Terra Ashfur stood where the grass stopped and the trees began. Behind her sat the burrow her family had dug, its roof furred with moss, its door dark and empty now. Inside lay four cold beds. The forest had taken her parents and her siblings, one raid at a time. Her uncle lived at the Great Tree, deep in that forest, and he had sent word that she could train with him there. She meant to reach him. She meant to learn how to make the forest pay. But she had never crossed the treeline. Not once. The woods ahead showed a hundred gaps between trunks, and every gap looked the same. No road. No sign. One wrong turn and she would circle until dark, then circle until she starved. Her bare feet pressed the last warm grass. She did not move. Then she remembered the seal. She pulled it from her tunic pocket. It was wood, carved by her father's own hands, round and worn smooth from years in his paw. At its center spread a great tree with wide roots. Around the tree, someone had carved the land itself. A river curled from stone peaks on one side. Rough red boulders marked the other. A pale path wound between them to the tree's roots. Terra had always thought it only a pretty keepsake. Now she turned it slowly and understood. It was a map. Find the river. Keep the sharp peaks on her left and the red stones on her right. Follow the water toward the heart. She lifted her head and listened. Somewhere past the first trees, water moved over rock. Faint, but real. Her ears swung toward it. She stepped under the branches. The air turned cool and green. She held the seal flat in her palm and matched it to the land, peak by peak, stone by stone. When the trees tried to turn her, the sound of the river pulled her straight. A field mouse darted across her path and vanished into the roots of a tall oak. She did not circle. Each step took her deeper and truer than the last. By midday the river ran clear beside her. The red boulders rose on her right, just as the carving promised. Terra almost smiled. The seal had worked. She knew the way now. Then she stopped. In the soft mud at the water's edge lay a print. Not hers. Four claws, sunk deep, pointed the same way she walked. Fresh. The water had not yet filled it. Terra looked up the path and saw a shape slide behind a trunk ahead. Black fur. A flash of red where an eye should be. The gleam of a drawn blade. The seal had shown her the road to her uncle. It had not warned her that something walked it first, and that it had already turned to face her.