Briar swung her pack onto her shoulders and stepped toward the door. Six hours to the root, another six back — she'd be cutting it close with the frost, but the timing would work. She'd checked it three times. This was the moment everything started: the wind-anchor root first, then the careful sequence that would end with a sylph in captivity for the first time in two centuries. A voice caught her at the threshold. "That's wind-anchor root." Briar turned. A woman stood in the doorway of the apothecary shop across the way, the building grown into the trees like it had always been part of them. She wore a work apron dusted with dried herbs and pointed at the pale, fibrous cutting visible through the mesh of Briar's pack. "You're going to harvest more." It wasn't a question. The woman stepped down from her shop's entrance, her eyes steady on Briar's face. "I know where it grows. I also know what it's used for, and I know you shouldn't go alone." She waited, hands loose at her sides, as if she'd already decided. Briar's mind worked through the variables — an extra person meant slower travel, split supplies, questions she didn't have time to answer. But it also meant someone who could identify wind-anchor root on sight, who understood its purpose. Someone who might know what came next. "We leave now," Briar said. The woman nodded once and disappeared back into her shop. She returned two minutes later with a pack that smelled like fresh earth and growing things. Plants spilled from every pocket and strap, their leaves bright against the worn leather. The woman pulled the shop door closed behind her and tested the weight of her pack with a small bounce. "I'm ready." Briar studied her for a moment, then turned toward the forest path. The woman fell into step beside her without another word. The frost was coming, the root was waiting, and now there were two of them walking toward it. They cleared the edge of Pinehollow before the woman spoke again. She pulled a thick book from her coat, its cover painted with flowers and star charts. "I've been tracking wind-anchor root for years." She flipped through pages filled with careful drawings and pressed specimens. "It only grows in three places anymore. The frost will kill everything but the deepest roots." She closed the book and tucked it away. Briar adjusted her pack straps and picked up her pace. The woman matched it easily, her herb-filled pack bouncing against her shoulders. For the first time since she'd started planning, Briar felt the weight shift. Not lighter, but balanced. Someone else knew what wind-anchor root meant. Someone else understood what came after.

The smoke rose thick and gray against the morning sky, visible from half a mile out. Briar stopped on the trail and felt her chest tighten. The woman beside her went still, one hand gripping the strap of her pack. They'd been walking for four hours, moving fast to beat the frost. Someone else had reached the root site first. Briar pushed forward at a run, the woman keeping pace behind her. The site opened into a small clearing where the root should have been growing, sheltered between two old stones. Instead, fresh-turned earth marked where someone had dug deep. A campfire still smoldered at the edge of the clearing, smoke curling up from the embers. Beside it lay an ornate pickaxe with a transparent chamber in its head, the kind used for precision root work. The chamber was empty now, but streaks of pale fiber clung to its edges — wind-anchor root, recently harvested. Briar knelt at the excavation site and ran her fingers through the loose soil. The roots went deep here, deeper than most harvesters would bother with. Whoever had come before her knew exactly what they were doing. The woman circled the campfire, then stopped. She crouched and picked up a knife with an orange handle that had been left on a flat rock near the flames. "This is a harvester's blade," she said, turning it over in her hands. "Expensive. Whoever left it might come back for it." Briar stood and brushed the dirt from her hands. The frost would come tonight, and there was nothing left to harvest here. But the pickaxe and the knife told her something useful — someone else knew about wind-anchor root, someone skilled enough to dig out the deepest growth, and someone in enough of a hurry to leave tools behind. She pulled her pack off and retrieved her own digging blade. "Check the edges of the clearing," she said. "Root systems spread. If they missed any lateral growth, we might still have enough." The woman nodded and moved to the far side of the stones. Briar started digging at the perimeter of the excavation site, working quickly. She didn't need much — just enough to start the process. The plan hadn't failed yet.