The hunter's battered van screeched to a halt in the deserted clearing. Its headlights, one askew and coated with grime, sliced through the pre-dawn dark and illuminated the ancient oak — but not the prize Gregor had expected. He vaulted from the driver's seat, the metallic tang of adrenaline already souring in his mouth, his eyes scanning for the whimpering form of the werebear cub he'd left securely bound. Instead, only empty air greeted him, disturbed by settling dust and the faint, loamy scent of damp earth.

  A roar, more animal than human, ripped from his throat. Months. Months spent tracking this particular lineage, the meticulous poisoning of the parents — all for nothing. The small fortune he'd envisioned, the one that would finally buy him that fertile patch of land downriver, far from the stink and squalor of the cities, had vanished like morning mist.

  He stalked toward the oak, the heavy iron chains he'd brought for transport clanking in his calloused hand. Blind, consuming rage took over. He swung the chains again and again against the thick, unyielding trunk, metal biting into bark with brutal force, splinters flying with each impact. The lost opportunity was a bitter, coppery taste that wouldn't leave his mouth.

  Finally the tantrum subsided, leaving him panting, sweat stinging his eyes, knuckles white around the chain links. He lowered his arms. His gaze, still burning, fell on the base of the tree where the cub had been — and sharp, calculating thought began to pierce the red haze. How had that scrawny, green-clad boy managed to restrain a creature that had given a seasoned specialist like himself such a run for his money? Simple rope wouldn't have held it for long once the initial shock wore off.

  He moved closer, hunter's instincts honed over decades overriding his lingering fury. His eyes, narrowed and sharp, scanned the disturbed earth and lower branches. It wasn't rope. Tangled around the trunk, binding the lower branches with an unnatural tightness, were thick, gnarled roots — their patterns too deliberate, too constricting to be natural growth. He knelt, ignoring the damp seeping into his worn leather breeches, and traced the rough, bark-like texture with his fingers. A faint, almost imperceptible thrum of energy resonated beneath his touch, a subtle vibration that prickled his skin. Magic. Not the flashy, explosive kind some aseweavers wielded, nor the chilling aura of aseseers. This felt older. Earthier.

  A slow, cold dawning of realization spread across his harsh features, chasing away the last of his rage. That boy hadn't just found a convenient length of rope. He had controlled these roots. Commanded them like extensions of his own hands.

  A Green Aseborn.

  Gregor's breath hitched. The legends, the fireside tales his grandmother used to scare him with, flickered through his mind. Green aseborn were thought extinct in this part of the world — driven out and hunted down during the Great Exodus, generations ago, when the Old Kings had feared their power over the land itself. A low, avaricious chuckle rumbled from deep in his chest. Werebears fetched a decent price. A handful of gold for a rare, healthy specimen — enough for a few good months. But a green aseborn, a living green aseborn, a child at that? They were worth more than a king's ransom. A hundred times more, if the old tales held even a shred of truth.

  His lips, thin and cruel, curled into a grin that revealed teeth stained yellow by cheap tobacco. His luck hadn't run out after all. It had merely taken a more verdant, and infinitely more profitable, turn.

  Hours later, as bruised twilight bled into inky night, the dilapidated skyline of Stylwater loomed. Gregor navigated the potholed, labyrinthine streets — the van rattling like a cage of angry spirits, its engine throwing a smell that suggested at least one gasket was giving up its fight — until he reached the decaying, salt-scoured ruins of the abandoned fish market on the city's derelict waterfront. A cluster of equally battered vehicles surrounded the crumbling warehouse: carts with reinforced cages, wagons with suspicious tarpaulin-covered loads, and a few more sputtering vans like his own, each bearing the scars of a hunter's brutal trade. He cut the engine and sat a moment. The silence amplified the distant, mournful cries of gulls and the slap of oily water against rotting pylons. The air hung thick with the ghosts of brine, stale fish, and something feral and unwashed that always clung to places like this.

  He slammed the van door and strode toward the flickering lamplight spilling from the warehouse's gaping maw.

  Inside, the cavernous space reeked of mildew, cheap ale, and desperation. A group of figures huddled around a makeshift table fashioned from old fish crates, lamplight casting long, distorted shadows on damp walls. Gregor knew them all. Borok sat at the near end — a boulder of a man, wide as he was dangerous, with a face so thoroughly scarred it had stopped looking like a face and started looking like a warning. He was working through a tankard with the focused dedication of a man who drank to forget the things he'd done. Across from him sat Kell, lean and hawk-nosed, fingers busy braiding a snare wire with the unconscious precision of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. Kell's eyes, when they lifted, missed nothing and revealed less. At the far end, two younger hunters Gregor knew only as Fetch and Dram were locked in a game of knucklebones, tossing bones and insults in equal measure. A fifth man sat apart from the others entirely, methodically sharpening a gutting knife, each slow stroke of the whetstone its own quiet threat.

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  "Well," Borok said, setting down his tankard with a thud that scattered the knucklebones. "Look what the swamp dragged back. You look like you lost something, Gregor."

  "The cub's gone," Gregor said flatly, dropping into a chair.

  Borok let out a long, mocking breath. "All that time chasing that lineage and you've got nothing to show but a bad smell."

  "Something got there first," Gregor said. "A boy. Couldn't have been more than twelve, thirteen. Green-clad, carrying a root-sword. He didn't use rope." He paused, letting the weight of what he was about to say settle properly. "He used the roots themselves. Grew them right out of the ground and wrapped them around the cub like a cage."

  The knucklebones game went quiet. Even the man with the whetstone stopped his slow, rhythmic scraping.

  Kell looked up from his wire for the first time. "You're certain."

  "I touched them. There was still a pulse in the wood." Gregor held Kell's gaze. "A green aseborn, Kell. A living one. A child."

  The silence that followed had a different quality to it — not the flat silence of disbelief, but the taut, charged silence of men recalculating.

  Borok leaned forward, his earlier mockery entirely gone. "Damn, Gregor." His small eyes had acquired a sudden, intense gleam. "You didn't stumble into a patch of mushrooms. You fell face-first into a goldmine."

  Kell set the wire down slowly. He reached across the table and slid a damp, curling roll of parchment toward Gregor without a word.

  Gregor unrolled it. A crude drawing — clearly done in haste by an untalented hand — depicted a small boy with an unruly mop of orange hair. Below the sketch, stark letters proclaimed: WANTED: LEONOTIS — GREEN ASEBORN. SIGHTING OR CAPTURE. BY ORDER OF KING REGA IV. SUBSTANTIAL REWARD.

  The royal seal in the corner was stamped so hard it had nearly torn through the parchment. Whatever urgency had driven it, it hadn't been subtle.

  "Came in yesterday," Kell said. "While you were out. Several copies, from more than one courier. The Capital's been circulating them wide." He paused. "They want him alive, if you're reading the implications."

  "That's him," Gregor said, his voice tight. He tapped the drawing with a dirt-encrusted finger. "That's the boy. I saw his tracks leaving the clearing with two others — girls, looked like. They're heading north, toward Water Mountain."

  Fetch laughed nervously from the far end of the table. Dram just stared at his knucklebones like they'd suddenly become unfamiliar objects.

  "Water Mountain." Kell's brow furrowed. "That's deep wildlands, Gregor. Uncharted past the second ridge. The King's patrols have been thicker up there since the troubles started, and that's before you account for whatever else lives in those hills that doesn't show up on any map."

  "Then we move faster than the patrols," Gregor said.

  "It's not just the patrols," Kell said, with the particular flatness of a man who chose his words carefully. "That territory eats people. You know that. I've lost two good trackers up near the northern wildlands in the past three years — men who knew what they were doing. I'm not walking into uncharted ground on a child's trail and a poster that doesn't even name the reward."

  "It doesn't need to name the amount." Gregor spread his hands on the table. "The King's seal means treasury gold. And a living green aseborn — the last one in the known world, brought in healthy? You could retire. All of you. Not 'buy a better horse' retire. Gone, retire. Land, walls, a name your grandchildren carry." He let that sit. "Kell. You've got a daughter in Mirewood you haven't seen in two years because you can't afford the passage. This buys the passage. It buys the house next door."

  Something shifted in Kell's expression — a tightening around the eyes that wasn't quite resistance anymore. He picked up the snare wire again but didn't resume braiding it.

  Borok broke the silence with a low rumble. "We split even? No last-coin tricks, Gregor."

  "Every man at this table takes an equal share," Gregor said. "We move at first light. I have his direction and a half-day's head start on him. A child traveling with two girls isn't moving fast."

  Fetch and Dram exchanged a glance. The man with the whetstone resumed his slow, rhythmic scraping — but he was watching Gregor now.

  Kell set the snare wire down one final time and reached for his tankard. "First light," he said, and drank.

  They raised their dented tankards, the clinking of metal a rough toast to an unspoken agreement. They were hunters, united by greed and the particular desperation of men with nothing better to lose. Somewhere to the north, a boy with with green magic was walking toward the mountains — and they had just decided to follow.