Kaelith had spent three days tracking rumors through port taverns and trade posts, looking for someone who had survived what shouldn't be survived. He needed a first recruit for his explorer's guild, someone who knew what it meant to walk into death and come back still watching, still thinking. The trail led to a crystalline pod half-buried in the hillside, its cracked walls glowing faintly beneath layers of moss. Inside, a metal hatch descended into rock. Kaelith climbed down into the bunker and found a woman sitting at a table, carving something from memory. On the surface between them sat a flower that had no business existing in this realm—petals like folded light, twisted stalk still rooted in a clump of soil that smelled wrong. The ambrosia dripping from it pooled in a shallow dish, shimmering colors he had no names for. She didn't look up when he spoke. "You're Veska," he said. "The one who mapped the fae wilds and came back." She kept carving. "Came back sane, they say." Her knife paused. Her eyes lifted to meet his, and he saw it—the watchfulness, the calculating awareness that marked someone who had learned to survive the impossible. "Sane is generous," she said. "But I can still count to ten and remember my own name, if that's what you're asking." Kaelith pulled the charm from his pocket and set it on the table beside the flower. "I'm building a guild of explorers," he said. "Fae who map places that kill people. I need someone who's been where the maps end." Veska looked at the charm, then at the flower, then back at him. She nodded once. "The Ashveil Corridor," she said, not a question. "That's where you're going first." He didn't deny it. She stood, slid the flower carefully into a pack, and walked toward the hatch. "Then you'll want someone who knows what it's like when the ground stops being ground," she said. "Let's talk terms."