Helga tore the last strip of mammoth meat from the bone and chewed slowly. The camp spread around her — warriors cleaning weapons, children chasing each other between tents, smoke rising from a dozen fires. She had come here looking for answers about her father's sword, but no one knew where it had gone. A gray-bearded warrior sat down across from her. He said the sword was lost, that chasing it would only bring her death. Two others nodded and told her to let it go. Helga wiped her mouth and stood. She walked past them without a word, heading toward the tent where she had slept. The tent had belonged to her father once, and she had kept his things inside — his cup, his cloak, the bear tooth he wore on a cord. She gathered what she needed and slung her pack over her shoulder. When she stepped outside, the warriors were still watching. She turned away from them and walked toward the edge of camp. No one followed. The path out of camp was marked by a line of stones where the last tent stood. Beyond that, a dirt trail led between tall pines toward the mountains. Helga stopped at the boundary and pulled the wine pouch from her belt. She drank once, felt the burn in her throat, and tied it back in place. The wind came down from the peaks and carried the smell of cold stone. She looked back at her father's tent one last time. The hide walls were still, the entrance dark and empty. Helga turned and started walking. The path curved into the valley, narrow and worn from use. Her boots found the center of the trail and she kept her eyes ahead. The camp noise faded behind her — voices, axes on wood, dogs barking. By the time she reached the first bend, there was only wind and the crunch of her own footsteps. She did not look back again.

The trail climbed for two days before dropping into a shallow valley where the pines grew thick and dark. Helga smelled smoke before she saw the tents. She moved off the path and into the trees, keeping low. Through the branches she could make out a camp — not the one she had left, but another. Smaller. Rougher. She circled through the undergrowth until she had a clear view. A dozen tents stood in a rough circle around a central fire pit. Barbarians moved between them, carrying water and wood. At the far edge of camp, wooden cages stood in a row. Inside them, orks sat hunched against the bars. Helga counted five cages, each holding one or two prisoners. A guard stood watch nearby, a heavy-shouldered man with an axe resting against his leg. He looked bored. Helga watched the cages for a long time. The orks inside were quiet, not struggling or calling out. One slept with her head against the wooden slats. Another sat cross-legged and stared at nothing. These barbarians kept captives, but Helga had never seen her people do that before. They killed enemies or let them go. They did not cage them like animals. She thought about her father's sword and whether someone here might know where it had gone. But if she walked into this camp asking questions, they would want to know why she traveled alone. They would see her as weak or desperate. She needed something to trade first — something that would make them listen. Helga looked at the cages again and felt the idea settle into place. If she freed the orks, the barbarians would chase her. And when they did, she would learn who led them and what they valued. People always revealed themselves when something was taken from them. She pulled the wine pouch from her belt and took a long drink. Then she moved deeper into the trees to wait for nightfall. But as darkness fell and she crept closer, Helga saw the collar lying in the dirt near the first cage. Heavy iron, crusted with green blood that had dried in thick streaks down the metal. More chains coiled beside it, their links spotted with the same stains. She knelt and touched the collar, feeling the weight of it. This was not the work of raiders taking prisoners for ransom. This was something else. The orks in the cages had been collared like dogs and bled enough to mark the iron. Helga stood and looked at the sleeping guard, then at the orks beyond him. She had come here to steal information, to force these barbarians into showing their hand. But she did not know what kind of people collared captives or why. And rushing in without understanding would get her killed before she ever found her father's sword. Helga backed into the shadows and turned away from the camp. She would find another way to get answers — one that did not require her to free prisoners she did not understand for barbarians whose purpose she could not name. The sword was still out there. Chasing it blindly would not bring it back.

The light changed as she pushed deeper. The dark pines gave way to older trees, their trunks thick and twisted. Moss hung from branches like torn cloth. The canopy above grew so dense that the forest floor turned dim even as morning brightened the sky. Helga slowed her pace and listened. No voices followed. No footsteps broke through the undergrowth behind her. She had lost them, but she had also lost any sense of direction. The trees here stood so close together that she could not see more than twenty paces in any direction. She stepped into a clearing where sunlight broke through in scattered beams. The glade opened before her like a held breath — towering trees ringed the space, their roots thick as her waist. Ferns and flowers grew in patches where the light touched ground. For the first time since the barbarians found her trail, Helga felt the tightness in her chest ease. This place was hidden, defensible. She could rest here and think. But as she moved toward the center of the glade, her boot caught on something beneath the moss. She knelt and brushed away the green carpet. Stone. Flat and carved, part of a pathway that continued under the earth and plants. Helga traced the edge of it with her fingers and felt the smoothness of old work. Not barbarian. Not human. The pointed ears her mother gave her suddenly felt heavier, more deliberate. The elves had been here. Their ruins were real. And if she could find their graves, she might find weapons — or answers about why her ears marked her different. She stood and looked at the glade with new eyes. The sword would be harder to find than she thought. But she had a direction now, and she had escaped the slavers who would have caged her. That was enough for today. Then torchlight flickered through the trees behind her. Helga turned and saw three barbarians pushing through the undergrowth at the glade's edge. The lead man carried a torch in one hand and a spiked collar in the other, its iron blackened from use. His eyes found her ears first, then her face. He smiled. The other two spread out to flank her, cutting off the paths she might have taken. Helga's hand went to her belt where her knife should have been, but she had left it behind at the slaver camp two nights ago when she ran. The man with the torch stepped forward. He said something in a tongue she did not know, then lifted the collar and shook it so the chains rattled. Helga looked at the stone pathway beneath her feet, then at the dense trees surrounding the glade. She could not fight three men without a weapon. But she knew forests, and she knew how to move through them faster than men weighed down by iron and torches. She broke left toward the thickest tangle of roots and ferns, her legs driving hard. The barbarians shouted and gave chase, but Helga was already gone into the green shadows, leaving only the echo of snapping branches behind her. She ran until her lungs burned and the voices faded to nothing. When she finally stopped, chest heaving, she found herself standing before a moss-covered stone tablet half-buried in the earth. The carving showed two figures dancing, their pointed ears and flowing robes unmistakable even beneath centuries of decay. Helga pressed her palm against the stone and felt its coolness. The elves had not just passed through this forest. They had lived here, built here, left their marks in stone that would outlast empires. Her ears were not a curse or a mystery. They were a thread connecting her to something older than her father's sword, older than the barbarians who caged and collared their captives. She could not return to the glade yet, not with slavers hunting her trail. But she knew now that the forest held more than one kind of answer, and that her father's sword might be only the beginning of what she would reclaim. The tablet remained silent beneath her hand, but it had already told her enough. She was not running anymore. She was tracking.

Helga moved deeper into the forest, away from the tablet and the voices that might still be hunting her. The trees grew thicker here, their roots breaking through earth like exposed bone. She needed a weapon. The slavers would not stop searching, and running had bought her time but not safety. She found it half-buried beneath moss and vines — a stone box covered in elvish carvings, its surface worn smooth by centuries. The vines wrapped around it like veins, their leaves bright against weathered stone. Helga knelt and tore at the growth with both hands, pulling away layers of green until the carvings showed clear. Flowers and figures danced across the surface, their pointed ears marking them as kin to whatever blood ran through her own veins. She dug her fingers into the earth around the box's edge and pried. The soil gave way reluctantly, releasing roots that had grown through cracks in the stone. The lid shifted. She worked it free and lifted it aside. Inside lay a dagger, its blade untouched by rust or time. The moment her fingers closed around the hilt, silver light flared along the metal. Helga pulled it from the box and held it before her face. The light faded but the blade remained bright, its edge sharper than any weapon she had seen. She stood and tested its weight. Balanced. Deadly. The orks in the barbarian cages would know which camp held her father's sword. The men who fled when he died might have passed through here, might have traded with slavers, might have left word of where the blade went after the battle. She would cut her way to the cages tonight. She would free the captives and make them tell her everything they knew. The dagger felt right in her hand, like it had been waiting for someone with her ears to find it. She turned back toward the direction of the slaver camp and began to walk.

Helga followed Sylvara deeper into the forest, away from the hovel of bones and mud. The trees pressed close on both sides, their branches blocking out the moon. Sylvara moved without sound, her pale skin catching what little light filtered through the canopy. She stopped at a clearing where the ground dipped into shadow, then turned to face Helga. "The slaver lord's name is Vorak," she said. "He keeps the vault beneath his largest tent, guarded day and night. You cannot fight your way in." Helga's hand tightened on the dagger at her belt. "Then how?" Sylvara pulled the wedding band from her pocket and held it up between them. The symbol on its surface gleamed even in the dark. "Vorak collects more than weapons. He collects secrets. I will tell him I have information about an ancient elven cache in the ruins. He will let us into his tent to hear it. Once inside, you take the sword while I keep him occupied." She dropped the ring into Helga's palm. "This proves I knew your father. It proves you are his daughter. Vorak respects bloodlines. He will believe you came to bargain for your father's blade." Helga stared at the ring, its intricate design marking it as something her father had valued enough to give away. "Why help me?" she asked. "You could take the sword yourself." Sylvara's expression did not change. "Because you are my daughter, and I have already failed you once. I will not fail you again." The words settled between them like stones. Helga turned the ring over in her hand, feeling its weight. The two men who fled her father were dead. The sword had a keeper. And the creature standing before her had just offered the only path forward that did not end in chains or death. Helga slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit. "Three days north," she said. Sylvara nodded once, then turned and began walking. Helga followed, the dagger cold against her hip and the ring warm against her skin. She had come into the forest hunting ghosts. She was leaving with a guide who knew the way to her father's sword and a plan that might actually work. The hunt had not ended. It had only become something she could no longer do alone.