He made it in three days.
Not four — the Domain moving with him, the Soul Harvest running through the farming country and the woodland and the secondary roads that Nara's framework mapping had identified as the lowest monitoring exposure route. The passive experience accumulating steadily. His Level climbing past 61, past 62, past 63 by the time Thornwall's walls appeared on the northern horizon.
Lira met him at the city's southern approach.
She looked different from the Ashwater crossing.
Not physically — the same weathered face, the same grey in her hair, the travel-worn quality of someone who had been moving for four days. The difference was something internal, visible to the between-frequency awareness that the Domain and the Class and sixty-three levels of Death's Chosen development had built into his perception. The Grave Walker's field quality — the thirty-one years of accumulated expertise — was running at a different register.
Louder.
