Kael Thornwood crouched at the edge of a cold trail, brushing dirt from a faint print. Three times he had found her tracks. Twice he had lost them. Each time, he learned to read the ground a little better. That was the only skill that still mattered. He needed to follow any trail, no matter how old or buried. A boot scuffed the gravel behind him. Kael's hand drifted toward his knife, but he did not turn. "Don't," a low voice said. A folded paper dropped into the dirt beside his boot. Kael opened it. His own face stared back from a wanted poster, the ink still fresh. "He's sent a collector," the stranger said. "Half a day behind me. He knows you've gone quiet." Kael folded the paper and stood. The stranger was already moving off through the trees. Kael tucked the poster into his coat. The hunter was now the hunted. He turned back to the trail and started walking faster. A mile on, Kael spotted smoke through the pines. He crept to the ridge and looked down. A ranger station sat in the clearing, its metal roof catching the late sun. Shutters hung open. A stranger moved inside, sorting gear on the counter. Not a ranger. The collector had taken the post as his base. Kael memorized the layout, then backed away on soft feet. He could not stay on Valeria's trail with a hunter at his shoulder. He would have to read a new track now — the collector's — and stay one step ahead of the man sent to bury him. Halfway back to his own camp, Kael's boot struck metal. He bent and picked up a brass compass half-buried in moss. Its needle was bent, locked toward the ranger station behind him. The first stranger had left it for him to find. A silent marker. The collector was not coming — he was already here, and someone else was watching them both. Kael closed his fist around the compass. The trail he had to learn next was no longer in the dirt. It was in the men hunting him.

Kael walked the trade road at first light, the bent compass heavy in his pocket. He kept to the shoulder where the brush could hide him. A mile in, he saw it — paper nailed to a roadside tree at eye level. His own face. The ink was dry now. Someone had passed this way in the night and hung him out for every traveler to read. Kael stopped in the road and stared. The collector had not waited. He had spread the word ahead. He pulled his hood lower and stepped off the road. A covered bench sat in the pines a stone's throw away, its pitched roof shading the boards. Two travelers rested there, chewing bread. They glanced at the tree, then at each other. One pointed. Kael crouched in the brush and watched them read his name aloud. Every traveler on this road would now carry his face in their head. He waited until they moved on, then crossed to the trunk. Below the poster, half-buried in the dirt, something caught the morning light. A dagger. His dagger. The one he had lost to a river crossing two winters back. The collector had it. The collector wanted him to know. Kael pulled it from the soil. The blue stone in the hilt was clean, as if just polished. A message, plain as the poster above it. Kael tore the paper down and folded it small. He could not outrun the word now — it was already ahead of him. But he could read the man who left this blade. The collector wanted him afraid. That was a track, too. Kael slid the dagger into his belt and stepped back into the pines. He would stop walking the road. From now on, he would hunt the hunter from the trees.

Kael moved through the pines parallel to the road, the folded poster in one pocket and the bent compass in the other. By midday he caught the sound of hooves slowing — a lone traveler, dust-stained, eyes flicking to every tree. Kael knew that look. Someone with news to sell, and not enough road left to sell it safely. Word about Valeria was moving today, and Kael was not the only one waiting in the brush to hear it. The traveler turned off at a log tavern set back in the pines. Smoke curled from its chimney. A painted sign swung on iron chains. Kael crept closer and saw the stone set into the path — a slab of granite carved with a circle of knotted lines. The collector's mark. His network had already claimed this stop. Anyone speaking inside spoke into the collector's ear. Kael slipped around to the back wall and found a knot-hole near the kitchen. The traveler was at the bar, voice low. A gold hoop earring rolled on the wood between his fingers. "She dropped it two days east," the man said. "Near the falls. I can lead a buyer there by dusk tomorrow." The tavern keeper nodded once and stepped into the back room. Kael heard a bell ring twice — a signal going out. Kael had no time to bargain. He cut around to the stable, met the traveler as he reached for his reins, and pressed the bent compass into his hand along with a heavy coin. "The buyer behind that bell will bury you in a ditch," Kael said. "Ride west with me now, or ride east alone." The man looked at the coin, looked at the tavern door, and mounted up beside him. They were gone before the second rider arrived. Kael had the earring, the lead, and a witness — but the collector's bell had already rung, and the falls would be crowded by morning.