Iris Starling's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

By morning, Iris needed answers more than markers. She built a small blind near the well from fallen branches and moss, a hut so wrapped in vines it vanished against the trees. Inside, she laid out her notebook, her lantern, and a fresh stake driven deep in plain sight. She waited two nights. On the third dusk, the fox came back. It did not wander. It trotted straight down a worn line of paw prints pressed into the dirt, the same prints going out and coming in, again and again. A trained path. Someone walked this fox here. The fox gripped the stake and tugged. Iris stepped out. This time it did not bolt. It sat, panting, and around its neck hung a leather collar she had not seen before — polished, bronze-clasped, stamped with a crest she did not know. Iris knelt slowly and read the crest by lantern light. Her stake was not the target. Her map was. Somewhere in the forest, someone with a name and a house and a reason had sent this small thief to keep her doorway closed. She wrote the crest into her notebook and understood her work had just gained an enemy.