The march began at midday, once rations had been distributed and the last protests smothered by Vaelira's clipped commands. They descended the chalk bluffs in a broken column: Vaelira's vanguard first, iron-reed cages lashed to sleds; then Helyra's wagon stacked with star atlases; then Draven's infiltration pack; finally the rear guard—Justiciar prisoners now shackled wrist-to-waist in a chain so they could carry ammunition without fleeing.
With every yard the procession advanced, the world seemed to tilt farther from any natural order. The seabed was a battlefield of mismatched eras, each revelation stranger than the last.
Splintered clams, split by sudden pressure change, coughed out final hissed breaths. Their pearlescent shells gleamed under the sickly blue light, and some still twitched, refusing to accept the sky's presence where water should have been.
