They walked for three days.
The Ashlands had always been grey, but they felt greyer now. Or maybe it was just that Kael's eyes had seen the true dark of the Void, and everything else looked washed out in comparison.
"My leg is seizing," Elric rasped, stumbling over a drift of soot. The scholar looked like a corpse that had forgotten to lie down. His robes were rags, his skin was gaunt, and his eyes were constantly darting to the shadows, expecting monsters that weren't there.
"Keep moving," Kael said. He wasn't tired. That was the scary part.
Since the crash, since he put on the Star-metal ring next to his Obsidian arm, he hadn't felt hunger.
He hadn't felt thirst. He felt like a furnace that had been stoked with too much coal.
"We need water," Elric argued, dropping to his knees. "We need to find a waystation."
Kael scanned the horizon. "There was an outpost near the Sulfur Crags. Two days north."
"Two days?" Elric laughed, a broken sound. "I won't last two hours."
Kael grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him up. "You survived the bottom of the world, scholar. You aren't dying in a pile of dust."
They dragged themselves forward.
By the fourth day, they found the outpost.
Or what was left of it.
The 'Sulfur Crags Waystation' was a ruin. The stone walls were smashed inward. The roof was gone.
And it wasn't fresh damage. Vines of grey-thorn had grown over the rubble. The scorch marks were old, faded by rain and wind.
Elric stared at it. "This... this shouldn't be."
Kael walked into the debris. He kicked over a rotted table. "It was standing when we left. The patrol schedules said it was reinforced."
"When we left?" Elric picked up a rusted helmet from the floor. It was a Spire helmet. "Kael. Look at the rust."
"So?"
"This takes years." Elric touched the orange flakes. "Metal in the Ashlands corrodes fast, but not this fast. This helmet has been here for... seasons."
Kael felt a cold knot in his stomach. "We were in the Void for a week. Maybe ten days."
"Were we?" Elric dropped the helmet. "Time is gravity, Kael. The closer you are to a massive object, the slower time moves. The Void... the Void is infinite mass."
Kael looked at his Obsidian arm. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying we weren't gone for a week."
A horn blew in the distance.
Kael spun around. On the ridge overlooking the ruins, a patrol was riding. But they weren't the ragged Ashland patrols Kael remembered.
These riders were clad in polished silver armor. Their banners were new—crisp white silk with a golden sunburst. The sigil of the "Ascended."
"Hide," Kael hissed, pulling Elric behind a crumbled wall.
The riders stopped. One of them, a captain with a voice amplified by magic, called out.
"Sector 4 is clear. No sign of the Heretic movement."
"Copy that," another rider said. "Move to the next quadrant. The High Inquisitor wants the perimeter secured for the Ascension Day festival."
"Can you believe it?" the captain laughed. "Two years since the First Sword Ascended, and we're still chasing ghosts in the dust."
The riders turned and galloped away.
Kael stood there, frozen.
Elric looked at him, his face pale.
"Two years," Elric whispered.
Kael looked at the ring on his hand. The ring the First Sword gave him.
Tell them I didn't hold the door... for the King.
The Spire hadn't just plugged the hole. They had lied about it. They claimed the First Sword had "Ascended"—become a god—while he was actually rotting in the dark to save them.
And Kael? Kael had been gone long enough to be forgotten.
"Kael?" Elric asked. "What does this mean?"
Kael pulled his hood up. The shadow covered his face.
"It means we're ghosts," Kael said. "And it's time to haunt them."