The Carver’s Heart

Born with nothing but a knife, a block of wood, and the open road, a young craftsman wanders from town to town, trading handmade wooden toys for coins enough to survive another day. He asks for little. He expects less. And the world, in its infinite cruelty, gives him exactly that. One stormy night — soaked to the bone, hollow with hunger, and broken by miles — he stumbles upon a village where a hauntingly beautiful woman opens her door, her arms, and her table to him. Warmth. Food. Shelter. Kindness. Everything he has been denied his entire life, offered freely in a single night. He never wakes from the sleep that follows. She was not what she appeared. She never is. And the villagers? They knew. They always know. They watched, they whispered, they wept quietly into their hands — and they