Aldric Ironfall died with an axe in his hand, and every night he reaches for it and finds nothing. He died outnumbered, flanked on both sides, and the weapon slipped from his grip when he fell. It was a hand-me-down with no history he knew, but he knew its weight. He could pick it from a thousand others blind. He cannot leave until he holds it again. So each night he searches the ground where he bled out. The trouble is simple and it ruins him: he cannot remember the exact spot. The dark trees looked the same in every direction. Aldric knelt in wet leaves and swept his hands across cold dirt. Nothing. He crawled six paces and swept again. Nothing. He had done this a hundred nights. The ground gave him roots and stones and the same empty answer. "You will not find it crawling." The voice came from low and close. Aldric turned. A small phantom stood among the roots, pale as frost, with green light where her eyes should be. Thin branches grew from her head and shoulders. This was Willow Ashenmist, the tree spirit two axes had felled before nightfall. She had counted every strike. She remembered sound the way Aldric could not. "I heard you fall," Willow said. "Years ago. I heard where." Aldric stood. "Then tell me." "I do not give things for nothing." She tilted her head. "Someone already took your axe. He carried it past my roots a week ago." The words landed like a stone in his chest. "Took it where?" Before Willow answered, a man stepped from the trees. Broad, bald, a thick beard, an axe resting easy on his shoulder. He walked like the woods belonged to him. Grendel Blackwood. Willow did not flinch, so Aldric understood they knew each other. "The dead one," Grendel said. He looked Aldric over once. "You want the old axe. The plain one." "It is mine." "It was in the mud where you died." Grendel set his boot on a flat stone near Aldric's feet. "Right here. I marked it. I took it to a shrine. Fed it to the fire there." Aldric dropped to the stone and dug. His fingers raked the dirt beneath it. Empty. The spot was real. The axe was gone. "Why," Aldric said. "The shrine trades," Grendel said. "An old blade in. A better one out. One that finds the man you want." He did not explain who he wanted. He turned to go. "Yours is ash now. But ash remembers. Follow it, you follow the axe." Aldric stayed kneeling on the marked stone. For a hundred nights he had searched for a place. Now he had the place, and the axe was not in it. It sat in a shrine fire, changed into something that answered to another man. He pressed his hand flat to the cold stone and rose. The ground had given up its secret. The shrine had taken everything else.