Ten steps. Wren counts them. The armor counts them louder. At the lantern she crouches — it barely reaches her waist — and lifts the grate. Inside, nestled in cold ash, sits something no bigger than a robin's egg: dull amber, faceted like a river stone, and very quietly warm. She picks it up with two gauntleted fingers, careful, the way you'd lift something sleeping. The warmth travels straight through the iron and into her hand, which is strange because iron doesn't do that. The moment she lifts it clear, the light in the Hollow shifts — not darker, differently lit, as if the Ember itself has decided what deserves illuminating. Behind her, in the corridor of white-barked trees, the shape in the charcoal coat takes one step forward. Just one. Then stops. The Ember pulses faintly in her palm. Like a heartbeat not quite matching her own.