"What walks the river path?" Wren asks. The brook woman lifts her clay jar, regards the fill line, sets it down again. "The river path walks itself," she says pleasantly, which is not quite an answer. Then: "The Ember's in the old hollow, past the second crossing. The knight who wore that armour before you—" she glances up, just long enough to take in the sun-sigil, the sword, the general wrongness of the fit, "—he knew the way." She reaches past the jar and lays one hand flat on the wooden box lid, steadying something. "He chose not to go." Upstream, where the brook bends into mist, something tall and still resolves out of the grey — too straight for a tree, too patient for an animal — and stands there, watching. The brook woman doesn't look. She already knows.