The snow had been falling since morning.

Calleia barely noticed it anymore. After fifteen years of hunting through forests and frozen fields and villages that smelled of fear and burnt offerings, weather had simply become another condition to work with. She pulled her coat tighter and kept moving.

The trees here were old. Older than the kingdom, older than the Order, older than any name she knew to give them. Their roots broke through the snow in thick, dark coils. Their branches locked overhead in a canopy so dense the sky had nearly disappeared.

She had been tracking this particular path for two days.

The informant in the village had been nervous. They always were, in places like this. She lives deep in the wood, he had said, not meeting her eyes. Things grow strange near her cottage. Flowers where there should be none. Animals that don't spook. People who wander in angry and come out calm.

Calleia had listened and said nothing.

She did not need to speak to gather information. She only needed to watch people while they talked.

She doesn't hurt anyone, he had added, quieter. Almost apologetic.

That had been the most interesting part.

She crouched now at the edge of a small clearing and studied the ground. Something had passed through recently. Not boots. Bare feet, the impression delicate but deliberate, spaced far apart for someone moving carefully. She pressed two fingers into the snow beside the track. Still fresh. Hours, maybe less.

She was close.

Calleia stood and scanned the clearing.

It was wrong, this place. Not frightening, exactly, but wrong in the way a dream sometimes felt wrong — too still, too saturated, color in places color had no business being. There were flowers against the base of one massive oak. White and small, pushing up through frost like they had simply decided winter did not apply to them. She had seen that before, near powerful witches. Life bending gently around them, the way water bent around stone.

She touched the hilt of her sword. Not drawing it. Just reminding herself it was there.

Twenty paces ahead, the trees thinned.

And there was light.

Calleia moved through the last of the old growth and stopped.

A cottage. Small, built so neatly against the hillside it looked like the hill had simply grown it there. Smoke rising thin and straight from the chimney despite the wind. A garden, impossible in this cold, green and alive along the south wall.

And sitting on the front step, watching her come out of the trees like she had been expecting exactly that, was the witch.

Calleia had built a mental image over two days of tracking. She had been wrong about most of it.

The witch was not hiding. Not frightened. Not reaching for anything.

She was simply sitting with a clay cup held in both hands, watching Calleia cross the clearing with calm, unreadable eyes. She wore plain linen and a heavy shawl the color of old bark. Her hair was loose. Something small, a bird, a wren, was perched along the fence post just beside her shoulder like it had claimed her as part of the landscape.

Calleia stopped ten feet away.

The wren did not fly.

The witch said, "You tracked well. Most hunters lose the path at the river."

Her voice was even. Not performing calm. Actually calm.

Calleia studied her the way she studied everything: systematically, looking for threat, for deception, for the small tells people showed when they were afraid and trying not to be.

She found none of them.

"You knew I was coming," Calleia said.

"The animals told me. Three days ago." A faint pause. "I wondered how long before the Order sent someone."

"And you stayed."

The witch looked at her for a moment. Something moved through those eyes, too bright for the grey morning light, and Calleia filed that away.

"I've been here eleven years," she said simply. "This is my home."

Calleia's hand was still resting on the hilt of her sword. She became aware of it and did not move it away.

"You know why I'm here."

"Yes."

"Then you know how this ends."