Maps in Lathryn were supposed to be dead things—ink, parchment, certainty.
Erynd Vale's maps breathed.
He noticed it at dawn, when the city bells were still dreaming. The parchment on his desk rippled softly, like lungs learning how to live. Ink-lines shifted, redrawing coastlines where none should move.
Erynd did not touch it.
He had learned the price of curiosity.
The map showed tomorrow.
Not the future—never far enough to become myth—but the immediate next step of the world. Roads that would collapse. Markets that would burn. Rivers that would change their minds and run elsewhere.
The Guild called it a predictive anomaly. Kings called it a weapon.
Erynd called it a curse that refused to leave him alone.
And today, the map was wrong.
Where the Western Sea should have been, there was land.
An entire continent—unlabeled, uncolored, unfinished.
The parchment trembled harder, as if frightened.
Erynd whispered, "You don't exist."
The map disagreed.