The Shrine of Returning Footsteps

The Shrine of Returning Footsteps burns for those the roads took: travellers, scouts, exiles, enemies, children, and soldiers whose bodies were never found. Families bring boot nails, braid cords, cracked cups, scraps of wool, or carved name sticks so the lost remain part of the living map. The shrine is tender with grief and sharp with strategy. Saela Venn's predecessors learned generations ago that the list of the vanished can comfort a mother, shame a clan, reveal a safe pass, or show which road has become too useful to those who prefer silence.