She stumbled through the snow, clutching her belly. Knocked on the door.

“Sanctuary,” her mother whispered that night, tracing the rune above their cottage door. “The only law that matters.”

Then a girl arrived. Twelve years old. Red hair. Freckles like scattered cinnamon. And a wound: her father had sold her to a man in the next valley. She had run for three nights, barefoot, through briar and bracken.

“What do you need to be whole?” she would ask.

“You are not welcome here,” she said.