Lyanna heard the story for the first time on a Tuesday morning, standing at the market with her hands full of parsnips. An old woman two stalls down was telling it to a younger man — the same tale her mentor had chased into silence. The woman's voice carried the forbidden name lightly, as if it were nothing. Lyanna dropped the parsnips. She walked straight to the town square, where the message board stood beneath the oak trees. Twelve notices hung there now, each one showing a face she recognized. The baker's son. The widow from the mill house. A traveling musician who had stayed too long. All of them gone in the last three weeks. She pulled her bag tighter on her shoulder — the one she had packed twice before and never carried beyond her doorstep. This time she did not turn back toward home. The school stood at the edge of the square, wrapped in flowering vines and soft lights. Lyanna had passed it a hundred times without thinking. Now she heard voices drifting from the open windows — children reciting something in unison. She moved closer and caught the rhythm of it, the pattern she knew too well. They were singing the story. Not a lesson. Not a rhyme. The actual tale, with the name woven through every verse. A young teacher stood in the doorway, smiling as she listened. Lyanna's chest went tight. She turned away from the school and started walking. The road led north, toward the forest where her mentor's letters had stopped coming. This time her feet kept moving. By evening she reached the old tavern built into the giant stump at the crossroads. A crowd had gathered outside on the benches, circled around a thin man with a traveling pack. He was telling the story again. His voice rose and fell with practiced rhythm, and people leaned in closer with each word. Some of them were writing things down. Lyanna recognized the look on their faces — the same brightness her mentor had described in his final letter. She did not stop to listen. She walked past the tavern and kept going into the trees. Behind her, the man's voice carried the forbidden name into the dusk, again and again, like a bell that would not stop ringing.

The trees closed in around her as the tavern sounds faded behind. Lyanna walked until the last light from the stump disappeared, until the only sound was her own footsteps on soft earth. The forest here was older than the woods near town. The air tasted different. She found the clearing just after midnight. Twisted trees ringed it like bent fingers, and the canopy above let through almost no moonlight. A figure stood in the center, clutching something against their chest. Lyanna stopped. The figure turned toward her, and she saw the fear on their face first — wide eyes, shallow breathing. Then she saw what they held. Her mentor's traveling bag. The maroon lining showed through a tear in the leather. She had sewn that patch herself two years ago. The figure took a step back. "Don't," they said. Their voice shook. "Don't come closer. You shouldn't be here." Lyanna's hand went to the knife at her belt, but she did not draw it. "That belongs to someone I'm looking for," she said. The figure shook their head. "He gave it to me. He told me to run. I didn't listen fast enough." They held the bag out slightly, like an offering, but their feet stayed planted. "Take it. Take it and go back. The story doesn't stop. It just keeps going." Lyanna moved forward three steps. The figure flinched but did not run. She could see their hands trembling now. She reached out slowly and took the bag. The weight of it felt wrong — too light, half-empty. She opened it. Inside were her mentor's journal, his spare shirt, and a single page torn from something else. The page had writing on both sides. One side was her mentor's careful script. The other side was different — rushed, frantic, written in a hand she did not recognize. She looked up at the figure. "Where is he?" The figure's face crumpled. "He went deeper. Three days ago. He said the name too many times. He couldn't stop saying it." Lyanna closed the bag. She had come looking for her mentor. She had found his fear made flesh in someone else. "Show me where," Lyanna said. The figure backed away, shaking their head hard. "No. No, I won't go back there. You don't understand — the story wants people who know it. It pulls harder the closer you get." They pointed past the clearing into the darker trees. "There's an old inn. He stayed there first. Someone there might know more. I'm not going back." They turned and ran before Lyanna could stop them, crashing through the underbrush until the sound faded completely. Lyanna stood alone in the clearing, holding the bag. She pulled out the torn page and read her mentor's side by lamplight. It was a list of names — people who had told the story before and vanished. The last name on the list was his own, written in that same frantic handwriting from the other side. She turned the page over. The other side was covered in the forbidden word, written over and over until the letters bled together. She folded it carefully and put it back in the bag. Three days was not long. She could still find him. But now she knew what she was walking toward — not just her mentor's disappearance, but the moment he had stopped being himself. She slung the bag over her shoulder and walked toward the trees where the figure had pointed. The old inn waited somewhere ahead, and with it, the last people who had seen her mentor whole.