Lumina knelt at the forest's edge and opened the crystal book across her knees. Its pages caught the dawn and threw small rainbows onto the moss. She needed a map of the surviving glades before the blooming season ended, or her plan to crown a new queen would fail before it began. She pressed her palm to the cold pages and asked the book to show her what still lived. The crystal warmed. Faint lines rose inside it, threading toward a half-buried path she had walked as a child. At its far end stood the weathered footbridge and lichen-marked stones of an old graveyard, its glowing symbols flickering like a slow heartbeat. Each grave-mark, she realized, named a glade that had folded itself away to hide. Lumina copied every symbol with shaking fingers. By the time the sun cleared the trees, she held a true list of the sheltering places. She also held a colder truth. Some of the marks were fading even as she watched, and one had already gone dark.

Lumina folded her list of grave-marks into her satchel and set out before the dew dried. The nearest sheltering glade waited beyond a low rise, hidden behind a curtain of fog. She carried the crystal book against her chest and an old black key wrapped in living vines at her hip. The key had belonged to her grandmother, and its flowers still bloomed. She reached the spot her map named, but found no gate. Only mist, and a patch of moss that did not move when the wind passed. Lumina knelt and pressed the vined key to the moss. "I am not a stranger," she said. "I carry the old ways." The moss split open like a slow mouth. A tall shape rose from it, black cloth and drifting purple wisps, soft at the edges and cold at the center. It had no face. It bent toward her without sound, and the air went thin. Lumina did not move. She held the key higher, so the small flowers brushed the hem of the shadow. "Read me," she whispered. "Read what I carry." The wisp drifted closer. Tiny lights inside it pulsed once, twice, matching the slow heartbeat she had seen in the graveyard stones. Two small clouds drifted down through the mist then, shaped like pale kittens, pink and lavender. They circled her shoulders and purred against the shadow's hem. The guardian paused. Whatever the clouds were, they knew her, and the wisp seemed to weigh that knowing. Slowly, the shadow parted down its middle like a torn veil. Behind it stood a tower of bright glass, wrapped in vines and small flowers, its shelves glowing with colored books. The hidden glade had opened. Lumina stepped through, the key warm in her hand, and the mist closed behind her. She was inside now, and the guardian had not let her pass freely. It had let her pass marked.