Mara didn't speak much after that first night.
For three days, she moved around the cottage like a shadow, speaking only to the fire or to the black cat who sometimes answered with a slow blink. Ana swept the floor. She cleaned jars. She chopped herbs she couldn't name and kept quiet when the walls creaked on their own.
It was on the fourth morning that Mara finally handed her something: a small cloth pouch filled with cold ash.
"Take this," she said. "Go to the west clearing. Alone."
Ana took it without question.
The forest air was sharp with mist. The trees stood taller here, ancient and silent, watching. She walked until she found the clearing — a circle of bare ground where nothing grew, though no sunlight reached it either.
She waited.
A long time passed before she realized Mara's task wasn't to simply arrive. It was a test.
Ana knelt, opened the pouch, and let the ash spill into her palm. It was lighter than sand, but heavier somehow — like memory. Her fingers tingled. And she remembered Mara's only words that morning:
"Draw a rune. Any rune. But do not speak, not even in thought."
How do you draw something you've never been taught?
Ana stared at the ground. Her hands moved on their own, slow at first, then with purpose. A symbol began to form: a spiral intersected by two lines, sharp like branches in winter.
When it was done, the ash trembled.
Wind passed through the clearing, but not a leaf stirred. The mark glowed faintly before vanishing into the soil, like it had been swallowed. A raven cried once overhead.
Ana stood up. She didn't know what she'd done.
But something deep in the forest did.