The rain had been falling for three days straight, turning the streets of Veridian's Fall into rivers of mud and filth that carried the stench of fish guts and rotting seaweed down from the upper terraces to the harbor below, and Mbappe sat in the corner of the Blind Mariner with a cup of ale he had not touched and watched the door with the patience of a man who had learned long ago that waiting was just another form of dying.He had been waiting for two hours. The ale had gone flat. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers that cast more shadow than light, and the few patrons who had braved the storm to drink away their miseries had either stumbled home or passed out at their tables, their faces pressed against the sticky wood, their snores competing with the drumming of rain on the roof. Chico was behind the bar, wiping down the same spot he had been wiping down for the past hour, and he was watching Mbappe with the kind of look that said he wanted to ask questions but knew

The bridge was supposed to be finished by autumn, and Rhys stood at the edge of the construction site with his three-fingered hand wrapped around a clay cup of tea that had gone cold an hour ago and watched his workers haul timber across the scaffolding with the kind of slow, deliberate care that came from men who knew that a single mistake could kill them.He had designed the bridge himself. It spanned the Blackwater Gorge, a deep cut in the northern hills where the river ran fast and cold and the rocks at the bottom were sharp enough to cut a man to ribbons if he fell, and it was the largest project he had ever undertaken, the kind of project that would make his reputation, the kind of project that would allow him to leave the war behind and become something other than a veteran with a bad hand and a worse temper. The bridge was going to connect two provinces that had been isolated for centuries. The bridge was going to bring trade and prosperity and the kind of slow, steady progres

The ship was called the Pale Horizon, and it was the kind of vessel that respectable men did not board unless they had no other choice, a two-masted smuggler's craft that had been refitted for speed rather than comfort, its hull scarred by cannon fire and its sails patched so many times they looked like a quilt made by a blind seamstress. Zevran, the smuggler who owned her, stood at the helm with his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the horizon and the kind of smile that came from a man who had made peace with his choices and did not expect anyone else to understand them.Mbappe stood at the bow, watching the Shattered Coast recede behind them, and he felt the old familiar weight settle into his chest, the weight that came from knowing that he was leaving something behind and might not be coming back. He had left his son in the care of a woman he barely trusted, a neighbor who had agreed to look after the boy for a few months in exchange for coin that Mbappe did not have and had bor

They reached Kaethar on the fourth day, and the city was not what any of them had expected.Theron had described it as a ruin, a place of crumbling temples and overgrown streets, and the team had braced themselves for the kind of decay that came from twenty years of abandonment. But Kaethar was not crumbling. It was waiting. The buildings were still standing, their stone walls intact, their carved facades untouched by the vines and trees that had swallowed the outer districts. The streets were clear, the paving stones swept clean, the fountains still flowing with water that ran crystal clear from some underground source. It looked as though the city had been abandoned only yesterday, as though the people who had lived here had simply walked away and expected to return."That's not possible," Rhys said, standing at the edge of the city with his tools in his hands and his eyes wide with disbelief. "Twenty years. Nothing stays like this for twenty years. The jungle should have reclaimed