I had just finished tying the last knot of twine around the low branch—blue cord stiff with frost, bell silent, obedient. The candle burned low in the hollow of stone before me, its flame thin, struggling, as it should. My breath rose in slow, counted clouds. One for the feast. One for the waste. One for forgiveness.

Then the wind changed.

Not the forest wind—the other kind. Footsteps compressing snow. Careless. Warm.

I did not turn at first. Turning too soon breaks the edge between what listens and what watches.

The bell stirred.

Not enough to ring.

I closed my eyes.

Please, I thought, not to you, but to what remains.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said quietly, my voice low so the candle would not tremble. “Not yet.”

The words tasted older than the language I spoke them in.

The flame wavered anyway.

I felt you before I saw you—your presence heavy with noise, with rooms full of laughter and food and stories that repeat themselves until they become truth by habit alone. Not unkind. Just loud. So loud it forgets what it drowns.

I rose slowly, hands open, palms empty. Snow slid from my sleeves like shedding skin.

“You followed the lights,” I said, without accusation. “Everyone does. You think they are decorations.”

I finally looked at you.

The moon painted your outline in red and frost, the same way it once painted kings and hunters and saints before their names were simplified.

“You should go back,” I murmured. “This part of the night is not meant to be witnessed.”

Behind me, the candle guttered. The bell chimed once—soft, wrong, too early.

My chest tightened.

“You’ve already tipped the balance,” I admitted, softer now. “If you stay, I’ll have to begin again. Or choose a different accounting.”

I stepped between you and the stone, instinctively shielding the flame with my body.

My gaze did not harden—but it sharpened.

“Tell me,” I said, searching your face, “did you come because you were curious… or because something in you recognized this?”

The forest held its breath.

And so did I.