Every night Soren Coldmane woke on the floor with blood under his nails, and he never knew whose. The blacksmith kept a tally scratched into his workbench: eleven mornings, eleven scrubbings. By day he shoed horses and mended plows. At dusk his shadow stretched long and wrong, shaped like a thing with claws. He wanted the curse gone. But he could not fight what he could not name. No cure works when you don't know the maker. So he tried to catch the beast in the act. He rented a room at the roadside inn, far from anyone he might hurt. Cobblestone walls, a barred door, a healer he'd paid to lock him in. Above the bed he hung a charm woven with beads and a hanging feather. The old woman who sold it swore it caught what the sleeping mind forgot. If the beast dreamed, the charm would keep the dream. Soren tied the last knot and waited for dark. He woke to splinters. The door hung off its hinges. His hands stung, raw and torn. The charm still swayed above the bed, and this time he remembered. Not a dream. A face. A red-haired woman in thick leather gloves, standing over his bed, whispering words he could not hold. Frost had crept across the floorboards where she stood. He knew her. Orla Brightmoss, the village healer. The same woman he'd paid to lock the door. Soren sat up, breathing hard. He had his answer. She had cast it. Rage rose in him, hot and simple. He would find her and make her undo it. Then a small sound stopped him. Under the broken bed, a black pug shivered. A heart-shaped tag hung from its collar. It was not his. He'd seen it before, at Orla's cottage, curled by her hearth. The dog had followed her here. It had watched the whole night. Soren knelt. His torn hands shook. "You saw," he said. The pug pressed against his leg, unafraid. That stopped his rage cold. The beast had not touched the animal. Whatever the healer had done to him, this creature trusted him still. He looked again at the charm and forced himself to think. Orla had come to lock the door, then stayed to whisper over him. Was she the one who cursed him, or the one trying to hold it back? The frost, the gloves she never removed, her own hidden trouble. He did not know which. But he knew one thing now that he had not known at dusk. The curse had a face and a name. That changed everything. He could not simply try a cure at random anymore. He had to reach Orla Brightmoss before nightfall and learn the truth from her mouth. Because if he was wrong about her, the next thing he broke might be her.