"What are you?" Tobias asks, and his voice comes out smaller than he intended, swallowed by the close-pressing dark. "What is your purpose here?" The tiny figure on the root does not answer with words. Instead it rises — standing upright on legs no thicker than pine needles — and extends one bark-brown arm toward the path ahead. Its violet eyes flicker, and that same soundless laugh ripples outward, making the moss tremble beneath Tobias's boots. Then, with a movement too quick to follow, it hops from the root to his shoulder and settles there, light as a dry leaf, one hand fisted in the collar of his nightshirt. It points again — farther down the path, where the dark ahead is absolute.