The first day after leaving Stony Creek was surprisingly quiet.
No wolf packs. No hidden dangers. Even the weather held up—pale, filtered sunlight broke through the cloud cover, casting a pale warmth across the rolling land. In the distance, the mountain ranges stood in serene silence, as though the nightmares of the past months had never happened.
Kaelan took the lead. Every so often, he would pause to confirm their bearings, check a water source, or scan the surrounding terrain.
For the first time, the burden of navigation rested entirely on his shoulders. Previously, these decisions fell to Harold. Now, Kaelan had to judge for himself when to rest, when to push forward, and where to make camp before nightfall.
Aether, on the other hand, couldn't stop looking around.
Only after stepping beyond Stony Creek's borders did he realize how vastly the real world differed from his imagination.
They weren't alone on the trail. Occasionally, they passed shepherds driving flocks, lone travelers hauling heavy packs, or elderly folk pushing squeaking wooden carts. Every person was bound for a different destination; every stranger bore a story of their own.
***
Around noon, they ran into a merchant caravan.
Five heavy wagons rolled in a straight line, their draught horses hauling loads of salt sacks, bolts of cloth, and iron implements. A dozen hired guards marched alongside, weapons loosely in hand.
Aether stared, unable to help himself. He had never seen so much wealth in one place.
Kaelan stepped forward to ask for directions. The caravan leader, a middle-aged man with a thick, untamed beard, listened patiently before pointing a calloused finger down the path.
"Keep straight on this track," the man grunted. "Don't wander off into the bypasses. You'll hit the Great Road in a few days."
He turned to rejoin his wagons, but Aether caught up to him. "Are all these goods headed for Whitestone City?"
The caravan leader offered him a brief glance. "Some are. Some aren't. We make stops at plenty of towns along the way."
Aether nodded, taking in the sight. "Where does all the salt come from?"
"The coast."
"And the cloth?"
"The East."
"The ironwork?"
"The northern mining districts."
Aether blinked, stunned. He had never even heard of these places, yet the work of those distant places was passing right before his eyes.
The merchant leader caught the boy's bewildered expression and chuckled softly. "First time away from home?"
Aether gave an honest nod.
The man burst out laughing. "Figures. The world is a whole lot bigger than you boys reckon."
Hearing that, Aether couldn't resist asking, "Have you ever been to Whitestone City?"
"Of course," the leader said. "A dozen times."
"What's it like?"
A few caravan guards overheard and let out a bark of laughter. "That's not an easy question to answer, kid," one guard called out.
"You'll get it once you see the city walls," another added. "The main market alone is bigger than most villages—and it gets noisier by the day."
Aether and Kaelan traded a quick glance. In their minds, Whitestone City suddenly felt both impossibly distant and strikingly real.
***
They walked with the caravan for a stretch, chatting as the miles slipped by.
The merchant crew hailed from all corners of the land. Some spent their entire lives on the roads, returning home only a handful of times a year. Aether listened intently. This way of living was completely foreign to him—the realization that not everyone stayed rooted to a single patch of dirt, that some people spent their whole lives in motion.
As they spoke, one of the guards offhandedly brought up recent rumors. "Things have been restless up north lately. Wolf packs are getting thick."
Another guard immediately shook his head. "I heard it wasn't wolves. It's mountain lions."
A third guard laughed, clapping his colleague's shoulder. "I passed through Red Rock Canyon last month, and the locals there swore it was panicked wild deer destroying their crops."
The guards laughed off the discrepancy, but Aether froze.
The names sounded painfully familiar.
*Wolves. Mountain lions. Wild deer.*
It was the exact same phenomenon they had been hearing about for weeks.
Back in Stony Creek, Aether had believed their situation was a terrifying anomaly—an isolated disaster so dire that the whole world ought to be panicking. Yet these men spoke of the same creeping dread with complete nonchalance, as if they were merely discussing bad weather.
The caravan leader took a bite of dried hardtack and muttered casually, "Strange things pop up every few years. A while back, folk talked about harvests and grain prices. The last few months? All anyone talks about is wild beasts acting up."
He shrugged it off, clearly not viewing it as an apocalyptic catastrophe.
Aether listened in silence, a subtle weight lifting from his chest. Perhaps things weren't as dire as he had feared. Perhaps Stony Creek had simply suffered a run of bad luck, and this strange tide would pass in time.
***
By late afternoon, their paths diverged. The caravan continued northward, while Aether and Kaelan swung onto the southern trail.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, they crested a high ridge.
Kaelan suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. "Look."
Aether followed his gaze and gasped softly.
Stretching through the mountain valley below was a massive, paved highway. It cut through the lowlands, crossed rolling hills, and carved a straight line into the distant horizon.
Even from a mile off, its sheer scale was breathtaking—an engineering marvel completely unlike the dirt paths they had trodden their entire lives.
"Is that... the Great Road?" Aether whispered.
Kaelan nodded. He had never seen it before either, but he knew there could only be one highway like this in the entire realm—the ancient road built by the First Empire.
They stood atop the ridge for a long time, speechless.
In that quiet moment, it struck them both: long before they were born, countless souls had walked this very stone. Merchants, soldiers, pilgrims, wanderers, and those whose names were swallowed by time. They had come, lived, left, and faded into history.
Yet the Great Road remained, silent and unyielding.
***
That night, they made camp a short distance from the highway.
Their campfire crackled softly in the dark. Farther down the road, the faint flicker of other travelers' fires dotted the gloom like fallen stars.
Aether stared into the flames, breaking the silence. "What do you think Harold felt the first time he saw that road?"
Kaelan remained quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting toward the dark highway stretching into the night. "Probably the same thing we did."
Aether smiled faintly and fell silent.
The firelight flickered against the dark. The Great Road stretched endlessly into the invisible distance, and their journey had only just begun.