Rosalind Fernwhisper pressed her hand to the oak and felt the sickness under the bark. She was fifteen, small even for a gnome, and she meant to crown herself queen of this forest by spring. But a queen needs a kingdom. The blight had other plans. Gray rot climbed the trunk under her palm, and the leaves above curled black and dropped like ash. She pulled her hand back. The spread had doubled since morning. Three oaks stood dead at the clearing's edge, their roots gone soft as old bread. If the rot reached the heart of the wood, no throne would mean anything. Her people would scatter, and no one would remember the girl who tried to rule them. Rosalind ran to the one place that still smelled alive. The bakery sat under its shingled roof, warm light spilling from the round windows. Pies and braided loaves crowded the counter. The baker had closed the shutters against the rot, but Rosalind knew what she wanted. Not bread. The sourdough starter. Her grandmother once told her the starter had lived a hundred years. It ate what was dead and made it rise again. Rosalind had laughed then. Now she grabbed the clay crock off the shelf and ran back to the dying oaks. She dug her fingers into the pale starter and smeared it across the rotted bark. It hissed. The gray crust bubbled, loosened, and fell away in wet flakes. Underneath, the wood showed green. Rosalind laughed out loud and packed more starter into the cracks. One oak, then the second. The rot shrank back from the living paste. She reached the third tree, the worst one, and scraped the crock clean. It wasn't enough. The starter covered the lower trunk, but the rot had already climbed past her reach into the high branches. She watched the green fight the gray, and she watched the gray win above her head. Then the cured bark began to glow. Not light exactly, but warmth, the way dough swells near a fire. The starter had taken root in the wood itself. It spread upward on its own, racing the rot, eating the gray as it climbed. The dead branches cracked, shuddered, and pushed new buds. By dusk all three oaks stood green and whole. Rosalind sat in the roots and breathed. She had saved the clearing. She had saved her kingdom. The empty crock rested in her lap. Then she heard it. A low groan rolled through the whole forest, from every direction at once. The starter was still spreading. It did not stop at the three oaks. It did not stop at the clearing. It poured through the roots under the soil, hungry, eating rot and healthy wood alike, and it was heading straight for the bakery and the gnome town beyond. Rosalind had cured the blight. Now she had to stop the cure.