The ascent was like slipping between dreams.
Farmlands shrank to quilts. Rivers curled like silver threads. Navaleon—land of war and wonder—became a memory wrapped in fog.
Elina clutched Sharath's hand. "You never stop surprising me."
"I hope I never do."
For a moment, it was just the two of them and their daughter, floating in a palace of sky. No politics. No council. No weight of progress or prophecy.
Just wind, silk, and silence.
And then, in that silence—on the farthest edge of the horizon—something shimmered.
A shape. A mass.
A continent that did not exist on any map.