The man did not arrive like a traveler.
There was no scout report. No distant movement across the ridge. No rising dust. He was simply… standing there.
At the boundary.
Just outside the breath-range of Blackridge's outermost flame wards, where the wind curved around invisible lines and birds didn't land. A place where silence usually held dominion.
He wore a robe stitched together from scraps of parchment—real parchment. Paper and hide and cloth, all marked in intricate inks. None of the designs were full; every map seemed to start somewhere and vanish mid-line, the roads tapering into curls, rivers melting into symbols. Some ink bled. Some shimmered. But none of it formed anything whole.
His eyes were blindfolded.
Kael and two guards approached him cautiously, glaives drawn but not raised. The man didn't move. He stood barefoot on the dry shale, fingers folded, head slightly tilted toward the sound of their footsteps.
"I am the Once-Guide," he said.
His voice was papery. Not raspy, not sick. Just… thin. As though the wind had used it before.
Kael narrowed his gaze. "You crossed the boundary without triggering any traps."
"I did not walk," the man replied. "I arrived. There is a difference."
Kael's lips pressed into a line.
The guards didn't speak. Their grips tightened.
The Once-Guide raised a hand—palm open. "I bring no harm. Only a warning. And a choice."
Kael said nothing.
"I lost my eyes," the man said, "to the center. It takes differently than beasts or blades. It takes you by asking you to believe the world is still whole."
Kael frowned. "You mean the Hollow?"
"I mean the land beneath your feet." The man turned slightly, somehow aiming his blank eyes right at Kael. "It's no longer truthful."
Kael tilted his head. "And you want to help?"
"I want to leave you a map."
Now Kael did raise a brow. "What kind of map?"
The man reached slowly into the folds of his robe and pulled out a small, square parcel. He held it out.
Kael did not move.
The man placed it carefully on the ground, just inside the arc of the ward-circle stones.
"You'll think it's empty," he said. "That's because it hasn't been watered."
"Watered?" Kael repeated.
The man nodded. "The roads don't show themselves to dry hands."
Kael gave the briefest glance to the guards. One stepped forward and picked up the parcel.
It was a blank vellum scroll, aged but flexible. No ink. No crease lines. No scent.
Nothing.
"I leave this freely," the man said, stepping back.
Kael watched him carefully. "What do you get in return?"
The blindfolded head turned skyward. "A hope that someone will stay visible."
And with that, the Once-Guide stepped away, toward the east—not toward any road, not following any trail. Just walking where the wind hadn't moved.
Kael returned to camp in silence.
The scroll was brought directly to Riku.
They placed it on the stone table inside the Hall of Silence. Riku, Kael, Sira, and the scout-captain Bren all stood around it. No one spoke.
Riku was the one who reached for the canteen.
He poured a single line of water down the center of the scroll.
The effect was immediate.
Ink bled up from beneath the parchment as though the scroll bled its own veins. Roads appeared—spindly, curling things. Some were too thin to be paths. Some thickened into strange double-routes that split, rejoined, then vanished. Circles appeared. And triangles. One spiral. A few blinking glyphs—not symbols from any sovereign language, but almost… twitching.
Bren stepped closer. "That's not the map I drew two days ago."
Kael leaned over it. "It's not any map we've ever drawn."
Sira pointed to a point near the top edge. "That marking. That's our obsidian forge. Or it should be."
Riku traced a line that should've led north. "This bends east, then drops."
"No ridge there," Kael murmured.
Bren exhaled. "There wasn't."
Kael looked at Riku. "What do we do with it?"
Riku didn't answer immediately. His eyes were still fixed on the spiral symbol at the bottom corner.
It pulsed.
Not visually. Not with light. But with… suggestion. As though the eye wanted to follow it. As though it knew it would be seen. As though it waited.
Riku touched the spiral.
The scroll stayed still.
But something under the stone table groaned.
They all heard it.
Kael's hand went to his blade. "That was from beneath."
Riku stood. "Lock this room."
Sira didn't argue. She was already sealing the flame-lock at the edge of the hall.
Kael turned the scroll over.
The back was dry. But in one corner, carved into the material—not inked—was a phrase.
"The land does not lie. It forgets."