Mira takes a breath. The word is still warm in her memory — she felt it as much as read it, the vibration travelling up her arm like a name recognising its owner. 'Aldenmere,' she says. The door swings wide. Amber light spills across the threshold, warm and humming, and behind it stands a stocky figure in a dark burgundy coat and a wide leather apron dusted with flour and something finer — copper filings, maybe, catching the glow. They study Mira with the same careful look as the question: neither relieved nor alarmed, only measuring. Behind them the mill breathes with that steady vibration, and now she can see its source — a great amber stone set into the far wall, pulsing slowly, linked by copper wire to gears that have nothing to do with the water outside. 'You said the tree helped you,' the Miller says at last. 'What did it ask in return?'