By the time Osric reached the council house, the air inside already smelled of wet wool, smoke, and nerves.

He’d walked up from the mill slower than usual, ledger tucked under his arm in case anyone decided, at the last moment, that numbers might be more comforting than memory. The sky was the flat, metallic grey that meant more snow later. The river had a thin skin of ice near the banks, thick enough to look solid, thin enough to swallow anyone foolish enough to test it.

The council house door stood open a crack, warm breath fogging the cold outside. Voices leaked through: Hesta’s low and brisk, Farlan’s sharp, someone’s baby letting the world know it did not approve of being out in this weather.

Osric hesitated on the threshold, fingers tightening on the ledger.

He hadn’t brought the green shoot.

It sat in its dish on his windowsill back at the mill, blade turned stubbornly toward a light that hadn’t fully shown itself in days. It had been a near thing. He’d stood there, cloak half-on, dish in hand, imagining the way people’s faces would change: worry softening into hope at the sight of something alive and tender from the fields.

It wasn’t ready for that weight.

Neither was he.

He set the ledger down on the bench just inside the door; they already knew the numbers that mattered most. Then he squeezed in along the wall, finding his place near the front where the council regulars stood.

Inside, the long house was full.

Crossroads folk packed one side, Brookfell the other, a line down the center where the two hills met in a tangle of boots and hems. Children perched on laps or sat on the floor, leaning against adults’ legs. The big hearth at the far end had been banked low, more for light than warmth; too hot and everyone would start dropping off, and Hesta refused to compete with snoring.

She stood now near the center table, spoon tucked into her belt like a badge.

“Everyone’s here who’s coming,” she said as Osric entered. “Good. I’m getting too old to repeat myself more than once a day.”

A frazzled laugh rippled around the room. Osric saw Liora near the other end, hair pulled back, hands folded so tightly around each other that the knuckles were white. Sera and Kalen stood together, Tavi wedged between them, fingers wrapped around her candle even though it wasn’t lit. Ash lurked near a post, staff in hand, looking like he’d rather be anywhere than the center of attention and knowing perfectly well he was about to be dragged there.

Hesta raised her chin.

“Last night,” she said, “we stood on the hill and talked about half loaves and shared hunger. If anyone here didn’t hear that and is surprised to see smaller bread in their house this week, I suggest you hit your ears with snow until they wake up. That decision holds. Half loaves, both hills, starting now.”

She let that settle. There were no gasps. The complaints had already been shouted into pillows or muttered over stew.

“Today,” she went on, “we have two more bits of business. First, how we’re going to make that half bread stretch without turning everyone into a bag of bones. Zora and a few others will talk through what they know about stretching pots. That comes later.”

She tapped the table with her fingers.

“Second,” she said. “The road.”

The room’s energy shifted, tightening.

Perrin straightened from where he’d been leaning against the back wall, arms folded. Farlan made a noise low in his throat, halfway between a scoff and a sigh. Liora’s fingers unclasped, then laced together again.

Hesta turned toward the post where Ash stood.

“Old Walker,” she said. “You wanted to say something foolish in front of witnesses. Now’s your moment.”

A few chuckles. Ash grimaced.

He stepped forward, staff thumping softly on the packed earth floor. Osric felt the room lean with him, as if someone had shifted a weight.

Ash stopped a little short of the center, clearly refusing to stand exactly where Crumb used to when he spoke.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll try to keep this short enough that your toes don’t freeze.”

He scanned the faces—Crossroads, Brookfell, old, young. For a heartbeat his gaze caught Osric’s. Osric gave the smallest of nods.

Ash swallowed.

“You all know the shape of things,” he said. “Osric’s told you. The sacks aren’t as full as they were. The caravan from the city is stuck or worse. The blight’s tearing through valleys that used to keep us supplied whether we needed it or not.”

He tapped his staff once.

“We chose half loaves,” he said. “We chose not to let one hill eat while the other starved. That’s a path. It’s also a guess. A good one, made with the best numbers we have. But it’s still a guess in one direction.”

He lifted his staff and pointed—not at anyone, but toward the wall that, by habit, everyone thought of as the road to Hallow Bridge.

“What we don’t know,” he went on, “is how bad it truly is past the next ridge. We don’t know if that caravan is lying in pieces in a ditch or making slow progress on better roads. We don’t know if traders from farther out are finding other paths, other towns, other crops that haven’t been eaten from the root up. We don’t know if anyone outside this valley even remembers we’re here except for what’s carved on our beams.”

He let the words hang.

“We can sit here,” he said, “and wait to see what comes limping through the snow. We can keep making decisions with half a picture and call it prudence. Or,” he took a breath, “we can send someone to look.”

Farlan snorted.

“In this weather?” he said. “On that road? You’ll send some poor lad to freeze just so you can write neater sums in your book?”

“I’m offering to be that poor old man,” Ash said, without missing a beat. “Not a lad. I’m too fond of them.”

A ripple of uneasy laughter.

He met Hesta’s eyes.

“I’m asking,” he said, “for the council’s leave to walk to Hallow Bridge. To see the caravan with my own eyes or lack of it. To talk to any drivers or traders who still have wagons under them. To bring back word—not rumor, not ‘Perrin’s cousin’s neighbor heard’—so that when we decide how long we can keep sharing as we are, we’re not sticking our fingers in the wind and guessing.”

Hesta pursed her lips.

“Alone?” she asked.

“No,” Ash said. “That would be stupid even by my standards. With someone who can pull me out of a drift and tell me when I’m being arrogant about my knees.”

“So you’ve rehearsed this,” Hesta said dryly. “Good.”

The room buzzed.

Perrin spoke up from the back.

“I’ve walked that stretch twice this year,” he said. “Last time, before the snow locked it, wagons were already having trouble. There are drifts high as a house in the passes by now. You go out there,” he nodded at Ash, “you’ll be sleeping on ice and arguing with your own joints.”

“I’ve done worse,” Ash said.

“That’s what worries me,” Perrin replied.

Sera raised her hand slightly, like a child in class.

Hesta pointed at her. “Speak.”

“If he goes,” Sera said, “what would you want him to bring back besides ‘yes, the wagons are broken’ or ‘no, they’re not’?”

Her voice was calm in the way that meant she’d thought about this in the dark.

Ash nodded gratefully.

“Good question,” he said. “Word about other routes. Traders talk. If the blight’s as bad as we’re hearing four valleys over, they’ll be changing their paths. Maybe someone’s found a way round. Maybe there’s a town that still has grain to spare, even if it’s two extra weeks’ walk. Maybe there’s work to be found where some of our folk could go for a season and come back with pay and seed. I’m not just planning to poke at a broken wheel and come home. I mean to listen.”

“And if there’s nothing?” someone from the Crossroads side called. “If it’s as bad as we fear or worse?”

“Then we know,” Ash said. “And we can start planning for ‘worse’ instead of ‘maybe.’ We can stop sitting in meetings wondering if we’re fools for sharing, and be fools or wise with full knowledge.”

Farlan snorted again.

“Or we can be fools for sending one of the last men who remembers what Crumb actually did to die in a snowbank,” he said. “You want to talk about sharing pain? How about the pain of burying him and knowing you let him go?”

A few heads nodded reluctantly.

Osric felt the words like stones in his gut. He’d said some version of them himself in the mill, to Ash’s face.

Ash didn’t flinch.

“I’m not offering myself because I think I’m worth less than anyone else,” he said quietly. “Or because I’m trying to… finish Crumb’s story. I’m offering because I know those roads. I know what a safe bad path looks like and what a hidden cliff feels like under my boots. I’ve argued with snow and won more years than most of you have been alive. I can walk twenty steps and know if a drift is sound or a liar. That matters, out there.”

His gaze trailed toward the Brookfell side.

“And because,” he added, “I carry the memory of the man you all like to mention when you talk about promises. If I’m able to come back and tell you, ‘I’ve seen what’s beyond our hill and this is the path that suits us best,’ you’ll believe me faster than if we send a boy with more energy than sense.”

“Send Perrin,” Farlan muttered. “He’s already half road-dust.”

Perrin raised both hands.

“I’m not saying no,” he said. “But you’re not volunteering my hide without asking it first.”

Hesta tapped her spoon against the table, calling the room back to her.

“Let’s make this simpler,” she said. “There are three questions on this: One, do we agree it’s worth having clearer word from Hallow Bridge and beyond? Two, if so, do we think Ash is still enough of a walker to go and come back without breaking something essential? And three, who we’re willing to spare to go with him.”

She ticked them off on her fingers.

“Any of those can be answered no,” she added. “You say no loud enough, we’re done, he stays, we find another way to chew on our worry.”

She nodded to the Brookfell side.

“You first,” she said. “Sera? Kalen? You’ve the most skin tied up in this.”

Kalen shifted his weight, old joints protesting. His voice, when it came, was rough but steady.

“In my life,” he said, “I’ve seen years when we waited for help that never came. I’ve seen years when help arrived late and we had to carry the graves through thaw. I’ve also seen years when a trader or a pilgrim or some fool with a pack full of gossip came in out of the snow and changed everything we thought we knew about the season ahead.”

He looked at Ash.

“If you’re willing to walk,” he said, “I’m willing for you to. Not because I think the road will be kind, but because I’m too old to live with ‘if only we’d known’ for another winter.”

Sera nodded.

“And I,” she added, “would rather tell my children we let someone try than that we stayed home and hoped. If he dies—” she swallowed, hard, “—we will grieve. But we will grieve knowing he chose it with open eyes and we did not push him up there because we were too cowardly to go.”

A murmur. Some uncomfortable. Some grateful someone had said it that plainly.

Hesta turned toward the Crossroads.

“Osric,” she said. “You’ve thought about this more than most. Say it out loud so we all know what you’re going to mumble later when grain’s low.”

Osric drew a slow breath.

He looked at Ash, at the staff, at the way the older man’s weight leaned just slightly to one side to spare his bad leg.

“I don’t like it,” Osric said. “My first instinct is to nail his boots to the floor and tell him if he wants to be useful, he can sit by the fire and answer questions while we keep digging ourselves out.”

A few grins.

“But,” he went on, “I also don’t like making decisions with ghosts and guesses. We are already risking all of us with half-loaves. It’s a good risk. It’s also one we made while squinting. If we can open our eyes a little wider, we should.”

He set his jaw.

“So yes,” he said. “I think it’s worth having clearer word. Yes, I think he’s still enough of a walker to go—if he doesn’t think being stubborn is the same as being strong. And no,” he added, “I don’t think he goes alone.”

Hesta nodded, satisfied.

“Liora?” she asked.

Liora’s throat worked as she stepped forward a little. The firelight from the hearth caught the edges of her cheekbones.

“I hate roads,” she said frankly. “I hate that they keep taking people I love out of arm’s reach. I hate that we keep asking paths to solve problems we should have stopped and listened through.”

Her fingers twisted together once, then stilled.

“But I also hate the thought of sitting in this room for the next month, looking at your faces, wondering if we made the right choices about bread, knowing there was a way to know more and we chose not to take it because we were afraid to lose one man.”

She looked at Ash, and Osric knew she was seeing not just the old pilgrim but Crumb, and her father, and her brother, and all the others roads had stolen.

“So yes,” she said quietly. “I’ll stand with him. Not because I think the road owes us anything. Because I don’t want to freeze knowing we turned our backs on every chance to learn something that might have saved a few of you.”

“That’s three yeses from people whose opinions weigh more than most,” Hesta said. “Now the rest of you get your say.”

She set her spoon down.

“First question,” she said. “Do we agree it’s worth sending somebody to Hallow Bridge to learn more? If you say yes, raise a hand. If you say no, keep it down, and don’t be shy about it.”

Hands went up, hesitant at first, then more steadily. Crossroads fingers, Brookfell fingers, some with bandaged knuckles, some with wedding bands, some tiny and bare where children mimicked their parents.

Osric counted roughly. Eight… thirteen… twenty…

About three quarters. Enough.

“Those against?” Hesta asked.

A scattering of hands, mostly older, mostly from the Crossroads side. Farlan’s was among them, high and rigid.

“All right,” Hesta said. “We hear you. Most say yes: better information is worth the risk. A few say no. Your worry is noted. We’ll carry it with us.”

She picked up the spoon again.

“Second question,” she said. “If we send someone, do we accept Ash as one of them?”

This time the silence stretched longer. Faces tightened.

From near the back, someone muttered, “He’s not young.” Someone else said, “He knows those roads better than anyone.” Another voice: “What if he falls? Who tells us the old stories then?”

Tavi’s voice cut through, small but clear.

“You’ll still have them,” she said. “Here.” She tapped her temple with one finger. “And here.” She touched her chest. “And in Liora’s mouth and Osric’s books and Kalen’s grumbles. He’s not the only lantern.”

The room turned toward her.

She flushed but did not sit down.

“I don’t want him to die,” she said. “I also don’t want him to stay because we’re scared instead of because it’s right.”

Ash looked poleaxed. Osric felt something in his chest twist.

Hesta slapped her spoon lightly against her palm.

“You heard the girl,” she said. “Hands if you agree he should go, with a companion. Hands down if you think we should ask for another volunteer and keep him here.”

The wave of hands rose more slowly this time, but it rose.

Osric saw Sera’s go up, and Kalen’s. Liora’s, knuckles white. Zora’s. Perrin’s, after a heartbeat’s hesitation. Even Hen, Farlan’s boy, lifted his shoulder-high, eyes wide as if he couldn’t quite believe he was defying his father in public.

Farlan kept his arms crossed. A few others did as well.

“All right,” Hesta said. “Again, not everyone. But enough.”

She turned to Ash.

“Seems they’re willing to risk your bones,” she said. “Question three: who’s going to watch you on the way?”

Perrin cleared his throat.

“I’ll go,” he said.

All heads swung his way.

“You sure?” Hesta asked.

He shrugged, the movement sharp.

“If we’re sending someone to the bridge, better it be someone who’s already talked to the folk there,” he said. “They know me. I’ve bartered with them. I can get more than a grunt and a curse out of them if there’s bad news. And I’ve walked those drifts before. I know where they lie about their depth.”

Lys, sitting near the back, frowned.

“You’ve got responsibilities here,” she said. “Orders. Routes. People who depend on your rounds.”

“People depend more,” Perrin said, “on us not making decisions in the dark. Joran and Hett can mind most of the local runs. Zora can curse people into paying the rest.”

Zora snorted. “She’s not wrong.”

Hesta looked at him for a long moment.

“Anyone else foolish enough to volunteer?” she asked.

Jari’s hand shot up. “I—”

“No,” Kalen, Sera, Liora, Hesta, and half a dozen others said in unison.

Jari’s mouth snapped shut, eyes wide.

Tavi’s hand twitched, then stayed down, knuckles whitening on her candle.

Kalen shifted.

“In another year,” he rasped, “I might offer. But my knees have less sense than Ash’s pride. I wouldn’t make it to the first ridge without needing to be carried.”

“Honesty,” Hesta said. “Good.”

She surveyed the room.

“We can’t spare many,” she said. “We have too much work for too few hands. Two is better than three on a road like that. Less weight, fewer bodies to dig out of snow if the hill decides it doesn’t like you.”

She nodded once.

“Fine,” she said. “Perrin, Ash. You’ll go together.”

She fixed Ash with a look.

“You understand,” she said, “this isn’t a glory run. You don’t go to drag wagons out of ditches with your bare hands. You go to look and listen and come back. If the bridge is broken and the wagon wheels are rooted in ice, you do not climb under them. You take a good hard look and bring us the story.”

“Yes,” Ash said.

“If you’re delayed,” she continued, “you send word with anyone you meet coming back. Traders, shepherds, saints in disguise, whoever. I want a scrap of cloth with your bad handwriting on it in my hand before I start writing your name on a stone.”

He grimaced.

“How long?” he asked. “Before you assume—”

“Twenty days,” Osric said, before Hesta could answer.

All eyes turned to him.

“Six there in this weather if it’s kind,” he said. “Six back. That’s twelve. Add two in case you get stuck somewhere, two if you find something interesting, four in case I miscount or you both decide to be cautious for once in your lives. Twenty. Any longer than that and we have to assume you’re either dead, stuck, or have decided to move to Hallow Bridge and I’ll come up there with a sack myself.”

Ash nodded slowly.

“Twenty days,” he repeated. “If I’m not back by then, plan without me.”

Hesta grunted assent.

“You leave at first light tomorrow,” she said. “That gives you the afternoon to pack, pray, argue, say goodbye, and decide which blankets you hate least. Come see me before you go, both of you. There are things I want you to ask at Hallow Bridge if your tongues aren’t frozen solid.”

Perrin managed a wry smile.

“You just like bossing us from a distance,” he said.

“That too,” she said.

She glanced around the room.

“You’ve heard it,” she said. “We’ve chosen half-bread, shared hunger, and two fools on the road. If you’re angry, be angry out loud. If you’re grateful, be grateful out loud. If you’re going to pray, do it with your eyes open so you see who’s standing next to you.”

She smacked her spoon lightly against the table.

“Now,” she added, “who knows a good way to make stale crusts taste like they’re worth eating? Zora? The floor is yours.”

The room’s tension shifted, some of it slipping sideways into the more ordinary business of survival: recipes, tricks, complaints. The council’s formal business on the road was done.

Osric slipped out while Zora was describing how to fry old bread with onions until it thought it was a feast.

Outside, the cold bit his face, sharp and clean. He stood on the council house threshold for a moment, watching people spill out in clusters, breath making ghosts in the air.

Ash emerged a few minutes later, staff in hand.

“It’s done,” Osric said.

Ash huffed.

“They’ve decided I’m useful for something other than taking up space by your fire,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll come back and resume that duty as soon as I can.”

Osric snorted.

“You’d better,” he said. “I’m not interested in being the only angry man over fifty in this valley.”

They stood there in silence for a moment, watching the flow of people.

Tavi passed with Sera and Kalen, their heads bent together. Jari walked beside his mother, shooting occasional glances back at Ash as if expecting him to sprout a halo or collapse on the spot. Farlan stomped by with Hen in tow, muttering, “Madness, all of it,” under his breath. Hen looked uncomfortable and didn’t quite meet Ash’s eyes.

Liora came last, shoulders tight, lips pressed thin.

She stopped in front of them and looked at Ash.

“You’ve got until dawn to change your mind,” she said.

Ash smiled faintly.

“I had until this meeting to change my mind,” he said. “After that, it stops being just mine.”

She exhaled, a puff of white.

“Then I’ll spend the time making sure you at least leave with decent food,” she said. “I refuse to have your ghost haunting me complaining about stale crusts.”

That afternoon, Pathfinder’s Crumb smelled not just of the day’s bread, but of travel.

Liora moved through the bakery like a small storm, pulling jars from shelves, weighing, wrapping, muttering to herself. She mixed dried fruit with crushed nuts and a little honey, pressing the mixture into tight, compact bars. She sliced yesterday’s loaves into thin strips, brushing them with oil and herbs before sliding them back into the oven to crisp. She filled cloth bags with oat mix that could be turned into porridge with hot water and patience.

“Dried things keep,” she said, half to herself, half to the air. “Salted, sweet, pressed. The road doesn’t care if it tastes nice, but I do.”

Ash sat on a stool by the back table, doing what he was told: staying out of the way. His pack lay open at his feet, neatly worn straps ready.

“You don’t have to—” he began.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

He shut his mouth.

Tavi arrived with an armful of kindling.

“For your fire-starting kit,” she said, cheeks pink. “Kalen says some wood’s better than others, and I know which dead branches never let our hearth go out.”

She dumped the bundle on the table. Liora picked through it, selecting the driest, straightest pieces and binding them with twine.

“Thank you,” Ash said.

Tavi glanced up at him.

“I still think you’re foolish,” she said. “But I’m glad you’re going. It makes my head hurt less, knowing someone will actually look.”

“That may be the best blessing I’ve ever received,” he said solemnly.

Sera and Kalen came later, bearing a wool scarf and a small leather pouch.

“The scarf’s from me,” Sera said. “It was my mother’s. It insists on keeping necks warm whether you want it to or not.”

Ash took it, fingers brushing the worn softness. “That sounds like you,” he said.

“The pouch,” Kalen rasped, “is for you to fill. With whatever seems important. Soil from somewhere the blight hasn’t bitten. A seed head from a crop we don’t know. Names of traders who still have heart enough to barter fair. Bring back something that proves the world isn’t just this valley and its worries.”

“I’ll try,” Ash said.

Perrin appeared in the doorway near sunset, pack already half-filled.

“Zora’s got me three packets of whatever she uses to make fish not taste like river,” she said. “Lys shoved dried apple at me until I promised to stop mystifying her with talk of ‘market conditions.’ You’d think I was going for half a year.”

“You’re going for twenty days,” Liora said. “Which is far too long to eat only what traders think is edible.”

She thrust a small cloth-wrapped bundle at him. “Share that with him,” she said, jerking her chin at Ash. “If you don’t, I’ll know.”

Perrin peeked inside, whistled softly.

“You’re sending your honey-sesame?” he said. “That’s near-sacred.”

“I’m bribing the road,” she said. “If it has any taste at all, it’ll send you back for more.”

When they were gone and the sky had gone from grey to deep blue, Liora climbed the stairs to her room.

She stood for a moment in the doorway, looking at the small things that made it hers: the scrap with Crumb’s handwriting, the worn blanket at the foot of the bed, the candle-stub in its dish.

She lit the candle and sat on the edge of the bed.

“No path is ours alone,” she murmured, tracing the letters on the scrap with one finger. “Fine. But some people still insist on walking the worst bits.”

She bowed her head, not quite praying—more talking into the quiet.

“If you’re listening,” she said, to Crumb, to whatever else might be, “look after him. And after us. And if you’ve got any sense left, send him back with something more useful than a story about how cold it was.”

Downstairs, the bell over the door jingled as someone came in late for bread. Life, as it had the habit of doing, went on.

Dawn the next morning came reluctantly.

The sky lightened from black to charcoal to smudged white, as if someone had been careless with chalk. The air had that brittle stillness that meant snow would come later, but not yet.

Ash stood at the edge of the square where the main road out of the Crossroads began, pack on his back, staff in hand. The bundle felt heavier than it had any right to be. Liora had stuffed it with more food than he’d asked for, Hesta with more questions than he’d wanted, Osric with more advice than he cared to admit he needed.

Perrin stood beside him, adjusting the strap of her own pack.

“You ready?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Yes. Doesn’t matter. We’re going anyway.”

A small crowd had gathered—not as many as at the Vigil, but enough.

Hesta was there, shawl wrapped tight, spoon nowhere in sight for once. Osric hovered on one side, Liora on the other, flour still dusting her sleeves from the hastily baked morning batch. Sera and Kalen had walked down from the inn with Tavi between them. Jari lurked near the well, kicking at the snow with the toe of his boot, pretending not to stare.

Even Farlan had come, though he stood a little apart, arms folded. Hen was beside him, hat pulled low.

Kindle sat on the signpost at the edge of the road, feathers fluffed against the cold. It looked, Ash thought, annoyingly pleased with itself.

Hesta stepped forward.

“Right,” she said briskly. “There’s no elegant way to do this. Ash, Perrin, you have twenty days. You know what we’re asking you to look for. Traders. Routes. Signs that the world’s fallen in or not. You find work that could help some of ours survive next winter, you ask about it. You hear word of blight worse than ours, you do not bring it back sugar-coated. You hear word of hope, you do not hoard it.”

Perrin nodded.

“Yes, Hesta,” she said.

Hesta turned to Ash.

“Try not to die,” she said. “I’m very busy. I don’t have time to organize another memorial this year.”

Ash smiled crookedly.

“I’ll put that at the top of my list,” he said.

Osric stepped up, thrusting a small folded scrap into Ash’s hand.

“If you see anyone weighing grain in Hallow Bridge,” he said, “ask them about yields, not just prices. And how deep the blight’s gone in their valley. I know it’s not the pressing thing, but—”

“It is for you,” Ash said. “I’ll ask.”

“Thank you,” Osric said gruffly.

Liora approached, eyes bright in the cold.

She didn’t say anything at first. She simply reached up and adjusted the scarf around his neck—the one Sera had given him—tucking it in so it covered the gap between coat and chin.

“You keep your fingers,” she said. “And your ears. And your tongue. I need all three for when you come back and start complaining about our stories again.”

“I intend to,” he said.

She hesitated, then leaned in and pressed a quick, fierce kiss to his cheek.

“Bring me something from the road,” she said. “A stone. A word. A story I haven’t heard yet. Something that proves it was worth letting you go.”

“I will,” he said softly.

Tavi stepped forward, candle held in both hands.

“This one’s been burned already,” she said. The wick was blackened, the wax cracked and re-smoothed. “But it still works.”

She held it out.

“So you remember,” she added, “if it gets very dark, that we’re still here. Waiting. Not… going anywhere.”

Ash swallowed.

He took the candle carefully, as if it were made of glass, and tucked it into the top of his pack where he could reach it.

“Thank you,” he said.

Jari came forward then, scuffing his boots.

“When you get to Hallow Bridge,” he said in a rush, “can you ask if they’ve ever heard of anyone else doing what we’re doing? Sharing like this? I want to know if we’re the only ones.”

Ash blinked.

“I can,” he said. “And if they haven’t, I’ll tell them about a boy who stood in a council house and asked a question that made a whole valley think.”

Jari flushed deep red, but he smiled.

Farlan didn’t move. He just nodded once, sharply, when Ash’s gaze met his.

“Don’t make my point for me,” he muttered. “Come back so I have to keep arguing with you.”

“I’ll do my best,” Ash said.

Perrin hoisted her pack with a grunt.

“If we don’t leave now,” she told Ash, “the whole valley’s going to start crying on us, and I’ll have to start charging for the show.”

He nodded.

He turned back to the gathered faces one last time.

No speeches. The Vigil had been enough of that. The words felt unnecessary now.

He lifted his staff instead, a small gesture, and dipped it in something that might have been a bow, might just have been his knees making opinions known.

Then he and Perrin turned and stepped onto the road.

The snow on the path out of the Crossroads had been trampled in recent days, packed by boots and sled runners. Beyond the last house, it lay smoother, interrupted only by the tracks of traders and herders, by Kindle’s small talon-marks where it had tested branches.

Ash’s first step beyond the last gate felt… ordinary. His foot sank a little, boot crunching into cold. His knee complained. His breath puffed white.

Ordinary, he thought, is how most roads start. The important bits come later.

Behind them, the square slowly shrank. The bell tower, the mill’s wheel, the curve of Pathfinder’s Crumb’s roof—all began to blend into the pale morning.

Kindle launched from the signpost and flew ahead, flicking its wings, then wheeled back to perch for a moment on Ash’s staff.

“Thought you might,” Ash murmured. “All right, then. You can come. But no telling the hill any secrets until we’ve heard them first.”

The bird chirped once, cheeky, and took off again, skimming the road ahead like a small, insistent arrow pointing forward.

Beside him, Perrin pulled her scarf up over her nose.

“Twenty days,” she said through wool. “You really think Hallow Bridge has anything to tell us worth all this trouble?”

Ash looked at the horizon, where the road curved out of sight between the low, white hills.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why we’re walking.”

Behind them, in windows up and down the Crossroads and on the hill at Brookfell, watch lights burned: small, stubborn flames in shallow dishes, each one a tiny circle of defiance against the dark.

The road out of the Crossroads did not care.

It waited, patient and indifferent, to see what these two figures and their ridiculous bird would make of it.