The wheat is chest-high and the armor is heavy and Wren doesn't care about either. She runs, stalks flicking against her greaves, the Ember steady and warm in her closed fist, the harvest moon so close to full it makes her chest ache. Don't look up. Run. The path hardens. The smell changes — smoke, turned earth, something baking. Familiar flagstones, then the mill, then the drying shed, and the gate with its torch-bracket burning and someone waiting on the step. It doesn't matter who. The Ember is in her hand and the village is breathing around her. She stops in the lamplight. Opens her fist. Above the eastern roofline, the harvest moon edges to full — one heartbeat after she crosses the threshold. Someone sees the amber glow and shouts, and then everyone is shouting, and Wren, swallowed whole in a dead man's armor, lets her face do something embarrassing. She won.