Axel Storms counted his coins twice, then stopped, because there were none. He sat on the top platform of his treehouse, blue hair blown sideways by the wind. Below him the village slept. Somewhere past the trees lay the answer he wanted: the family he had never known, the bloodline that had given him hair no one else in Birchrot possessed. He had asked the elders about it for years. They only shrugged and looked away. Now he was old enough to go find the truth himself. But a journey needed coin, food, and gear. Axel had a rope ladder, an empty purse, and a stubborn wish. He climbed down and walked to the market at first light. He offered to trade his tools, his boots, even the lashings from his loft. The traders laughed. "Save your rope, boy," one said. "You'll need it to hang your dreams." By noon he had nothing to sell and no plan left. He slumped against a stall post and stared at the road out of the village. It might as well have been an ocean. A voice cut through his gloom. "You look like a man who wants to leave and can't." A woman stood over him, a short bow slung across her back. Her boots were mud-caked from real travel. Her dark braid was tied tight for the woods. She studied him the way a hunter studies tracks. This was Elara Thornwick, and Axel had heard the rumor: a hunter searching the deep forest for a rare vine that only bloomed under the moon. "I can't pay you," Axel said. "I can't pay anyone." "I didn't ask for coin." She crouched to his level. "I need a guide. You grew up in these trees. I'm hunting the moonvine, and I've lost three days to wrong turns." Her eyes narrowed. "Help me find it, and I'll owe you a favor. Any favor. That's a promise I keep." Axel thought of the empty road and the empty purse. A favor from a woman with supplies, weapons, and knowledge of the wild was worth more than any coin he could beg. "Any favor," he repeated. "Any favor," she said. "Then outfit me," Axel said. "Food, a pack, a blade. Enough to travel far after we're done. That's my price." Elara stood and offered her hand. "Done. Find my vine first." He shook it. That afternoon she loaded a spare pack with dried meat, a waterskin, and a hunting knife, then pressed it into his arms. The weight felt like a door swinging open. For the first time the road out of the village looked crossable. But the moonvine grew deep in the forest, past ground Axel had never walked. He had traded a journey he understood for one he did not. His supplies were real now. So was the danger waiting under the trees.