The wind over the driftways was sharper here, slicing between the jagged rock spires like knives. Kaelen kept low, moving in Orien's shadow as they threaded a narrow path between trembling ropes and swaying planks. Below, the Veil churned in slow, poisonous waves.
Orien didn't look back often, but when he did, his eyes seemed to catch more than the dim lantern light should allow. Too much more.
They stopped only when the boards ahead had warped so badly that Kaelen had to test each one with his weight before stepping. His hand brushed the hilt at his belt out of habit, though the real danger wasn't anything that could be cut. The Shard burned faintly in his palm — not painfully, but insistently, like it wanted to speak.
Kaelen shook it off.
"Where are we going?" he whispered.
"Somewhere the Sovereignty won't follow," Orien replied, voice tight. "And somewhere the Wraith can't."
That should have been reassuring. It wasn't.
They reached the end of the driftway and clambered onto a lip of crumbling stone. From here, the world spread wide — broken islands hanging in the dark like teeth, threads of rope bridges between them. In the far distance, a faint glimmer of lightning pulsed inside the Veil.
Orien crouched, tracing something into the dust with one gloved finger. The marks were quick, practiced. Kaelen recognized pieces — fragments of runes he'd seen carved into Sovereignty gates — but they were twisted, inverted, made wrong.
"What is that?" Kaelen asked.
Orien hesitated just long enough to make the answer suspicious.
"Insurance."
The Shard in Kaelen's hand flared at the same moment Orien's fingertip brushed the last line. The dust mark shimmered faintly before vanishing into the stone.
"That wasn't Sovereignty magic," Kaelen said.
Orien looked up, meeting his gaze for longer than was comfortable. "No," he said. "It wasn't."
The wind carried the scent of storm from the Veil, and somewhere deep below, something shifted. The sound didn't belong to air or stone — it was heavier, older. Kaelen felt it through his bones.
He wanted to ask Orien what he'd just bound into the rock, but the older man was already moving.
"We should keep walking," Orien said. "It's going to find us faster than I thought."