Aldric Wandermere counted his coins by firelight and found none. He wanted a guildhall, a safe first door for every green adventurer in Mythral. But a guildhall needed planks, and planks needed coin, and his pockets held only lint. Beside his tent, his stone-skinned hound thumped its heavy tail. The beast's cracked hide caught the fire's glow. Aldric scratched its ears. "We can't build a dream on hope, boy," he said. "We need work." He broke camp at dawn and walked to the village inn. The weathered hall served as tavern and town office both. A notice board hung by the door. One paper caught his eye. A farmer offered good pay for anyone who could drive a pest from his orchard. Something had been stripping his prize tree bare each night. Inside, the innkeeper pointed him to the farmer. The old man's hands shook as he described the thief. "Comes at dark. Eats my fruit and scorches my branches. I've lost half my harvest." He named a price. It was enough for a first load of lumber. Aldric shook his hand and left before sundown. The orchard held one great oak, its branches heavy with red and gold fruit. Aldric hid behind a fence with his hound. They waited. The moon rose. Then he heard wings, soft as paper. A small dragon dropped onto a branch. Its wings spread wide, colored like a butterfly's. It clutched a single gold coin in one claw, guarding it like treasure. It plucked a fruit and ate, quick and nervous. The hound growled low. Aldric gripped its collar. He could have killed it. That was the job. But the little dragon was thin. Its ribs showed under bright scales. It ate because it was starving, not cruel. Aldric's chest tightened. He knew that hunger. He had slept hungry a hundred nights on the road. He stepped into the open. The dragon froze, wings snapping up. Aldric raised empty hands. "Easy," he said. "I won't hurt you." He set down a strip of dried meat and stepped back. The dragon watched, then crept close and snatched it. It ate, then looked at him again. Slowly, it dropped its gold coin at his feet and cocked its head. At dawn Aldric returned to the farmer with a plan. The dragon would guard the orchard instead of raiding it. No more scorched branches, no more thefts. The farmer scoffed, then watched the small dragon perch above his tree, alert and proud. He paid Aldric in full. Aldric walked back to camp with coin at last, the dragon gliding overhead and the hound loping beside him. He had earned his first plank money. But the little guardian had chosen him now. It circled his tent and would not leave. He had wanted lumber. Instead he had gained two mouths to feed, and one purse that would empty far too fast.

Aldric's coin ran out in three days. The dragon ate twice its weight in fish. The hound cracked bones between its stone jaws. Aldric skipped meals and still came up short. He needed steady work, not one lucky job. So he went back to the village inn, where the same hall served drinks and posted the town's needs. The noticeboard by the stairs held a dozen slips. He took three. He hauled feed sacks for a corn farmer past the fields, dug a drainage ditch, and mended a fence. Each job paid a few coins. Each night his animals ate them all. By week's end his hands were raw and his purse was still empty. He slumped at the bar. The bartender set down a mug he hadn't ordered. She was tall, half dragon, purple scales along her arms. Old scars marked her jaw. Aldric had learned her name was Matilda. She'd broken up two brawls since he sat down. "You look like a man feeding an army," she said. "Two mouths. Both bigger than mine." He pushed the mug back. "Can't pay for that." Matilda slid it back to him. "Then listen instead. There's a woodcutter, last cottage on the road. Grumpy old thing. His daughter's gone. Says she was taken. Nobody helps him. He'd pay for hands he could trust." She wiped the bar. "He needs the help. You need the coin. Go slow. He bites." Aldric walked out at dusk. The last cottage sat quiet, timber-framed, a small porch facing the road. A broad man sat there watching the road like he expected it to bring someone. A hand-axe hung on his belt. A scar cut his jaw. This was Valen Thorne. Aldric stopped at the steps. "Matilda sent me. Said you needed help around the place." Valen didn't rise. His eyes stayed on the road. "I need a woodcutter's hands. Not questions." "I've got hands." Aldric held them up, blistered from the ditch. "I'll split wood, mend the roof, whatever you've got." Valen looked at him then. His gaze moved to Aldric's raw palms and stayed. Something in him settled. "Woodpile's out back. Split it. We'll see." Aldric worked until dark. The axe bit clean. Valen watched from the porch and said nothing. When the pile stood stacked, he tossed Aldric a coin pouch heavier than a week of odd jobs. "Come back tomorrow," Valen said. "Every day. Same pay." He turned back to the road. "Don't ask about my girl." Aldric weighed the pouch. Enough to feed the dragon, the hound, and himself. Steady work at last. But he'd heard the word Valen buried under his warning. Taken. And Aldric noticed the man's hands as he passed the coin. Smooth. Soft. No woodcutter's hands at all. He walked home fed and hired, and turning over a lie he wasn't meant to see.

For a week Aldric split wood at the last cottage on the road. Each dusk Valen sat on the small porch, watching the road, and paid him well. The coin fed the dragon, the hound, and Aldric himself. But the buried word stayed with him. Taken. He wanted the truth, not just wages. A guildhall needed men he could trust, and he couldn't trust a lie. Still, one wrong question and Valen would send him off for good. So Aldric tried a careful path. He asked in the village, not at the cottage. He asked the corn farmer. He asked an old woman drawing water. Most shrugged. Valen kept to himself. His daughter left one night, they said, and never came back. Nobody saw who took her. Nobody saw anything at all. That evening Aldric slid onto a bench at the tavern. Matilda set down a mug and wiped the timeworn table. He asked her plainly about Valen's girl. "I sent you there to work," Matilda said. "Not to dig." She glanced past him. "But if you're set on it, ask her." A woman had just come in from the dark. Leather vest, a knife on her belt, mud to the knee. She dropped a wrapped haunch of meat on the bar and took the far bench. Matilda leaned close. "Mara. Lives in the woods. Brings us meat and news. She's helped Valen too. She's the one who'd know." Aldric carried his mug over and sat across from her. "You've worked for Valen Thorne." Mara didn't look up. She cut a strip of dried meat. "I have." "His daughter. People say she was taken. I don't believe it." Mara chewed. Then she set the knife down flat. "Smart. Nobody took her." She met his eyes. "Jane crossed the bridge on her own two feet. I saw the tracks. One set, walking east. No struggle. No blood." Aldric leaned in. "Then why does he say taken?" "Because it's easier than saying she chose to go." Mara wrapped her meat. "Valen's no woodcutter. He's hiding from someone. She got tired of hiding." She stood. "He pays me to search east. I search. I bring back nothing, because there's nothing he'll like." The truth landed hard. Valen's lie was a father's shame, not a scheme. Aldric had guessed wrong and right at once. "East," Aldric said. "Where the river runs?" "The bridge. Past it, the eastern forest." Mara paused at the door. "I'm tracking prints out there now. Heavy. Wrong for deer. If you go looking for the girl, you'll find worse first." She left. Aldric sat with cold ale and a heavier problem than the lie. He knew the truth now. He couldn't keep taking Valen's coin and stay silent. And beyond the bridge, in the woods where Jane had walked, something waited that even Mara couldn't name.

Aldric found Valen on the porch at dusk, still watching the road. He set his splitting axe against the wall and told the truth. Jane wasn't taken. She walked east across the bridge on her own. Valen's smooth hands went still on his knee. He didn't shout. He just said, "I know." Then, quieter, "Bring her home. I'll pay whatever you ask." Aldric saw his chance. A father's coin could fund the guildhall he needed. But first he had to cross into the eastern forest. He couldn't go blind. Mara had warned him something waited past the bridge. So Aldric found her at the treeline the next morning, crouched over a print in the mud. She traced it with two fingers, then looked up. "Cloven," she said. "Too big for elk. Wrong shape." She stood. "You still going in?" "Valen wants his daughter back. I said I'd try." Mara studied him a long moment. "Then you don't go alone." She turned and walked into the trees. Aldric followed. They moved for an hour under thick pines. Mara stopped often, reading tracks Aldric couldn't see. Then she raised a fist. Ahead, through the brush, stood weathered buildings around a fire pit. Rope and crates. Men moved between the shacks with blades on their belts. A bandit camp. "Jane's tracks lead here," Mara whispered. "They pass the camp and keep going east." Aldric watched a woman step from the largest shack. Pink hair. From her skull rose two antlers, curved like a stag's. She scanned the treeline, sharp and slow. One of her men flinched when she passed. "Their leader," Mara breathed. "Cursed. The antlers weren't there last season." Then the forest went cold. A shape drifted between the trees beyond the camp. An elk, but wrong. Vines hung from its back. Blue marks glowed along its ribs. Mushrooms sprouted from its antlers. Its eyes burned red. The heavy prints were its own. This was what Mara couldn't name. The cursed elk turned its head toward them. Aldric didn't breathe. The bandits below scrambled for weapons, shouting. The pink-haired leader drew her sword and faced the spirit, not the woods. Mara grabbed Aldric's arm and pulled him back. They crawled through the brush until the camp fell out of sight. Only then did she speak. "That thing guards the way east," she said. "Jane walked past it. Either she got lucky, or something let her." Aldric sat against a trunk, heart still pounding. He had come to fetch a girl for coin. Now he knew the truth. No man walked through that forest unprepared. Not past bandits and a spirit like that. "I can't face it as I am," he said. "No," Mara agreed. "You can't." She wiped mud from her hands. "But I know who might help. An old woman lives deeper in these woods. She knows curses." Aldric got to his feet. The path to Jane ran through the witch first.

Mara studied the trees for a long time. "There's no clean trail to the witch," she said. "Every path she knows loops back to the camp. If we skirt wide, we meet the elk." Aldric weighed it. Bandits could be reasoned with. The spirit could not. "Then we go past the camp," he said. "Straight through." Mara's jaw tightened, but she nodded. They walked in with hands open. It didn't matter. Two men stepped from the shacks with blades up, and more circled behind. Aldric stopped by the fire pit. The pink-haired leader came last, antlers rising through her hair, curved like a stag's. She looked them over the way a merchant counts coins. "Your valuables," she said. "Now." Aldric didn't reach for his purse. "We're not passing through for loot. We're here about the curse in these woods." The word stopped her. Her men glanced at each other. One at the treeline flinched, then pretended he hadn't. "Say that again," she said, quieter now. "The curse," Aldric repeated. He kept his eyes off her antlers, but she saw him not looking. "We know it's real. We've seen the elk." "Kendra," one of her men muttered. She raised a hand and he went silent. "What do you know?" she asked. "I'm hunting the one who did this to me. I've asked money and rumor. Neither gives me a name." Aldric chose his words. "Not much. But we're going to someone who might. A witch, deeper in." Kendra's antlers seemed heavier as she thought. "Then I come too," she said. It wasn't a request. She sheathed her sword. "Show me the way, and your purse stays yours." Mara didn't argue. She led. Kendra walked between them, saying nothing, her men left behind at the fire. The three of them cut through brush for an hour before a crooked hut rose from the roots. Lanterns hung from its eaves in green and orange glass. Dried herbs swayed at the door. An old woman opened it before they knocked. She wore a purple hat with flowers wilting on the brim. Her eyes moved over each of them and settled last on Kendra's antlers. "Three of you," Agatha said. "Why are you at my door?" Aldric stepped forward. "A man hired me to bring his daughter home. Jane. She walked east on her own, past the camp, past the elk." He glanced at Kendra. "This one's cursed and wants to know who did it. And I can't reach anyone in these woods without help." Agatha studied him. "Jane," she said, as if the name meant something. She stepped back and held the door. "Come in. The tea's already warm." Aldric crossed the threshold. He had gotten past the camp, and he'd gained a cursed ally he never asked for. The witch knew Jane's name. Whatever came next, it started inside.

Inside, the hut smelled of nettle and woodsmoke. A cauldron simmered over the fire, and a ladle turned slow circles in the soup. Agatha waved them to a round wooden table set with cups and bread. Mara sat first. Kendra stayed by the door, arms crossed, antlers scraping the low beam. Agatha poured tea and looked at Aldric. "Tell me the whole thing," she said. "From the start. Leave nothing out." Aldric wrapped his hands around the warm cup. He told her about Valen's soft hands and the lie that Jane was taken. He told her Jane crossed the bridge east on her own. He told her about the elk, and about hunting for someone who could help. He drank while he spoke, and the tea was bitter and green. When he finished, the cup was empty. Agatha took it from him. She tilted it and studied the leaves clinging to the bottom. Her thumb traced the shape they made. For a long moment she said nothing. Mara watched her hands. Kendra watched the door. "You didn't come to steal her," Agatha said at last. "The leaves say you came asking." She set the cup down. "But asking is easy. Say Jane won't go back. What then? Do you drag her? Do you leave?" Aldric shook his head. "I don't drag anyone. Valen paid me to find her, that's true. But I took the job to know she's alive. There's a curse loose in these woods." He glanced at Kendra's antlers. "I've seen what it does. I only want her safe from it. If she stays, she stays. I'll tell her father the truth." Agatha held his eyes. Something in her shoulders let go. She poured herself a cup and sat. "Then I'll tell you what I've kept," she said. "Jane is my apprentice. Has been for two years. I found her in the woods east of here, half-starved, running from that cottage. She wanted to learn. Not to swing a sword. To read leaves and mix cures." She nodded at the herbs on the wall. "She passed the elk because I taught her the words to pass it. She's no captive. She's mine to teach." Kendra pushed off the door. "Two years," she said. "You've been out here two years. Then you know curses." "I know who spreads them," Agatha said. She looked at the antlers, then at Aldric. "And now I know you'll do right by the girl. So I'll help you. But not the way you planned." Aldric leaned forward. His mission had turned under him. Jane wasn't lost. She was being trained by the one person in these woods who knew the curse-maker's name. He had come to retrieve a runaway. He was leaving with a guide. "Then help us," Aldric said. "Tell us where to find him."

Agatha set her cup down. "I'll tell you where he hides," she said. "But knowing won't help you." She looked at Aldric. "His tower stands past the elk. You've all seen the elk. None of you can beat the man inside that tower. Not you. Not the ranger. Not the bandit with the antlers." Kendra's jaw tightened. "Then I go alone." "Then you die," Agatha said. She said it the way she'd name a herb. "And you'd die for nothing. Killing him won't lift the curse." Aldric leaned forward. "Why not?" Agatha nodded toward the door, toward the woods. "The elk. You met it. Its body is full of thorns and rot now. That elk is the old guardian of this forest. Its spirit holds the land steady." She spread her hands. "The curse is in it. While the elk stays sick, the curse spreads. Kill the wizard and the sickness still climbs. The antlers still grow." She glanced at Kendra's crown of bone. "You want them gone? Cure the elk first." Mara had stood silent by the wall. Now she spoke, blunt as a dropped stone. "I've tracked those prints for weeks. Cloven. Too heavy. The forest is going wrong." She looked at Agatha. "You can cure it." "I can," Agatha said. "I need three things the woods won't give me easy. Sap from the old lark tree, the one choked with thorns and mushrooms. A blossom that grows only on the elk's own antlers. And moss from the tower's north stone." She counted them on her fingers and stopped. "Bring me those. Then we talk about the wizard." Aldric weighed it. The wizard's name meant nothing without a cure. A cure meant nothing without the ingredients. He thought of the boy who took a bad contract and never came back. He would not walk in blind again. "We get your ingredients," he said. "All three." Agatha studied his face. Something in her softened. "Good. Do that, and you'll have my trust. Not before." The door opened. A young woman stepped in, mud to her knees, a basket of roots on her arm. She had Valen's face, smaller and softer. She stopped when she saw the strangers. Her eyes moved over Kendra's antlers, over Mara, and settled on Aldric. "Who are these," Jane said. Not a question. Flat. Agatha didn't rise. "Help, if they earn it." Jane set the basket down slow. She looked at Aldric a long moment. "My father sent you." She didn't ask. She knew the shape of it. "He did," Aldric said. "I found you alive. That's all I came for." Jane's shoulders stayed stiff. "I'm not going back." "I know," he said. "I'm not here to take you. I'm here to stop the thing killing this forest." She held his eyes. Then she nodded, once, and picked her basket back up. The bargain was made. The path had a name now, and a price. The work started at the lark tree.

The lark tree stood at the edge of a bog, taller than any tree Aldric had seen. Its trunk rose smooth and gray for thirty feet before the first branch. Thorns wrapped the higher wood in tangled ropes. Mushrooms clustered thick around its roots. Somewhere up there, in the split bark, the sap ran. Agatha wanted it, and without it she would not help them stop the curse. Aldric had promised her all three ingredients. This was the first. He circled the trunk twice. No handholds. No low limbs. "I can't climb this," he said. Mara crouched by the roots, reading the ground the way she read everything. She had tracked the sick elk's prints for weeks before Aldric ever met her. She trusted her eyes over any man's plan. "Bark's wet," she said. "You'd fall and break your neck. Then you're no use to anyone." Aldric pulled the rope from his pack. He tied a loop, weighted it with a stone, and threw it at the lowest branch. The loop slipped off. He threw again. Again it fell. On the fifth throw the rope caught, and he hauled himself up two feet before the wet bark tore his grip loose. He landed hard in the mushrooms. "No," he said, breathing rough. "Not like this." Jane knelt beside a cluster of mushrooms he'd crushed in the fall. She had walked into this forest alone and lived, guided by Agatha's teaching. Two years of herbcraft had taught her what the woods gave freely. She pressed a torn mushroom cap between her fingers. Thick sap oozed out, gold and sticky. "You don't climb it," she said. "The mushrooms feed on the tree. They pull the sap down themselves." Aldric stared. "That's the same sap?" "Same tree," Jane said. "Same blood." She named the direction of the light, low and gold through the branches, and chose the caps that grew where it fell warmest. "These are ripest. Squeeze them into your jar." They worked until the jar filled. Gold sap, clean and thick, no rope needed and no fall to fear. Aldric corked it and held it to the light. He thought of the boy who died from bad information, sent up a wall he had no business climbing. Jane had known the easy road because someone taught her. That was the whole point of the guildhall he meant to build. "You saved me a broken neck," he told her. Jane wiped her hands on her skirt. "Agatha taught me. Not you." But something in her face had shifted. Mara stood and looked east, toward the deeper woods. "One down," she said. "The next one grows on the elk's antlers. The one that nearly killed you." She turned, dry and final. "We can't ask it nicely."

The elk stood in a clearing past the bog. Aldric had seen it before, when it nearly killed him. Now he had to get close. Its antlers held the blossom Agatha wanted, the second ingredient. Flowers and ferns grew from its cursed hide. Its eyes burned red. Mara knelt in the brush and lifted one hand. "Slow," she whispered. "Wind's toward us. It hasn't smelled our fear yet." Jane crouched beside Aldric, breathing quiet. Behind them, Kendra guarded the trail. Kendra had joined them to find the person who cursed her. The antlers pushing through her pink hair grew larger by the day. She wanted the curse-maker's blood. But Agatha had told them plainly: killing the wizard would not break the curse. The sick elk was the true source. Heal the elk first. Kendra had listened, jaw tight, saying nothing. Now her patience broke. "We're wasting time," she said. Her voice came sharp. "That thing carries what he did to me. I want to end it." "Not yet," Aldric said. "Loud and it bolts. Then we lose the blossom." Kendra's hand went to her blade. "He put these on my head." She touched her antlers. "Same as the elk. I'm done waiting." The elk's ears turned. Its head lifted. Aldric felt the whole plan tilting toward ruin. If Kendra charged, the spirit would run, and Agatha would send them back empty. He turned and gripped Kendra's wrist, hard. "Look at it," he said, low. "That's you in five years. It didn't ask for this. Neither did you. We heal it, the curse breaks. Yours too. But only if it stays." Kendra stared at the elk. The plants curling from its skin. The blossom bright in its antlers, the same flowers that would soon crown her own head. Her breath slowed. Her hand left the blade. "Fine," she said. Clipped and quiet. "Your way. This once." Jane moved then. She stood slow, palms open, and spoke words Agatha had taught her, the words that passed the elk safely. The spirit's ears settled. Its red eyes dimmed to a calmer glow. Jane stepped forward, one careful pace at a time, until she stood beneath the great antlers. "The blossom," Mara breathed. "Now." Jane reached up and closed her fingers on the flower. She twisted. It came free with a soft snap. The elk did not run. It only watched her, still and strange, as she backed away with the blossom cupped in both hands. Aldric let out the breath he'd held. Kendra stood beside him, watching the elk that mirrored her own fate. She had held her fury. Because of that, they had the second ingredient. "Two down," Mara said. She looked east, past the clearing. "Last one's moss from the wizard's tower. His tower." She turned to Kendra. "You'll get close to him after all. Just not with a knife." Kendra said nothing. But her eyes stayed on the elk, and something in her had gone quiet.