I turned the dagger in my hand.

  I didn’t know what I had expected. A hum. A pulse. Lumi’s voice stirring at the back of my thoughts.

  But there was nothing.

  The metal sat clean and steady in my grip. Cold. Balanced. The same dark, light-drinking finish as the blade I knew. But there was no pull in it. No pressure. No quiet insistence against my bones.

  It was only steel.

  Compared to my sword and its layered runic lattice, this carried nothing I could feel at all.

  “Will this work?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if the answer were obvious.

  “It will cut.”

  I hesitated, then asked the question I had been circling.

  “Will I be able to speak to it?”

  The smith shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “That one was a special case. But this needs one more touch.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, he took the dagger from my hands. The movement was careful, but it allowed no argument. He returned to the anvil and set the blade flat against its scarred surface.

  “This metal is rare,” he said, his eyes fixed on the steel. “It comes from one place only. A place none of us can reach.”

  A cold, distant image stirred in my mind. The place Lumi had shown me. Not a land a person could walk through, and not somewhere I would ever choose to go.

  The smith glanced at my face and paused, a flicker of curiosity crossing his features, as though my reaction had answered something for him.

  “This metal,” he continued quietly, “can only be worked within the boundary.”

  He chose a narrow chisel from the rack and drew its edge across his thumb. The skin held. He frowned, then reached for a shallow dish set beside the anvil.

  A thin, shimmering liquid clung to the tool as he dipped the chisel’s tip. He followed it with a heavier oil, slow and dark, coating the metal in careful layers. From a small tray near the forge he gathered fine filings shaved from the same black metal as the dagger and pressed them into the wet edge.

  The chisel darkened as the filings sank into its surface, as if the tool were drinking them in.

  Only then did he set its point against the blade.

  No spark rose.

  No ring answered.

  The chisel passed through the dagger as if the steel offered no resistance.

  A single mark appeared beneath his hand. Long and thin. Bent at an uneasy angle that no written tongue would use. The line sank into the blade without stress or scar, as though it had always belonged there.

  He lifted the tool and tapped the mark once.

  “This is the Rune of Imbas,” he said. “It gives no strength. Only understanding.”

  He turned the dagger slightly, letting the new rune catch the forge light.

  “The moment this blade bites what stands against you, you will begin to understand it. Each cut sharpens that knowing, until its strength, its frailty, and its limits lie clear to you.”

  He set the dagger back into my hands.

  It felt unchanged.

  And yet, the air around the edge seemed thinner, as if something in the space between me and the world had shifted.

  “Understanding?” I said quietly. “The other me is already far stronger than I am. How is this meant to be enough?”

  A faint curve touched his mouth.

  “Understanding is always half the battle,” he said. “Do not concern yourself with the rest. The ale will suffice.”

  I stared at him. The ale?

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He didn’t explain. His eyes moved over me with the same slow care he gave his hammers, tracing lines I could not see, weighing what strain I might yet endure.

  “Turning back is no longer one of the paths open to you,” he said. “You will reach the tree. You will endure.”

  I nodded and tested the dagger’s balance. I had never fought with a blade this short, but the weight settled perfectly into my palm. Its edge carried a quiet intent, shaped for close work and unavoidable contact.

  The forge heat pressed against my face, and I felt the smith’s patience thinning.

  I turned from the anvil and inclined my head. “Thank you.”

  I had taken only two steps when he cleared his throat.

  “Be careful. Now that you have drunk the ale, the wanderers of the marsh can see you.”

  I stopped. Jerald’s notes rose at once.

  Be wary of the wanderers of the marsh.

  Do not follow the lights.

  Beware the water that waits without ripples.

  When something watches you, choose your path before it does.

  A chill ran through me.

  Before I could ask more, he turned back to the forge and sank his hands into the coals. The fire flared, and I was dismissed.

  The message was clear.

  He had said everything he intended to say.

  I stepped out of the forge and onto the wet plain, the rhythm of iron on anvil fading behind me. The dagger rested in my hand a gift shaped by the keeper of the first flame.

  The fog had completely cleared. Across the open ground, the dark silhouette of the tree rose from the low land, stark and unmistakable against the flat horizon.

  I stopped at the edge of the forge light.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly once more.

  The smith did not turn.

  The fire answered for him.

  I took a breath and moved on.

  One wet step at a time, I cut through the marsh.

  Doyle had said that whether you failed or succeeded, this place would change you. The words settled differently now. As I walked, a faint pressure shifted deep inside my chest, small but undeniable, like something turning in its sleep.

  Throughout my life, the blood curse had drowned out everything else. Pain had filled every corner of my awareness and left no space for anything beneath it.

  Now the pain was gone.

  And with Lumi far away, the silence inside me had become wide enough to feel what remained.

  Not strength.

  A presence.

  The dagger rested in my hand, cold and mute. No hum. No answering pull. I doubted there would be such comforts here.

  The ground sucked at my boots as I followed the narrow rise of firmer earth toward the tree.

  That was when I saw them.

  Small lights flickered low over the drowned patches of the marsh. They hovered just above the water, pale and steady, as if someone had scattered distant embers across the pools.

  One drifted closer.

  Then another.

  They gathered near a stretch of darker ground to my right, brightening the edge of a narrow, inviting line through the reeds. The space between the lights formed a clean opening, wide enough for easy passage.

  My feet slowed without my permission.

  Jerald’s notes cut through the moment.

  Will-o’-the-wisps.

  These sprites offer only false ease.

  I held my course.

  The lights remained at my side for several steps, patient and unhurried.

  I did not look back.

  I kept to the broken line of higher ground and walked on toward the tree.

  As I walked, my thoughts kept circling back to the man in the forge. He had offered help without offering a name. He had spoken as if he expected never to be questioned. Whatever he truly was, it was not something meant to be explained here. I would ask Doyle when I returned, if I returned.

  Most of the marsh lay broken into wide, shallow sheets of water that rippled gently under the moving air. I picked my way across the firmer patches and skirted around deeper pools where the ground sank away into black, uncertain depth. Above me, the grey cloud cover slid low and slow against the wind, pressing in from the direction of the tree.

  It felt as though the marsh itself were leaning into me, pressing against every step.

  “Careful. The wanderers can see you.”

  The voice rose from somewhere behind me.

  I spun, searching the reeds and the low ground for its source.

  It sounded like the smith.

  Only broken. Misplaced. As if the words had been lifted from his mouth and dropped into the wrong air.

  The pale arch of the gate lingered to my right, distant and thin against the marsh, but I did not turn toward it. My attention stayed on the dark rise of the tree ahead.

  “Thank you,” my own voice said softly.

  The sound of it twisted in my chest. The cadence was mine. The timing was not.

  I shut it out and kept walking.

  I had not come back here to turn away.

  “We can see you now.”

  The ground dipped without warning.

  A wide stretch of water opened before me, far larger than any pool I had crossed so far. It spread across the marsh like a fresh wound, at least twice the size of the others. I slowed at its edge and studied the surface.

  I did not remember this much water.

  Not here.

  It was as if the land had shifted after I passed through.

  As if something had made room.

  I tightened my jaw and searched for a way around.

  A faint glow stirred to my left.

  I took an instinctive step back and turned.

  Another light hovered to my right.

  “The cut will suffice,” said a raspy voice.

  The words brushed the edge of my hearing, too soft to place.

  My breath hitched.

  Behind me, the will-o’-the-wisps slid into a clean line through the reeds, opening a narrow passage exactly wide enough for one body to pass. Pale light pooled along the ground like a promise.

  Two pointed ears lifted above the reeds, sharp and alert, then vanished again.

  I did not wait to see the rest of it.

  No.

  I turned back to the pool.

  The water ahead lay unnaturally still. No wind traced its surface. No reed bent or drifted across the dark glass. Not even the smallest ripple disturbed it.

  Only silence waited there.

  Beneath the dark surface, a line of pale stones cut through the depth. Their rounded backs sat just below the water, visible through the black glass.

  A crossing.

  The only way.

  And it kept me moving toward the tree.

  I tightened my grip on the dagger and stepped forward.

  Water broke around my boot and the surface shattered into rings. I shifted my weight at once and found the first stone. It held.

  Something stirred behind me.

  Close enough now to feel the space tighten at my back, waiting for hesitation.

  I did not give it one.

  I slid my next step forward, skimming over the water and landing on the second stone.

  That was when I saw the eyes.

  Green.

  Unblinking.

  Watching me from the darkness below.