Ember crouched low behind a moss-covered ridge, her small paws pressed to the cold stone tablet she had dragged across half the world. Thirty years of running, six convergence points sealed, and now only one remained: the portal to the old dragon's lair. The final stanza glowed faintly on the tablet's cracked face, but the letters jumbled and shifted, refusing to settle. She needed the rite. She needed to read it right. She could not afford to be wrong. She pulled the dragon-bone dagger from her belt and laid its tip against the glowing script. The blade was supposed to be the key. Press it to the stone, and the letters would still. That was the promise. Instead, the dagger sparked once and went dark. The stanza blurred again. Behind her, a twig snapped. Someone was tracking her through the trees, and they had been for two days. Her ears flattened. She did not have time for both puzzles. Ember wrapped the tablet in her cloak and sheathed the useless blade. If the dagger would not unlock the words, she would have to drag the stone to the portal itself and pray the dragon could read what she could not. She rose, counted three steady breaths, and ran.

Ember ran with the tablet bouncing against her back. It was too heavy. Her paws slipped on wet leaves. She would not reach the lair in time. She stopped, breathing hard, and pulled a black pouch from her belt. The green rune on its face glowed faintly. She had saved it for an emergency, and this was one. She slid the stone tablet inside. The pouch swallowed it without growing larger. Lighter now, she pushed deeper into the trees. Then she saw the sign she had feared. A shimmering veil hung between two stone arches at a small crossroads, blue fading to violet. Her pursuer had opened a portal. They were no longer behind her. They were ahead, or beside her, or both. Ember turned hard and ran the other way. She remembered an old story about a willow with a pool beneath its roots, a place that bent distance for those who paid in a memory. She had refused such bargains all her life. Today she had no choice. She found it at dusk. Orange leaves hung over a still blue pool. She knelt at the water. "Take the sound of my mother's voice," she whispered. "I cannot remember it well anyway." The pool rippled. Something in her chest went quiet and cold. When she stepped into the water, the forest folded. She came out three days' run closer to the lair, the pouch heavy at her hip, the dagger silent at her belt. Her pursuer's portal was far behind her now. But she could not recall her mother's voice at all, and the prophecy's mark on her felt one shade deeper.