The sign is barely dry. Coal smoke curls from your chimney into a grey afternoon sky, and the crossroads hollow sits quiet around you — just wind, old oaks, and the smell of hot iron. A dying traveler told you this place draws the lost. You believed him. You built anyway. Then boots scrape the stone at your threshold. She's road-worn and watchful, carrying something wrapped in cloth she hasn't named. The fire shifts behind you — a low, strange color. Somewhere in the heat, something old stirs. Your first customer has arrived. Whatever she needs, you already know it isn't just metalwork.