Chapter 230: The Edge of Silence
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One hour later... He carved out the map on tree bark. The map was little more than fraying bark stitched with spider-silk threads—old caravan routes inked in resin, dots for hunting ponds, jagged red scratches for wyrm nests long since abandoned. Yet it was all Kai had. He knelt on a shale outcrop a few kilometres away from the tunnels, silver hair fluttering as dawn’s second light slipped between cobalt leaves.
He traced the narrow river tributaries feeding southward, then the curved line depicting the sea’s scalloped shoreline. Kai exhaled.
On land, it would mean weaving through fen-marsh, rock canyons, and three minor beast territories and more. One month to forty days journey.
But if he could ferry them by sea? A straight line back to the Eastern Shore, then inland past his mountain’s southern spur. It will be twenty days’ journey, maybe less—assuming the water wasn’t cursed like Luna said.
"I need to see it for myself."
A gust rattled glassy serpent spires behind him, scattering violet shards that clicked over stone like brittle rain. He folded the map, tucked it into armor, and set off downslope—boots crunching charred peat where beast ichor had once hissed.
The southern forest thinned another hour later, trees giving way to knuckled knolls littered with small star iron fragments. Each step carried the scent of salt and something colder. It was an undercurrent of metal that tasted like a blade pressed to tongue. Wind howled through crooked pines.
Halfway down a ravine, Kai paused at a shallow spring. He crouched, cupped water in his palms; the surface rippled with flecks of silver pollen blown from thorn blooms overhead. His reflection wavered, crimson eyes, hair streaked with soot, jaw shadowed by the sleepless night. A ruler’s face, but also a man’s: bruised, fallible, more than muscle.