The carriage rattled on, its wheels biting into the cracked soil. The driver's shoulders hunched forward, his movements stiff, unnatural. Kael's eyes narrowed.
The pulse in his mind still echoed:
[DANGER ALERT: The carriage driver intends to abandon you before reaching the frontier.]
Adrian's instincts sharpened. In the Army, he had seen men desert convoys, leaving supplies to rot in the desert. Betrayal wasn't new. But here, in Kael's frail body, it carried sharper consequences.
He leaned back, feigning indifference, while his mind worked. If the driver left him stranded, the knights would follow orders only so far. Without leadership, without supplies, he would be swallowed by the wastes.
The wastes.
Kael's gaze drifted to the horizon. Dust swirled in the distance, choking the land. Villages here whispered of curses — that the soil itself rejected human hands, that spirits of the dead poisoned the air. Priests spoke of divine punishment; nobles dismissed it as superstition.
But Adrian recognized the signs. He had seen it before in history books, in photographs of the American Dust Bowl: overworked soil, stripped of nutrients, left to choke under wind and drought. Not cursed. Mismanaged.
The realization steadied him. This land wasn't doomed. It was broken. And broken things could be fixed.
A flicker of firelight caught his eye. One of the knights riding alongside the carriage raised a hand, muttering words that shimmered faintly in the air. A spark of magic — a flame conjured to light the path.
Kael's lips tightened. Magic. Reserved for nobility, wielded sparingly by military mages. His brothers had flaunted it, weaving spells as easily as breathing. He had none. Another reason he was cast aside.
But Adrian had something else. Knowledge. Logistics. And now, a system that whispered of danger.
The carriage jolted again. The driver muttered under his breath, eyes darting to the horizon. Kael caught the words — a prayer to the "Ashen Curse."
So that was his excuse. Abandon the weak lord, blame the land, and vanish into the wastes.
Kael's fingers tightened around the Baron's Writ. His heart beat with calm clarity. He would not be abandoned. He would not be discarded.
The nobles thought exile was death. The driver thought betrayal was easy. The people thought the land was cursed.
They were all wrong.
Adrian Cole had survived deserts, famines, and wars. He would survive this frontier. And he would make it flourish.