Mireth climbed the ladder of her watchtower before dawn. She pressed her palm to her antlers and waited. Nothing. Three weeks of silence, and a pilgrim missing since last night. She needed the old magic back, or someone would die unseen. She opened her leather journal and inked the traveler's name. Pressed leaves slipped between the pages. The book was a poor stand-in for senses that once tasted souls on the wind. Still, she logged the hour, the weather, the last known step. At the mist's edge she found the marker: an old cart half-swallowed by ferns, its canvas torn, its wheels broken. Boot prints led past it and stopped. The mist began there, white and patient. She knelt and touched the cold ground. Her antlers stayed dull. Mireth stood. She tore a blank page from her journal, pinned it to the cart, and wrote a single line: Searching blind. If I do not return, follow the ferns. Then she stepped into the mist.