The memory snapped off like a switch.
Mia was back.
Bare feet in cold mud. The small knife still clenched in her right hand. The young faon stood three steps away, ears forward, dark eyes steady and unafraid. Its injured leg trembled slightly under its own weight.
She stared at the blade.
It was one of Ludwig's skinning knives—short, razor-sharp, the kind he used to trim infected hooves. She had no memory of taking it from the wall of the shed. None.
Her arm was already moving.
Not fast. Not dramatic. Just the slow, automatic arc she had seen in the memory: the same angle Noire had been trained to use when the order came. The faon watched her without flinching. It had learned, too, that humans sometimes carried pain in their hands.
A large hand closed around her wrist.
Not rough. Not panicked.
Just there.
Ludwig's grip was warm, steady, the way a root holds the earth. He did not yank. He simply stopped the motion before it finished.
Mia's breath hitched.
The knife slipped from her fingers and fell point-first into the mud with a soft, wet sound.
She looked up at him.
Ludwig's face was calm, the same calm he wore when he fed the blind goat or stitched a torn ear. No horror. No accusation. Only the quiet certainty that nothing had happened yet, and nothing would.
Mia's knees gave out.
She folded, not dramatically, just all at once, the way a marionette's strings are cut. Her back hit the wooden fence of the enclosure. She curled into herself—arms around her shins, forehead pressed to her knees—small, tight, the way Baby used to hide.
A sound tore out of her that was not quite a sob. More like something breaking open after years under pressure.
"I didn't—" Her voice cracked. "I wasn't— I was just—"
She couldn't finish.
Ludwig crouched beside her. Not too close. Close enough. Atlas sat a few feet away, ears pricked, watching the faon instead of the girl. The wolf-dog had already decided the threat was over.
Mia rocked once, twice, then went still.
Tears came hot and silent, soaking the knees of Ludwig's hoodie. She did not wipe them. She simply let them fall, let the shaking take her, let the body do the only thing it still knew how to do when the voices went quiet.
Ludwig stayed crouched there, one hand resting lightly on the fence post, the other loose on his thigh. He did not speak. He did not touch her again.
He simply guarded the space around her while the sun finished rising behind the ridge and the first birds began to call.
The faon lowered its head and nosed at a patch of wet grass, already forgetting the blade that had never reached it.
Mia cried until there was nothing left to cry with.
Then she stayed curled, breathing, while the mountain air moved over them all—cold, clean, and indifferent.