The Shear Flats were exactly what the name suggested.Flat. Featureless. The highland ridges fell behind him within the first two hours and after that there was nothing between Flint and the sky except cold and distance. The eastern drainage line ran along a slight depression in the earth — a channel three feet lower than the surrounding ground that the wind passed over rather than across. Daya had marked it on his copy of Edran's map. Not shelter. A reduction of wind pressure. On the Shear Flats that counted for something.The Void Serpent had found the currents within the first hour.Not full flight. But the Flats wind was consistent and strong enough that it could spread its wings and let the pressure hold it level without spending energy. It moved in the specific way of something discovering what its body could do. Testing. Adjusting. Finding the edge of a capability without committing to it.Flint watched it from the corner of his eye without stopping.---The first day passed wi

The foothills took three hours.Not because the terrain was impossible. Because it required attention at every step. The rock face of the Ascent was old in a way that had nothing to do with geology — the stone had a density to it that pushed back against weight differently than the highland ridge, like it had been compressed by something that hadn't finished compressing it. Every footfall gave less than expected. Every handhold held more than it should.Wind Step made the difference on the first two faces.He moved quieter than he had any right to at this elevation and the rock seemed to register it. Not soften. Just tolerate him slightly more than it would have otherwise.The Void Serpent rode his shoulder through the foothills and then lifted off on the third face without warning. Not the testing glide from the Shear Flats. Controlled. It banked wide above him, reading the thermal currents rising off the heated stone, and came back down to his shoulder at the top of the third face w

The first six hours were manageable.Not comfortable. Manageable. The glow from the seam had moved through his hand and up his arm and settled somewhere in his chest where it sat like a second heartbeat running slightly out of phase with the real one. He could feel it from the inside — not pain, the thing that came before pain when a system first registered it was being changed.He stayed seated against the cavern wall with his hand flat on the seam and his back against the almost-rock and he breathed the same rhythm he had used during the demon commander devour. Not to eliminate anything. Just to give the body a pattern to follow.The Void Serpent had not moved from his side.It was pressed against his left leg, the full length of it, scales warm in a way that was not ambient temperature but deliberate. It had made the choice and committed to it and that was that.[DRAGON MARROW — PHASE ONE: SYSTEMIC REJECTION — HOUR 3.][HOST INTERNAL TEMPERATURE: ELEVATED — 1.4 DEGREES ABOVE BASELI

Phase three finished in the early hours of the fourth day.He knew it finished because the glow from the seam changed. Not dimming. Settling. The Dragon Marrow had been running at the specific intensity of active work and it shifted now into something lower, the way a fire settled when it had consumed what it needed to and was simply holding heat.He sat still for a while after that.The fever was gone.Not reduced. Gone. The specific absence of something that had been present for seventy-two hours was its own sensation — a quiet that had a shape to it. He registered it and set it aside and looked at his hands.Both of them. Palm up.He had looked at them at the end of phase two and noticed the difference in the right. He looked at them now and what he saw was not a difference between the right and the old version of the right. It was a difference between both hands and every version of either that had existed before the cavern.He made a fist.The resistance was gone from both. Not l

Daya was not in the council room.She was at the eastern forge. Standing at the open face of it with her arms folded and her eyes on the fire the way she looked at things she was making decisions about. She heard him coming and turned before he reached her.She looked at him the same way Caravan had at the boundary. The full assessment. Taking the complete picture before responding to any part of it."You came back." She said."I told you I would." He said."You told me your odds were marginal." She said. "That is not the same thing."He said nothing.She looked at the Void Serpent on his shoulder. Then at his hands. Then at his face."The Dragon Marrow." She said."Yes."She turned back to the forge. "The elders had a debate while you were gone. Three of them wanted to send scouts to the Ascent to determine if you were alive." She paused. "I told them not to.""Good." He said."I told them that if you weren't alive there was nothing useful a scout could do, and if you were alive you