The land wasn't quiet anymore.
It remembered.
Each footfall crunched over bones older than the war. Broken Flow runes pulsed weakly from old monoliths, bleeding a sickly blue light into the earth like veins left open too long. Cyril adjusted the weight of his pack and trudged after Miren, who moved through the ruin-paths like she'd grown up in them.
Ahead, the plateau loomed—Veinscar—what they both decided to call it, was still a distant gash in the horizon, torn wide by the fall of the shard. The sky above refused to heal. Clouds spiraled outward, forming patterns no sane person would try to name. Sometimes Cyril could hear it humming. Sometimes it sounded like breath. Sometimes it sounded like his.
They hadn't spoken in an hour.
The wind brought voices that weren't theirs. False whispers. Echoes from distant camps, from scouting parties, from the dying. The Flow warped sound here—sometimes it even bent memory.
Cyril broke the silence first.
"You ever been to Veinscar before?"
Miren paused. Her shoulders shifted slightly, like she was arguing with herself before answering.
"Before it was Veinscar, yeah. It used to be a valley. Ibrin's Fold. Trading post. Quiet. Slow. Nothing worth a map."
She started walking again. Her voice flattened.
"Now it's worth armies."
Cyril swallowed. His chest ached—like something inside him was too big. A pressure that didn't stop since the shard fell. He rubbed his arms. Sparks chased his fingers. He didn't try to hide it anymore.
"You think they're already fighting?"
Miren gave a short nod.
"Skirmishes. Proxy strikes. Emberhold's buying stakes on all sides. Braithborne's throwing heirs into the fire to prove their bloodlines. Chorus is already inside."
Cyril looked to the sky.
"And we're walking toward that. Sounds like nothing but death."
She stopped.
Not from danger—just to look at him.
"You don't have to, you know."
He blinked.
"You serious?"
Miren's voice softened, slightly.
"I've trained plenty of prodigies. Cultivators who could bend Flow in ways that made no sense. Most of them burned out before they ever made it to a battlefield. Let alone one of this scale."
Cyril, stared at the scarred sky for a second before responding.
"I'm not one to cower from a fight, especially if there's a beautiful woman infront of me leading the charge."
She tilted her head at him, Cyril couldn't tell if the look was good or bad.
Then she smiled. A rare one—a hint of warmth could be found within it.
"Good. Be sure to stick close."
They made camp beneath the collapsed remains of an old watchtower. The glyphwork etched into the stones still hummed faintly, reacting to their presence. Cyril lay awake, watching the spiral cloud over Veinscar twist and pulse.
The pull was stronger now.
Not a whisper.
A song.
Low, dangerous, persistent.
His bones felt like they were vibrating. Not from nerves—from resonance. The land was responding to something in him. Or maybe the other way around.
He sat up sharply, gasping.
Miren was already awake.
She tossed him a canteen and came closer. No questions. Just eyes full of knowing.
"You're syncing again," she said.
Cyril clenched his fists.
"I'm not trying to, this flow thing is still…foreign."
"That's the problem." Her tone was blunt.
"It's happening to you. One day soon, it's going to happen through you. And if you can't steer it, someone else will."
He looked away.
Feigning silence again because he knew she was right, thinking of another Dren like figure controlling him left a sour taste in his mouth.
Miren was quiet for a moment, then:
"Don't fret, from what I've seen so far… the time it'll take for you to steer it won't be long."
***
Dawn came quick.
By morning, the edge of the Veinscar Plateau had come into view.
It looked like a scar the world refused to scab over. Twisting rock. Scorched soil. Air that shimmered wrong. Distant flashes of light blinked and burned—battle glyphs, or worse.
Three camps were already in ruin.
The Chorus had marked the lower valley with towers and Flow-scrawled murals. Braithborne flags waved atop the central ridge. And above it all, the faint silhouette of a Sunvault skyship drifted behind the clouds like a watching god.
The war hadn't started in full yet.
But it would.
Miren crouched on a rise and peered through a cracked spyglass. Her voice was low.
"They've taken the high ground. Anyone coming from the south will get flanked hard."
"So south's a no go," Cyril said.
She gave him a glance. "You have a better plan?"
He pointed through the mist toward a spined rock formation.
"There. That ridgeline. Something about the Flow is… thinner there. Like the shockwave stripped it raw and never healed it."
Miren studied him.
"You sure?"
"No. I just know."
She stared for another beat, then nodded once.
They moved.
They made it barely a hundred meters into the broken ridge path before the ambush hit.
Chorus zealots. Half-feral. Masked and high on corrupted ambient.
They struck from above, shrieking oaths and igniting their blades with flow mid-leap. The surrounding air shifted like vinegar, rust, and rot.
Cyril's hands reached toward his sword but something within stopped him.
You don't need a blade for these vermin.
He reached inward.
The Flow answered.
Not like a technique. Not like training.
Like instinct.
A wave of compressed resonance burst outward. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't controlled. But it was devastating. The nearest zealots were slammed back with bone-breaking force. Glyphs flared around him—wild, half-formed, screaming with pressure.
One attacker's blade exploded in his hand.
Miren fought beside him—calm, surgical, precise. But her eyes kept flicking toward Cyril.
She'd seen prodigies. She'd seen monsters.
He was something different.
When the last zealot fled—bleeding into the mist—Cyril dropped to one knee. His skin steamed. His vision danced with static.
Miren knelt beside him.
"You just bent the resonance signature of an entire squad—their collective flow pattern." she said.
Not impressed. Not scared. Just marking it.
"Do you even know what that means?"
He shook his head.
"I hope it has something to do with a flask of water."
Cyril exclaimed as he knelt.
Miren ignored him and continued.
"But you did."
Silence passed between them.
Then she stood, scanning the horizon.
"They're going to notice that," she said.
"Every cultivator within ten miles felt it."
Cyril looked toward the Veinscar crater.
The pull was constant now.
"Then we'd better get there first."
Miren gave him a long look. Measuring something invisible.
Then she nodded.
And didn't argue.