Spring has come to Embermist Hollow, but there is little joy in it.  The long winter is finally retreating. Snow pulls slowly back toward the mountain peaks, swollen streams rush through the valley, and dark earth emerges beneath the ancient pines. Soon the passes will be open again. Soon the roads beyond Embermist Hollow will once more lead somewhere.  Yet the village feels strangely reluctant to see what the thaw will uncover.  Embermist Hollow is still recovering from the Battle of the Solstice Lantern Festival. The broken windows have been replaced and the damaged buildings repaired, but the village carries its losses quietly. There are empty chairs beside familiar hearths, names spoken more softly than before, and lanterns burning outside homes for people who will never return.  Perhaps that is why people have begun thinking so much about wishes. There are many things the people of Embermist Hollow wish they could change. Things they would undo. People they would bring home. Words they would take back. Moments they would give almost anything to live once more.  But lately, wishing for such things has begun to feel dangerous.  No one can say why.  There are whispers of strange dreams. Coincidences that feel a little too precise. Fleeting moments when someone thinks they hear their name spoken from an empty room, or awakens with the unmistakable feeling that something had been listening while they slept.  People laugh about such stories during the daylight.  They laugh less after dark.  And now there are more reasons to worry.  Mittens has been missing for three months. Widdershins’ Arcana Emporium remains dark, its door locked and its windows untouched. Winter once provided a comforting explanation for her absence—the mountains were impassable, the roads buried, the valley sealed beneath snow.  That explanation is disappearing with the thaw.  And now Tamotsu has disappeared as well.  He was last seen alone near the edge of the village, unusually quiet, watching the distant mountains as evening settled over the valley.  No one thought anything of it.  By morning, he was gone.  Perhaps there is nothing connecting these things.  Perhaps the long winter and the losses of recent months have simply made Embermist Hollow fearful. Perhaps grief has made people see patterns where none exist.  But something has changed.  The forests seem quieter. The fog seems thicker. People linger beneath the lanterns instead of walking through the darkness between them. And increasingly, when someone begins to say, “I wish…”They stop.  Now the last of the winter snows are withdrawing from the lower passes.  For the first time in three months, the way into the mountains is open.  There are no more storms to blame.  No more impassable roads.  No more reason to wait for Mittens to walk through the fog and come home.  If answers exist, they lie somewhere beyond Embermist Hollow.  Beyond the familiar lanterns.  Beyond the last cottages at the edge of the valley.  Beyond the places where the people of the Hollow still remember the names of the roads.  Someone will have to go looking.  Because whatever happened to Mittens is still waiting to be discovered.  Whatever drew Tamotsu away has not brought him back.  And somewhere beyond the retreating snow, something has begun to stir.  The passes are open.  The lanterns are lit.  And for six adventurers in Embermist Hollow...the time for wishing is over.  It is time to find the lost.