The wind shifted again.
But this time, it did not carry with it the scent of ash, nor the heavy silence of a battlefield before the storm. It carried voices—distant, muffled, tucked just beyond the veil of trees. Caliste stood still, the map folded tightly in his grip, the warmth of the sigil against his palm less like heat and more like breath—alive, insistent.
The trees whispered overhead, leaves brushing against one another like tongues shaping forgotten words. He turned slowly, not out of caution, but reverence. Whatever had begun with that scroll, with the glyph from a life lived long ago, was pulling him east—not by threat, not by fear, but by memory's unshakable tether.
He walked.
Not with haste. Not yet.
