"Wren," she says, and the word comes out quieter than she intended — just a name, no title, no borrowed rank. She waits. The brook woman turns it over the way she turned over the sun-sigil: looking for hidden meaning. Then she gives one short nod and lifts the clasp. The box opens without ceremony. Inside, nestled in faded cloth: a folded square of vellum and beneath it, something that glints — not like gold, but like a thing that remembers heat. A small disc, stamped with the same sun that sits on Wren's breastplate. "The Ember isn't a fire," the brook woman says quietly, pressing both into Wren's gauntleted hands. "It's a door, and you now hold the key." She closes Wren's fingers around the disc. "Sit. I haven't much time here, and there's a great deal you need to know before you go any deeper into the wood." She glances at the brightening sky above the treetops. "Three things. The path, the price, and what the Ember will cost your village if you succeed."