Seven days of travel brought the expedition past the last border settlements and into wilderness that answered to no authority at all.
The landscape shifted gradually from maintained roads to overgrown paths to routes that existed only in Kane's memory and occasionally conflicting local rumors. Villages became rare, then absent entirely, replaced by ruins that suggested previous attempts at settlement and the violence that ended them.
"This was farming territory thirty years ago," Kane explained during one rest period, gesturing at collapsed structures barely visible through encroaching forest. "Gate activity increased when I was young, monsters pushed the frontier back, and nobody ever reclaimed it."
"Could be reclaimed now," Misha noted, her administrative instinct cataloging potential future expansion. "Soil looks fertile, water sources are present, proper defensive construction could handle the local monster population."
