. So you’re not… alone. In it.”

Ash’s throat tightened.

“I think,” Liora said, looking at the little flame, “we can manage that.”

They went down the hill together, a tangle of lanterns and breath and relief, Tavi between her mother and Liora. The candle stayed burning on the stone until the last of them reached the square. Then the wind took it, snapping it out in a small, decisive puff.

In a few days, more candles would be lit—on tables, in windows, around fire pits. Some nights they’d gutter. Some nights they’d burn steady.

For now, the village stumbled through the dark with whatever light it could muster: a lantern shared on a bad slope, a bird’s impatient flutter, a foolish girl’s cracked candle, an old man’s stubborn proposal to walk one more road.

They did not know yet which of those would be enough.

They only knew, after this night, that letting a child wander into the dark alone was not a path they were willing to take.