The patrols became more frequent after the watchtower.Miko learned to read the land the way other children learned games. Fresh boot prints meant stop and hide. Broken branches at adult height meant circle wide. The faint smell of oiled armor on the wind meant stay low until the smell was gone. He moved mostly at dawn and dusk now, when the light was thin enough to hide small shapes and the patrols preferred clearer visibility.His ankle had gone from swollen to a deep, constant throb that climbed all the way to his knee. He walked with a limp he could not fully hide. Every time the Bond stirred and offered a brief rush of stolen strength, the joint stopped hurting for a few minutes. When the strength faded, the pain returned worse than before. He stopped accepting the offers. The emptiness afterward was starting to feel like falling.Food remained a problem. The bitter roots no longer filled anything. He found a dead bird once and ate it raw because there was no safe way to make a f

They walked together for nine days.It was not friendship at first. It was simply two small shapes moving in the same direction because the alternative was still worse. Miko kept the Bond locked down harder than he ever had. Kitty never asked him to use it. She only adjusted her pace when his limp worsened and handed him the less bitter roots without comment.On the fourth day the rain stopped completely. The rocky hills softened into rolling scrubland again. The air smelled of dry grass instead of iron. Distant columns of smoke still rose to the north, but they were fewer now. Either the fighting had moved on, or there was simply less left to burn.Kitty talked more when the quiet stretched too long.She told him about the clean medical tents she used to watch from a distance in her home city — white canvas, proper beds, healers who did not get chained to primary talents. She told him about a striped cat that used to sleep on the bakery roof and how she had planned to name her first

Hills grew steeper the farther south they traveled.Loose shale slid under every careless step. Dry wind carried fine grit that settled in their hair, their clothes, the corners of their eyes. Miko’s ankle had stopped swelling, but the deep ache remained, forcing him to measure each stride. Kitty matched his pace without comment, though he caught her watching his limp when she thought he was not looking.They spoke less during the hard climbs, saving breath for the work of moving. At rest stops the words returned in smaller pieces.Kitty told him about the first time she had seen a proper healer close a wound without leaving a scar. She described the clean white light, the absence of screaming, the way the patient had simply fallen asleep. Miko listened and filed the image away beside the clean beginning she kept mentioning. He offered little in return, but when she asked if Veyra had healers like that, he shook his head once and she did not press.The Bond stayed mostly quiet around

The heat arrived before the true forges.Even at night the black stone under their hands held a low, sullen warmth. Cracks in the ground released thin ribbons of air that smelled of sulfur and hot metal. The tough shrubs disappeared completely, leaving only bare rock and the occasional patch of pale lichen that crumbled to dust when touched. Miko’s ankle suffered on the uneven surfaces. Kitty walked with one hand near her small knife more often than before.They stopped speaking during the long climbs. Words cost moisture they could not spare. At the short rests they shared the bottle in measured sips and checked each other for new burns from accidental contact with the hotter stones. The Bond disliked the land. It stayed restless, colorless threads flickering toward the deeper heat and then recoiling as if the source tasted wrong.On the second day in the black stone country they saw the first real structure.It stood on a low ridge ahead — a squat building of dark brick and iron pla

They almost made it past the basin.For most of the morning they stayed high on the broken ridges, moving carefully between slabs of black stone that radiated heat like banked coals. The works stayed below and to the left, a permanent low roar of machinery and the heavy red-tinged smoke that never fully cleared. Miko’s ankle had gone completely numb. He walked with a stiff, unnatural gait that forced Kitty to slow every few dozen steps. Neither of them mentioned it.The Bond remained in a state of constant low conflict — recoiling from the industrial residual energy while still straining toward the denser concentrations of talent and life inside the basin. Miko kept it locked down with everything he had left. Blood crusted on his upper lip from repeated small nosebleeds. He had stopped wiping them away.Near midday the ridge they were following dropped into a narrow saddle. On the far side the high ground continued. On the near side a secondary path cut down toward the works — fresher