Chapter 19 | Part 5

Drusniel woke to the smell of sulfur.

The darkness had thinned while he slept, fading from black to the sickly grey-green that passed for morning here. He sat up and found Srietz already finished packing, the goblin crouched over their supplies with his hands folded, waiting.

“How long have you been ready?”

“Forty-seven minutes.” Srietz stood and shouldered his pack in one fluid motion. “Srietz did not wish to wake you. Sleep deprivation degrades decision-making by fourteen percent per missed hour.”

Elion emerged from behind a rock formation, rolling his shoulders. He’d taken the final watch and still moved better than either of them. The hollowness had left his face overnight, replaced by sharp attention.

“The path east is clear for the first league,” Elion said. “After that, I couldn’t see.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“Both.” He didn’t elaborate.

They walked.

The volcanic glass ended within the first hundred paces, giving way to stone so dark it swallowed light. Then the stone crumbled into soil that crunched like ash underfoot. Drusniel looked down and saw veins of dull red threading through the black earth, pulsing. The ground had a heartbeat here.

He counted his steps. Old habit. The numbers helped him think.

At six hundred and twelve steps, Srietz spoke.

“Srietz wishes to register a formal objection.”

“To what?”

The goblin pointed at the horizon.

The glow hung there like a wound torn in the sky, red light bleeding upward into clouds that churned with heat. From the caravan, weeks ago, it had seemed distant. Beautiful, even, in the way destruction could be beautiful. Now Drusniel could feel the warmth on his face from leagues away.

“Walking toward that,” Srietz said, “contradicts every survival calculation Srietz has ever made.”

“Noted.”

“Srietz expected more resistance to the objection.”

“Would resistance change anything?”

“No.” The goblin’s ears flattened. “Srietz is walking anyway. Group calculations are… complicated.”

Elion matched Drusniel’s pace, close enough to speak quietly. “I spent thirty years in Wyrmreach. Thirty years avoiding those lands.” He nodded toward the glow. “The stories say things live there that don’t live anywhere else. Things the lords keep as pets. Things the lords are.”

“We’re not invited.”

“No.”

“We’re going anyway.”

“Yes.”

The ridge came up fast, a lip of black stone jutting from the earth like a broken bone. They climbed it in silence and stood at the top, looking down.

The contested lands spread below them.

Black crystals studded the lower slopes, millions of them, facets drinking the volcanic light. They grew from the rock in clusters and veins, some no larger than a fist, others tall as a man, their surfaces catching the red glow and throwing it back as faint violet. Steam rose from cracks in the ground. The air tasted of sulfur and copper and something else, something that made Drusniel’s teeth ache. He’d felt this sensation before. In the barrier. In the Voice’s presence. Raw power, barely contained, pressing against the skin of the world.

Three territories carved the landscape below. Three lords ruled them. And beyond all of it, Szoravel waited.

“Fast and low,” Drusniel said. “We stay quiet. We don’t stop.”

“And when something finds us?” Srietz asked.

“We deal with it then.”

The goblin made a sound that wasn’t quite agreement.

Drusniel turned to face them both. The alchemist who survived through numbers. The shapeshifter who survived through change. They’d followed him this far for reasons he still didn’t fully understand, and now he was asking them to walk into fire.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Srietz will accept gratitude after survival. Not before.”

Elion’s mouth twitched. “He means you’re welcome.”

“Srietz meant what Srietz said.” A pause. “But Srietz does not object to the translation.”

Drusniel looked back one last time. The gloomy town had vanished behind the horizon. The caves were gone. The caravan’s wreckage lay somewhere far to the west, bones and cargo scattered across a road they’d never walk again.

Nothing back there worth returning to.

He faced east, toward the volcanic glow, toward the lords and their servants and their territories carved in fire.

Szoravel waited on the other side. Answers or traps or both.

Only one way to find out.

They walked into the contested lands together, three figures descending toward the red light, and the black crystals hummed as they passed.

End of Chapter 19.5 —> 20.1: The First Fragment: The Search