Wren turns upstream without quite meaning to, boots splashing at the brook's edge while the armor makes its opinion of silence known. The first crossing is a single flat stone, almost beneath contempt — she hops it in one stride. The second is a proper plank bridge, grey-black with age, solid enough when she tests it with one boot. And beyond it, where the Thornwood thins just enough to let pale light through, she can see it: a great split-rooted oak, ancient and vast, with a hollow at its base pulsing a low amber warmth, like a coal that has been burning quietly for a hundred years. Then she sees what is standing on the bridge. The Watcher is there — tall, still, a featureless pale oval where a face should be, charcoal coat hanging straight as a curtain in windless air. It does not threaten. It does not gesture. It simply stands, as patient as the trees, as certain as stone. Waiting to see what she will do. This, Wren thinks, is exactly what stopped him.