The branch moves again — not wind, not squirrel — and Wren's hand finds the sword hilt before her brain has time to vote. She spins, armour clanking loud enough to wake the whole wood, and there between two black-barked trunks, not twenty paces off, is a shape that does not belong to the mist. Tall. Still. A long charcoal coat like a smear of smoke, and where a face should be — nothing, or near enough: a pale oval, smooth as a river stone worn down by ten thousand years of current. It does not move. It does not speak. It simply stands, in the way of something that has been standing there for some time and has no intention of stopping. Behind her, Wren hears the brook_woman set the wooden box down again on the flat rock — carefully, like a period at the end of a sentence. "Ah," says the old woman, very quietly. "So it did follow you."