Wren doesn't let the cup cool. "The path," she says — it comes out more demand than question, all urgency and no ceremony, because the moon has a timetable and does not care how she was raised. Old Maret stops stirring. The pause stretches long enough to be a lesson in itself. Then: "East," the old woman says. "Follow the white-barked trees — they grow in a line where nothing sensible should, straight to Aldermere Hollow. Stone lantern at the centre. The Ember will be inside it." She holds out the clay cup. Wren takes it. "The others?" "Took the same path." Old Maret meets her eyes steadily. "There's a thing in this wood that watches. Tall. Charcoal coat. It followed them." She says this with no particular alarm, the way one might mention weather. "It has been watching you since you sat down." Wren does not look behind her. She very deliberately does not look behind her. The cup is warm in her gauntlet. The mule chews at something and is entirely unbothered.