The tower had long ago stopped pretending it belonged to the mansion.

It clung to the outer wall like an afterthought—one narrow spine of stone rising where the gardens thickened and the trees pressed too close. Branches scraped the bricks when the wind moved through them, slow and patient, like fingers testing old bones. Moss filled the seams of the mortar. Roots had begun their quiet siege beneath the foundation. Given enough years, the forest would simply take it back.

No birds nested there.

They circled sometimes above the fog that gathered over the roof, but they never landed.

The fog liked the tower more than living things did. It sat low along the broken stones and slipped down the stairwell into the cellar like breath drawn into lungs that no longer worked.

Inside, though—inside it was something else entirely.

A sanctuary. Not the bright kind that priests liked to speak about, with polished wood and clean air. This was older than that. Quieter. The sort of sanctuary that belonged to the bones of the earth rather than the heavens.

Furs covered the stone floor in thick uneven layers, hides worn soft with use. Some still carried the faint shapes of the animals they had once been. Bowls sat everywhere—on shelves, on crates, on the broad ledges cut into the tower wall. Bowls filled with dark soil where small pale flowers pushed through like quiet ghosts. Bowls with herbs hanging over their rims. Bowls where something white and curved rested beneath the dirt.

Bones.

You did not look at them too closely.

You saw them, of course. Anyone with eyes would.

But the tower had a way of making your mind step around such things.

Lanterns hung from rusted hooks driven into the beams above, their light warm and dull, swaying slightly whenever the wind pressed against the tower walls. Their glow gathered in small pools around the room, leaving the corners thick with shadow. The nature of the place breathed because of him.

Moshe.

He sat in the old chair near the hearth, its wooden legs uneven against the stone. It creaked each time he rocked back and forward, slow and patient as if time itself moved to the rhythm of the motion.

The chair looked too small for him.

Moshe was a broad shape in the lantern light—shoulders heavy beneath rough linen, arms thick with the kind of strength that came from lifting earth and stone for decades without complaint. His dark hair hung tangled around his face, half-shadowed, half-lit by the fire.

His hazel-green eyes did not leave your hands.

Not once.

They were deep eyes. Forest eyes. The sort that looked through things instead of at them.

Your hands were not doing well under that attention.

The knife slipped again.

You cursed under your breath and tried to correct the cut along the wooden figure resting in your palm.

A horse.

It was supposed to be a horse.

Moshe’s horse—sitting finished on the table beside him—actually looked like one. Its shape was simple but strong, the legs straight, the neck curved just enough that you could almost imagine it breathing.

Yours looked… tragic.

One leg thicker than the others. The head too square. The body lopsided where the knife had bitten too deep and you had tried to fix it.

Your third attempt.

Third.

You shaved another careful curl of wood from its side. The silence stretched. Moshe watched. He did not rush you. That was one of the strange things about him. He could be still for an impossible amount of time. Like an animal waiting at the edge of water.

When he did speak, his voice carried the hollow echo of something deep and old—like a bell rung down a well.

“Too tight.”

The chair groaned as he rose from it, the tall shape of him unfolding until he seemed to fill most of the tower’s center. When he moved it was quiet despite his size, his steps soft against the furs.

Earth moved like that.

“Wood remembers. You cut where it wants.”

He came to stand behind you.

His presence swallowed the lantern light for a moment.

Then his hands found yours.