Gretel Müller left her brother drunk at a countryside tavern and walked into the dark forest alone. For years she had hunted witches for coin. For years she had hunted one witch in particular, the one who built the candy house and nearly baked her alive as a child. She killed that witch herself, shoved her into her own oven. But the witch had masters. A coven trained her. Tonight Gretel meant to find proof of who they were. She knew the risk of going without Hansel. He laughed at danger. He drank through every lead. But he would have stopped her from entering the forest at night, and she was done waiting. The trees stood black against a blacker sky. Something moved between them. A wolf stepped onto the path, taller than any wolf should be, its eyes burning red. It rose on two legs like a man. "Little hunter," it said. Its voice scraped like a blade on stone. "Lost, far from your pack." Gretel did not run. Running fed beasts like this. She kept her hands still near her knives and studied its shoulders, its hunger. "You smell my fear," she said. "But you smell my brother more. He follows close behind, and he carries fire." The wolf's ears twitched. It sniffed the air behind her. Gretel had rubbed pitch and ash on her cloak before she left. The scent read like smoke, like a torch coming. "He is not here," the wolf growled, but doubt cracked its voice. "Then wait and learn," Gretel said. She stepped sideways, slow, toward the dark trees. "Or let the small meal pass and keep both your eyes." The wolf hesitated. That was all she needed. She slipped behind a thick spruce and ran. The beast howled, but it stayed to guard the path it thought her brother would take. By the time it understood the trick, she was gone. She found the candy house at the bottom of a hollow. Years of abandonment had ruined it. The sweet walls had rotted black. Moss choked the candy. Vines pulled the frame crooked. Scavengers had stripped it bare long ago. Gretel went inside anyway. She remembered the hearth. She knelt and pried at the stones with her knife. The old mortar crumbled. One stone lifted free. Beneath it lay a square of charred cloth. She unfolded it by moonlight. Burned into the fabric was a mark: three thorns crossed inside a ring. Her hands shook. Not from fear. From several years of silence finally breaking. The coven had a sign now. A sign she could track, name, and hunt. She tucked the cloth into her belt. Hansel had to see this. But telling him meant admitting she had gone alone, past the wolf, into the ruin he feared. The proof was found. The hard part was carrying it home.

Gretel carried the charred cloth out of the forest before dawn. She found Hansel where she had left him, slumped at a table in the countryside tavern. He woke when she dropped the cloth in front of him. "You went alone," he said. He did not sound angry. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the mark. "Three thorns in a ring. Pretty. Means nothing." "It means something to someone," Gretel said. "We find who wears it, we find the coven." Hansel turned the cloth over. He smelled it. "Twenty years we've chased these people. You think a rag tells us their names?" He dropped it. "It's a lead that goes nowhere." He was right, and that was the problem. The mark was proof. But proof of nothing until she could match it to a face, a town, a trade. A sign no one recognized was just ash. Gretel folded the cloth and stood. "Then we ask people who read marks for coin." They rode to a cluster of countryside houses by midday. Steep roofs. Stone walls dark with moss. Gretel went door to door with the cloth open in her hands. Three villagers stood laughing by a well, an older woman between two men. Their smiles died when they saw the weapons strapped across Gretel's chest. She showed them the mark. The woman shook her head fast. One man stepped back. Children ran past, chasing each other, until the woman called them close and held them still. "We don't know it," the man said. But his eyes stayed on the cloth too long. Gretel watched him. "You've seen it." "No." He wiped his hands on his tunic. "But the old shepherd north of here lost sheep last winter. Found that mark burned on the gate after. He wouldn't speak of it. Moved away." Gretel's grip tightened. "Where." "Gone. Took his family at night." The man lowered his voice. "But the one he blamed still lives. A dealer. Trades cures near the Dark Forest. Folk say he reads witch-signs because he keeps witch company." Hansel laughed under his breath. "A witch-dealer. Of course." Gretel did not laugh. She had a direction now. Not a name, but a door. Someone who could read the mark and say who wore it. They left the villagers at the well and rode toward the forest edge. The sun dropped behind the trees. "You know what dealers like that cost," Hansel said. "They don't take coin. They take pieces of you." "Then we pay," Gretel said. The scrap in her belt was no longer silent. It had an owner now, or soon would. The dealer near the Dark Forest could read what Gretel could not. Finding him was the next hunt. And a dealer who kept witch company would not answer questions for free.