They haul you back with a board, a hook, and the kind of quiet adults use when they are saving their scolding for later.

Ranger Dev has your elbow. Jonah has your lantern, which he held like a baby the whole time. Your shins are muddy medals. No blood. No drama except the honest kind: cold, stuck, found.

Dev puts a thermos in your hands. “Wisps don’t kidnap. Mud does.”

You drink. Heat finds your middle. The little flame is gone. The puddles still wear pieces of sky, which is rude of them.

“You did the right second half,” Dev says. “You called. You waited. Freezing first is a skill. Lunging first is a story we tell so the next kid doesn’t.”

Jonah looks at his shoes. “I wanted it to be a ghost. Ghosts don’t get your socks this wet.”

The landing lights make the marsh look almost kind. It is not kind. It is not cruel. It is peat and gas and gravity, wearing old names.

You can ask for the legend version now—the briefing, the old words beside the mud—while your heartbeat is still a teacher.

You can go to the kitchen and write it before the night edits your memory into something braver and dumber.