Lyra Thistledrift knelt on the cold temple floor and lit her small lamp. She had come here every dawn for months, trying to read the last cluster of paw marks carved into the wall. The mossy stone held nearly the whole ancient language now. Only one knot of symbols still hid from her. She wanted to be the one who freed them. She set her small mirror at the base of the wall, the way she always did. The glass caught the lamplight and threw soft sparks across the carvings. Sitting with the symbols made the noise in her head go quiet. That was her method now. Wait. Listen. Let the meaning come. Then she saw them. Fresh paw prints crossed the dust of the sealed floor. They glowed faintly, pink and gold, ringed by tiny scattered petals that had not been there last night. The trail ended exactly where she could not read. Right at the cluster. As if something had come to point. Lyra pressed her hand flat to the stone. The door had been sealed. No creature could have entered. But the prints were real, and they were small, and they shimmered like the ones spoken of near the tree line. A quiet step sounded behind her. Luna Stardust stood in the doorway, hood down, eyes steady. "They came in the night," Lyra whispered. Luna looked at the glowing trail and the untouched seal. "She is trying to be found," Luna said. "The marks are a message. Read them." Lyra turned back to the wall. The mirror caught the prints and threw their light up onto the carving. In that doubled glow, one symbol shifted under her eye — not a word for stone or sky, but a name. A young one. Lost. The cluster cracked open in her mind like ice. She had her answer. And with it, a worse question: the language had been waiting to tell her where the missing wolf had gone.

Lyra read the cluster again, faster now. The name was only half the message. The other symbols were a place — a old tree with a hollow door, set where the ridge bent. She stood up so quick her lamp shook. "It's a map," she told Luna. "And the prints will fade by sun." They ran. Outside the temple, a trail of pale blue feathers lay across the snow, faintly glowing, each one set like a step. Some had already begun to dim at the edges. Lyra followed them at a hard pace, her breath sharp. The path bent exactly where the symbols had said it would. At the ridge stood a wide tree with a dark hollow at its base. Tufts of soft blue fur clung to the bark. Small wing-feathers, downy and bright, were caught in the roots. Pups had been here. Lyra knelt at the hollow's mouth, hands shaking. The fur was still warm. "We found it," she breathed. Luna touched her shoulder. The last feather on the path winked out behind them. Lyra had beaten the trail. But the hollow was empty, and whatever had taken the missing wolf had taken the pups too.