[250 Years Later]
The road was stone.
Not cobblestone — not the loose, uneven patchwork that Ryn had seen in frontier villages where the locals jammed river rock into mud and called it a path. This was engineered stone. Cut blocks, beveled edges, fitted so precisely that a coin placed on the surface wouldn't wobble. The road was twelve meters wide, cambered slightly toward drainage channels on either side, and stretched in both directions to the horizon without a single visible crack.
Ryn had been walking on it for two days and still couldn't stop staring at the ground.
