The road back toward Nashkel sloped gently, winding through low brush and broken stone that caught the sun without offering shade. The mine vanished behind us quickly—its mouth swallowed by distance and terrain—but the sense of having left something unfinished did not.
We walked for a time without speaking.
Not because there was nothing to say. Because whatever words came first would decide the shape of what followed.
Imoen broke the silence by scuffing her boot against a loose stone and sending it skittering ahead of us.
"So," she said, kicking it harder this time, "anyone else get the feeling that whatever that was didn't end just because we walked away?"
No one answered right away.
Jaheira walked a few paces ahead, staff tapping in a steady rhythm, her gaze forward rather than outward. Khalid kept close to her side, alert in a way that suggested he was already thinking several steps beyond the present moment.
"We should speak once we're settled," Jaheira said at last. "Not here."
"About the letters?" Imoen asked.
"And everything else," Jaheira replied.
I nodded.
The parchments from Mulahey's chamber felt heavier in my pack than they had any right to. Not because of what they said, but because of what they implied. Coordination. Reach. A problem that didn't end where we'd cut it down.
And then there was him—the weight of that sword, the certainty of how he'd stood there. Not gone so much as unfinished.
I tried to replay the encounter, searching for something familiar to grab hold of—some rule, some recognizable structure. In other circumstances, I would have known where it fit. What it represented. How it was supposed to unfold.
It was a reflection of something I'd made once. Something overbuilt. Something I'd never expected to see turned back on me.
There was nothing to lean on now.
Just the awareness that whatever leverage my prior knowledge had given me—the ability to anticipate, to sidestep—had been deliberately taken away.
I was playing blind.
Not ignorant. Just stripped of the advantage I'd been quietly using since the beginning.
Xan walked with his arms folded inside his sleeves, expression neutral in the way that never quite convinced anyone.
"Uncertainty," he said mildly, "is often mistaken for cruelty. In truth, it's simply honesty arriving late."
Imoen shot him a look. "That's… not comforting."
"It isn't meant to be," Xan replied.
Rasaad had been quiet since we left the mine. Now he slowed slightly, letting me fall into step beside him. His eyes stayed forward, but his attention was clearly elsewhere.
"Whatever you encountered," he said, low enough that the others wouldn't hear unless they tried, "it removed something you were relying on. Not from the world—from you."
I exhaled. "That obvious?"
"To someone trained to notice imbalance," he said. "Yes."
Ahead of us, Jaheira slowed, then stopped altogether. Khalid mirrored her a heartbeat later. The rest of us followed suit.
"There is something we must consider," Jaheira said, turning to face us. Her expression was composed, but the decision beneath it was already set. "What we uncovered in the mines—and what followed—cannot remain only with us."
Khalid nodded, swallowing. "T-the Harpers will need to know," he said. "N-not later. N-now."
Imoen frowned. "You mean… leave?"
"For a time," Jaheira said. "Yes."
The word settled uncomfortably.
"This isn't abandonment," she continued, as if anticipating the objection. "It's responsibility. If what we've seen points to a wider disturbance—one that isn't confined to Nashkel or its mines—then silence becomes complicity."
Xan tilted his head slightly. "Organizations," he said, "do enjoy believing they can still matter."
Jaheira ignored him.
"We'll reach Nashkel first," she said, looking directly at me now. "Then Khalid and I will turn toward the Coast Way. There are channels there we can reach more quickly. If matters allow, we'll leave word at Feldepost's. It's a place others know to check."
Not a promise. But not an absence either.
I didn't argue.
Part of me wanted to. But another part understood exactly why this was happening.
The world was getting larger.
Rasaad inclined his head. "I will remain," he said. "For now."
Jaheira studied him briefly, then nodded.
Xan smiled thinly. "Of course you will," he said. "Someone should bear witness when things worsen."
Imoen rolled her eyes. "You're really committed to that angle, huh?"
"Consistency," Xan replied, "is one of the few mercies left to us."
We resumed walking shortly after, the road stretching ahead with its familiar bends now stripped of promise. Nashkel lay somewhere beyond the rise, unchanged in shape if not in significance.
I adjusted the straps of my pack and felt the letters shift inside.
Whatever order I thought I'd been following was gone.
From here on out, I'd have to decide what came next.
The road did not offer guidance.
It only waited for us to choose.