Nettle Reed waded through the green water with her knife and tablet strapped to her back. She had come to the marsh hunting one more glimpse of the god's face. Three years her sister had been sick. One true carving, one wish — that was the bargain she meant to win. She found the shrine half-drowned, its mossy columns leaning like tired shoulders. Brick walls crumbled into the stagnant pool. Above the dark doorway, someone had cut letters deep into the stone. Nettle leaned close and read: The last who carved his face did not come home. She waded around the back. A marble figure stood waist-deep in the muck, robes draped, hands still lifted as if shaping something unseen. Vines had eaten his beard. His eyes were open. Nettle touched his wrist and felt warm stone under the cold moss. She sat on a root and opened her wax tablet. The resin-sealed surface caught the dim light. She copied the warning, then sketched the stone sculptor exactly as he stood. Below it she wrote one line: He tried. Then she closed the tablet, tightened her pack, and walked deeper in.

Nettle waded back to the marble sculptor and followed the line of his lifted hands. They pointed down into a black pool where thick, thorny vines coiled across the surface. The tendrils moved slow, like sleeping snakes. Whatever he was showing her lay beneath them. She crouched on a half-sunk stone and stared. Through a gap in the writhing vines, she saw rust-orange bars wavering under the water. A gate. Something was caged, or something was kept out. Her sister's face flickered behind her eyes. She rolled up her sleeve. Nettle pushed her arm through the gap. A thorny tendril brushed her wrist and tightened. She did not pull back. Her fingers found cold iron, then a slot in the bars, then a small object wedged inside — flat, hard, carved. She tugged it free as the vine bit into her skin. Blood threaded the water. She yanked her arm out and fell backward onto the root. In her shaking palm lay a wooden token, no bigger than a coin. A face was carved into it. A face she had been trying to find for three years. She opened her tablet and pressed the token beside her sketch. Her hand was bleeding, but she was smiling. The swamp had let her keep it. For now.