Sarah counted her supplies at dawn. Three bundles of yarrow. Half a jar of willow bark. The wound salves would last another week if no one got careless with an axe. She closed the lid and reached for the old healer's journal, flipping to the entry she had read twenty times before. The birch bookcase outside her cabin held the journal and scrolls, protected under the eaves. She pulled the leather-bound book from between two glass bottles and opened it to the marked page. The entry described a herb that grew near standing water, with leaves that turned silver in moonlight. It could knit bone in days instead of weeks. The old healer had written coordinates, a season, and a warning about the deep woods. Sarah traced the ink with her finger. Two families needed her today—a child with fever, a man with an infected cut. After that, she would pack supplies and leave before sunset. The journal went into her satchel first.

Sarah followed the coordinates through the deep woods as the sun dropped low. The trees grew closer together here, their branches thick overhead. She found the standing water just as the journal had described—a small pond fed by a spring, its surface dark and still. The silver-leaved herb grew at the water's edge, exactly where the old healer had noted. Sarah knelt to examine it, relief settling in her chest. Then she saw the boot—weathered leather, laces still tied, half-buried in the mud ten feet from the herb. She looked closer. Deep gouges scored the earth around it, claw marks dragging toward the trees. A patch of torn fabric hung from a nearby branch. Someone had been here before her, and something had driven them away in a hurry. Sarah pulled a cutting knife from her satchel and worked quickly, taking three stalks with roots intact. Her hands stayed steady, but she kept her back to the water and her eyes on the treeline. The herb went into a cloth pouch. She stood, slung her satchel over her shoulder, and walked back the way she'd come. She had what she needed. Whatever lived here could keep the rest.