The map was wrong again.
Kaal stared at the clearing in front of them, then down at the parchment spread across his knees.
The land ahead was supposed to dip into a shallow ravine. Instead, it rose, jagged, uneven, full of thornbrush and scattered stone that looked more like discarded teeth than terrain.
"This should be a descent," he said flatly.
Lyra leaned against a boulder, arms crossed, eyes scanning the ridgeline. "That's what you said two valleys ago."
"It matched the elevation markers."
"And yet," she said, kicking at the rocky slope, "we're not where your ink thinks we are."
Kaal folded the map, slower this time. His fingers hesitated just slightly. "It worked through the foothills."
Lyra's voice softened, but not much. "That was familiar ground. These mountains obviously play by different rules."
He didn't respond.
She pushed off the boulder and walked a slow circle around the clearing. No paths. No footprints. No old trail markers. The silence stretched taut.
"We've been following bad directions," she said.
"I've cross-referenced three journals. These aren't ancient scribbles, they were used during the last Awakening."
"Well then," she said sourly, "maybe the mountains decided they didn't like being mapped."
Kaal looked back at the ridge ahead. He didn't know how to explain it, but something in him was pulling in that direction.
A steady hum beneath thought. Not logic. Just certainty.
He hadn't told Lyra about the dreams.
Not the one from two nights ago, where he'd stood beneath an arch of stones that pulsed with light, or last night, where the path curved around a tree with silver bark and spiral-shaped roots.
He hadn't even told her that he knew, before they turned off the last marked trail, that the map would fail again.
Because even he didn't understand it or maybe he did but he didn't want to believe it.
But every time they followed the map now, it twisted them in loops. Every time he trusted that quiet tug behind his ribs, they found something, a landmark, a trail, something that felt true.
"We need to go north," he said suddenly.
Lyra turned to him. "Why?"
He paused. "Instinct."
Her eyes narrowed. "That a scholar's term for guessing?"
Kaal offered a tight smile. "Let's call it educated intuition."
She studied him a second longer than was comfortable.
Then she shrugged. "Fine. North it is. But if your 'intuition' walks us into another dead end, I'm confiscating the maps and letting a bird decide."
"There are no birds."
"I'll find one."
They moved slowly.
The trail, if it could be called that led them through uneven ridges, thick with bramble and broken tree limbs. Lyra took lead, dagger in hand, carving a narrow way forward. Kaal followed, clutching his journal like it might still matter.
He hated how right it felt. This blind guidance. These unmarked turns that pulled him like a compass buried in his ribs.
He should've needed proof, coordinates, journals, charts. But now? He just... followed. And that terrified him more than getting lost.
The landscape grew stranger as the sun crept overhead.
The trees here leaned unnaturally, some bent toward each other like whispering sentinels, others twisted into spirals that mirrored the markings they'd seen on old stones.
The wind didn't blow steadily. It came in waves, short, sharp gusts that always seemed to push them forward, never back.
Lyra slowed as they reached a flat shelf of stone. She crouched low, brushing leaves aside.
"Footprints," she murmured.
Kaal stepped closer. "From who?"
"Only one set. Deep."
He knelt beside her, studying the impressions. "They're recent."
"Too recent," she said. "Someone's ahead of us."
They exchanged a look.
"Another seeker of Eternity?" Kaal offered.
Lyra didn't answer.
They camped beneath a natural stone overhang that night. No fire again
Kaal sat hunched, his arms wrapped around his knees. The dreams tugged at the edges of his mind, even awake, flashes of that tree with silver bark, stone archways half-sunk in fog, whispers just on the edge of sense. He felt like he was walking toward something he'd already seen. Or remembered.
Lyra sat sharpening her daggers a few paces away, her eyes flicking up to him now and then. Watching.
"You're quiet," she said at last.
"I'm tired," he replied.
"From walking or thinking?"
"Both."
He wasn't lying.
Just not telling the whole truth.
Lyra nodded to the folded map beside his pack. "You're still carrying it."
"It's still useful. Parts of it might match up again."
"Or mislead us worse," she muttered, returning to her blade.
Kaal didn't argue.
But something twisted in his chest.
He trusted the Queen. He trusted the expedition notes. These journals were compiled by royal scholars who'd traced the old paths and drawn from oral records of past pilgrims. If they were wrong… what else was?
He shook the thought away.
No. The Queen had sent him here for healing. For hope. This wasn't sabotage. Just the weight of years, and the mountain's will.
Still…
Why did the paths in his dreams feel more real and accurate than this.
They woke early.
Without discussion, they turned north again, Kaal leading this time.
Not far into the day, they crested a narrow rise and found a ruin near a ridge, a half-buried stairway descending into the rock.
The entrance was ringed with small spirals chiseled deep into the stone. Some were filled with moss. Others shone in faint silver where sunlight hit them.
Kaal's stomach flipped.
He'd seen this.
In sleep.
Not exactly. Not whole.
But close enough.
He felt Lyra's eyes on him as he stared at the stairway.
"You've seen this before," she said softly.
He blinked. "No. It just looks like the kind of place we're meant to find."
She didn't call him a liar.
But she didn't believe him, either.
Not fully.
Still, she drew a dagger and stepped to his side. "Then let's see what your instincts have gotten us into."
Together, they stepped into the ruin.
And behind them, in the trees, something turned away.