The silence changed.
Not louder. Not heavier. Just settled.
Xander was the first to break it. "Anyone else get the feeling we just crossed something?"
Kara didn't answer right away. She kept walking, eyes forward, pace steady. "If we did," she said, "we'll find out soon enough."
Elara exhaled through her nose. "Air's wrong again."
Xander glanced back at her. "You say that like it's news."
"It's not," she replied. "That's the problem."
They moved for a while without speaking. No forks. No sudden drops. Just a long, gradual descent that forced them closer together than usual.
Luna shifted her pack higher on her shoulders. "We should stop soon."
Kara nodded. "Agreed. First place that lets us."
Drake said nothing.
They found a narrow shelf that barely qualified as a rest point. Packs came off. No fire. No jokes.
Xander dropped to a knee and stretched his leg. "Okay. I'll say it. I hate this part."
"Which part?" Kara asked.
"The part where nothing's wrong," he said. "But everything feels like it's lining up to be."
Elara leaned back against the stone, eyes closed. "We're being funneled."
"By what?" Xander asked.
She opened one eye. "Don't know. Doesn't matter."
Kara glanced at Drake then—not sharply, not searching. Just checking a position.
Drake felt it. Didn't look away.
Luna broke the moment. "We've been moving like this for days."
Xander frowned. "Days?"
She nodded. "Since the basin. Maybe longer."
That landed harder than it should have.
Kara checked the time marker on her wristband. It blinked once, then stabilized. "She's right," Kara said. "We've lost track of exact intervals."
Xander let out a breath. "Great."
Elara shifted, then winced, pressing her fingers briefly to her temple. She lowered her hand quickly. "We don't stop here long."
"Because?" Xander asked.
"Because this isn't a place people linger," she said. "It's a place people pass through."
Drake felt it then.
Not pressure. Not lag.
Attention.
He stood without thinking.
Everyone noticed.
"I'm going to check the edge," he said.
Kara watched him for a second, then nodded. "Don't touch anything."
"I won't," Drake said.
He stepped a few paces away from the group. The shelf dropped off into a deeper channel below—too dark to see clearly, but open enough that sound carried differently.
"Drake," Luna said quietly.
He paused. "Yeah?"
"Don't decide anything yet."
He didn't answer.
Because for the first time, it didn't feel like a decision was his to make.
The air shifted.
Not wind.
A presence.
Behind him, Xander straightened. "Okay," he muttered. "That one wasn't in my head, right?"
Elara opened her eyes fully now. "No."
Kara's hand went to her bow—but she didn't draw.
A voice spoke from somewhere that wasn't quite in front of them.
"Far enough."
It wasn't loud. It didn't echo.
Drake turned.
A figure stood at the far end of the channel, where the canyon bent out of sight. No sudden arrival. No flare of energy.
Just… there.
Azael.
He didn't look at the group at first.
He looked at Drake.
"You can stop walking now," Azael said calmly. "This is where you were always going to end up."
No one moved.
Xander swallowed. "You wanna explain who—"
Azael lifted a hand.
Only Drake felt what that meant.
The rest of the canyon didn't matter anymore.
Only this moment did.
Azael lowered his hand and finally looked at the others. "You can stay," he said. "Or you can listen. Either way, this doesn't involve you yet."
Then his gaze returned to Drake.
"You," he said, "have been surviving pressure you were never meant to understand."
Drake felt his chest tighten.
"And now," Azael continued, voice even, "you're out of room to pretend that's accidental."
Silence followed.
Xander was the first to break it, because of course he was.
"So," he said, glancing around the chamber, then back at Azael, "is this the part where you tell us you've been here the whole time? Or the part where you tell us we're about to die?"
Azael didn't look at him.
"I arrived when you stopped correcting the ground," he said.
Xander blinked. "Wow. Okay. Neither of the options I guessed."
Kara didn't take her eyes off Azael. "You've been watching."
"Yes."
"How long?"
Azael considered that. "Long enough to see which mistakes repeated. And which ones stopped."
Drake felt the weight of that land on him before anyone else reacted.
Elara shifted uncomfortably. "If you were observing," she said carefully, "then you knew the path was collapsing behind us."
"Yes."
"You knew we were losing margin."
"Yes."
"And you still didn't intervene."
Azael finally looked at her. Not sharply. Not dismissively.
"You were still choosing," he said. "Intervention would have changed that."
Luna frowned. "Changed it how?"
"It would have made the outcome mine."
Kara stepped forward half a pace. "Then whose is it now?"
Azael's gaze moved back to Drake.
"His," he said.
That did it.
Drake's breath hitched before he could stop it. He hadn't moved. Hadn't spoken. But suddenly every eye in the chamber was on him, and he couldn't tell which part of his chest felt tighter—the attention, or the fact that Azael wasn't wrong.
"I didn't do anything," Drake said.
Azael tilted his head slightly. "You did less than you wanted to."
"That's not the same thing."
"It is," Azael replied, "when the alternative would have resolved the moment."
Xander rubbed his face. "Okay, I'm officially lost. Because from where I'm standing, all I see is him not screwing us over."
Azael looked at him again. "That is not what you saw."
Xander opened his mouth, then paused. "I saw him stop."
"Yes."
"…which is good."
"It is restrained," Azael said. "Those are not the same."
Kara's jaw tightened. "You're speaking in circles."
"No," Azael said calmly. "I'm speaking to the one person who isn't."
Drake swallowed. "Then say it plainly."
Azael didn't hesitate.
"You survive pressure because you were built to," he said. "You notice it because you don't accept it."
Drake stared at him. "That doesn't explain anything."
"It explains why you're still here," Azael replied. "Not why you understand."
The words slipped past Drake's guard before he could brace for them.
"Understand what?"
Azael stepped closer—not invading space, just enough that the distance between them felt intentional.
"That when you act," he said, "the moment bends. And when you hesitate, it doesn't."
Drake shook his head. "I haven't bent anything."
"You displaced a basin," Azael said. "You redirected a collapse. You crossed a threshold without resolving it."
Elara inhaled sharply. "You knew about that?"
"I observed the result," Azael replied. "The canyon corrected after you left. That matters."
Kara cut in, sharp. "So what are you saying? That he should have committed harder?"
"No," Azael said. "I'm saying he committed early."
Drake laughed once, short and disbelieving. "That doesn't make sense."
Azael didn't raise his voice. "You are early," he said. "Not wrong. Not reckless. Early."
The word hit Drake harder than anything else had.
Early meant there had been a right moment.
Early meant there would be a cost for arriving before it.
Drake felt his throat tighten. He tried to speak and failed. Tried again.
"So what," he managed, "I just… wait until the canyon decides it's time?"
Azael's expression didn't change. "The canyon is irrelevant."
That snapped Drake's head up. "Then what isn't?"
Azael held his gaze. For the first time since appearing, there was something like gravity in his eyes.
"You."
The room went very still.
Xander shifted his weight. "I don't love that answer."
Luna shot him a look. "Not helping."
Drake exhaled shakily. "You said I wasn't chosen."
"I did."
"And you're saying this isn't accidental."
"Yes."
Drake's hands clenched at his sides. "Then what am I supposed to be?"
Azael didn't answer immediately.
When he did, his voice was quieter—not softer, just closer.
"You were noticed," he said. "Because you keep stepping into moments you don't yet have the right to finish."
Something in Drake broke then—not loudly, not all at once. Just enough that the breath he drew in came out wrong.
He looked away, jaw tight, shoulders rigid, like if he held himself together hard enough, whatever was clawing up his chest would settle.
It didn't.
"So my dad—" The words slipped out before he'd meant to say them. He stopped, swallowing. "Was that part of it too?"
The others froze.
Azael didn't.
"Yes," he said.
That was all it took.
Drake's breath shuddered, and this time he didn't fight it. He bent forward slightly, one hand braced on his knee, the other covering his mouth as the sound caught in his throat anyway—ugly, uncontained, real.
No one spoke.
Kara didn't move. Elara didn't look away. Xander, for once, said nothing.
Azael waited.
When Drake finally dragged a hand down his face and straightened again, his eyes were red, but his voice—when he found it—was steady.
"So what now?"
Azael met his gaze.
"Now," he said, "you decide whether you keep surviving pressure… or whether you accept responsibility for how it resolves."