Where the two oldest roads of the valley meet—one running straight and sure, the other wandering like a question—there sits a village most mapmakers reduce to a dot. Travelers call it the Crossroads. They know it by the creak of the windmill, the chuckle of the river under the road, and the smell that reaches them before the rooftops do: woodsmoke and bread.

Crumb has lived there all his life. He does not think of himself as remarkable. He keeps the oven warm, the loaves steady, and the simple promise carved into the village sign: that a weary stranger can rest without having to explain themselves. People pass through carrying dust, hunger, and stories they don’t always want to tell. Crumb gives them something solid to hold, then lets them go.

Each morning, he walks the square with a lantern that doesn’t blaze or beg for attention. It simply burns—soft, steady, warm—as if wind and damp have agreed not to trouble it. In a place built on passing, Crumb becomes one of the few things that stays: a quiet light, a listening ear, a door that opens.

But the roads don’t always behave like lines on a map. When a stranger arrives with questions Crumb cannot answer and a need that goes deeper than food, the Crossroads begins to shift. Something stirs at the edges of the valley—old fears, old patterns, old choices—and Crumb must learn what it means to be called a Pathfinder: not someone who runs toward greatness, but someone who holds the center when the world starts to pull apart.