"The longer path," Wren says. She means it more firmly than she expected. Old Maret nods and ladles root-tea into a clay cup without asking. Wren drinks it — bark and honey and something she cannot name — and the warmth climbs from her toes up to her knees like a coal held close. The directions arrive with the calm precision of someone who has given them in dangerous places before: east-northeast along the ridge spine until the oaks thin, south until she finds a grey stone shaped like a seated heron, then east when the ground turns soft and mossy. The cold from the shrine will reach her before she reaches the shrine. "One thing," Old Maret says, as Wren rises to go. "Don't walk past the heron stone after dark. Sit and wait for morning." Wren opens her mouth to ask why. The old woman is already stirring. An hour east-northeast, the oaks thin exactly as promised — and then, from somewhere south and too close, Wren hears water moving over stone.