Morning came as a thin line under a door. Not warm. Just there.
Elira knocked ash off her boots—tap, tap—and the gray fell, then skated back on the wind like it had a grudge. She checked the wire across her scabbard. The blade sat quiet. Good. Or… good enough.
"Spacing," she said. "Two lengths. No silhouettes on the ridge."
Kael slid to the right edge of the track, steps soft like he'd practiced silence as a trade. Mira took the left. Eyes near, far, near again.
They climbed a low rise. The ruin behind them flattened into a seam. In front: winter grass, a slow ribbon of water, a sky that looked like hammered metal.
No one talked. Sound carried too clean.
"North road's open," Kael said, finally. Low voice. Careful.
Mira tied her hair back with a strip of cloth that used to be blue. "Then we move before the world remembers we're still here."
They walked. Dust hissed. The land out past the ruin was gray and pale gold and… big. Too big. Like a room after the furniture's gone.
Elira's shoulders burned where the straps bit. Not from the weight—from what her body remembered. The stair. Stone on stone. Air that sounded like water. Words that had worn her voice and weren't hers.
The Keeper's line wouldn't leave: truth sleeps beneath the stones… even from yourselves.
Comfort, when she heard it. A warning now.
"Do we talk about it?" Mira asked after a bit. "Or pretend we didn't see— any of it."
"Talking won't change it," Kael said.
"Silence won't either."
Elira almost said something. Didn't. The words were still molten; touch them and they burn.
The path bent through low hills, each looking like the last. Kael crouched once, palm on dirt. A faint shimmer ran under his glove.
"Old magic," he said. "No heat left."
"So it passed fast," Mira murmured. "Or someone cleaned after themselves."
They kept moving. The air thickened—the way it does when a storm is a day out, picking a side. Elira's fingers brushed Lumeveil's hilt. Just to check it was there. Still cool. Still silent.
The trees ahead had no birds. Leaves held on like they couldn't pick a season. Shadows sat too neat at the roots.
Mira turned her ring a quarter. A small glyph flickered over her palm, then died. "There's a field," she said. "But it's… flat. Like a song that forgot the beat."
"Residual," Kael said, leveling his spearhead to watch the ground light. "From a storm, or… testing."
"Testing what?" Elira asked.
He shook his head. "Don't know."
They hit a dry stream by noon. Cracked bed, pale lines where water used to run east and just—stopped.
Mira squatted, dragged a finger along the break. "Blocked," she said. "Not dry. Redirected."
"Surge cut the flow," Kael said. "Veins twisted."
"On purpose?" Elira asked.
"Maybe. Maybe the land's still… rewiring itself," he said.
Elira felt the Sight—the brass frame's gift—tug at the corners of her eyes. She let a little in. A thin film lay over the bed, a ghost of pattern with holes in it. Residue—pattern incomplete / source unknown. The letters weren't letters, not really; more like the thought of them. Pain pushed in behind her eyes.
"Don't lean on it," Kael said, not looking at her.
"I'm not." Beat. "Much."
Mira watched her. "And?"
"It hurts," Elira said. "But it tells me something changed. Here."
"Something always changes," Kael said.
"Sure," Mira said. "But I'd like a memo next time. Color-coded. With snacks."
They walked until the sun dropped behind the west ridge and the light went knife-thin. They stopped—not from tiredness, but because the ground under their boots… hummed. A quiet, steady note. Like a throat trying out a word and thinking better of it.
Then silence again.
Kael checked the ring of land. "Clear enough."
"Define clear," Mira said, setting her pack down. "Because I'm— yeah, I'm not feeling that."
"Not dead," Kael said.
"That's a low bar," she muttered. "I can live with it."
She huffed a laugh at her own joke. It didn't travel far.
Elira stayed standing. The sky had a faint red seam on the far line—same shade that bled through cracks under the Stair. Memory pressed hard. The Element verse surfaced like a bad habit: Hold joy like steel when midnight falls…
She didn't know if that was wisdom or a dare. Joy felt thin. Slippery. Easy to drop.
"You're quiet," Mira said, watching her.
"Thinking."
"Dangerous."
Kael looked up from a strap he was fixing. "Hope's allowed," he said. "Don't bet meals on it."
Elira sat. The earth was cold enough to prove she was here. "We keep north tomorrow," she said. "High line. Eyes first."
"And if we find worse?" Mira asked.
"Then we deal with worse," Elira said. "Together."
Kael nodded once. "Always."
They didn't light a fire. Bread, water, no fuss. The quiet here was… useful. It let their hands stop shaking.
Night fell fast. No heat left in the ground, only memory. Elira took first watch. The dark was honest: what moved, moved; what didn't, didn't. Twice a fox barked—sharp, like a nail hit wrong. Once the earth gave that thin hum again, crossing under her boots like a thread being pulled. She let it pass. Didn't follow.
She woke Kael; he was already half-awake. "Nothing," she said.
"Good." He took her place. No more words.
Elira lay down. Sleep didn't come; the Stair did. Rule in her head: If the water speaks in words, go back.
It hadn't. Sounded like water doing its best to be water. Mercy then. Maybe still. Maybe not. She didn't know.
Dawn shouldered night aside without trying very hard. Frost wrote sharp little stars along their rope line. Kael stood with a palm open to the north like he could feel distance. Mira sat with both hands on her knees, counting breaths out loud until she reached ten, then started over.
"Status," Elira said.
"Wards clean," Kael said. "That pulse—came once, same interval. No spread."
"The shard's cool," Mira said, nodding at the wrapped sample. "We heat-test later. Far from any roof that deserves to stay a roof."
Elira rolled her shoulders until they sat right. "We keep the plan," she said. "High to the coast. Watch first. We don't poke a nest we can't see."
"Copy," Mira said. "And—uh—breakfast that isn't a theory?"
"We'll try," Kael said. "No promises."
Elira touched the brass frame in her pocket. The Sight tugged. She ignored it. Not yet.
"Alright," she said. "We go."
They stepped out before the light filled all the way in. The ridge ran toward a sea they couldn't see, only smell—salt, and nothing else. The road gave them ten quiet minutes in a row.
They took them.
Then kept walking.