The road north was not built. It was stranded.
For twelve leagues across the central plateau of the Grey Waste, the party rode through an open-air museum of impossible architectures. To their left rose an aqueduct of pink marble fifty feet high. Its dry channel carried a slow, drifting stream of crushed glass instead of water. To their right stood a huge bronze equestrian statue of an emperor who had never lived, wearing a royal crown shaped like an open book, pointing an iron sword toward a city that had never been founded.
Nothing moved except the dust kicked up by the hooves of the two mountain mares.
Ren Vale rode on the left, his hands steady on the leather reins. His thirty-one-year-old stance was low and balanced in the saddle. His knees were tucked into the stirrup leathers to absorb the dull, rhythmic impact of the horse’s gait. Over his shoulders, the three rolls of Precursor Seventh Void Vellum were lashed securely beneath the oilskin tarp, riding alongside the lead-lined pouch of purified chrono-melted rock waste.
Beside him rode Mira.
Her sprigged wool traveling cloak was pulled tight against the freezing mountain draft. Her silver balance-spring hairpin gleamed in the dark hair behind her right ear. Her right arm—smoky, many-sided quartz—rested against the saddle horn. Ever since they crossed the northern ridge, the crystal had been humming a low, steady drone that set the horses’ ears twitching with mild curiosity rather than panic.
