The Shifting Lands

The salt-laced wind ripped through the rotting boardwalk of Port Karra, and you felt the shift before you saw it—a low, grinding tremor deep in the earth, a landmass sighing as it dragged its belly across the seabed. The cobblestones beneath your boots buckled, and the ramshackle warehouses groaned like dying animals.

You’d been here three days, long enough to map the fault lines in your sleep, and you’d known they’d come. Rourke’s men moved through the crowd with the practiced patience of hunters, their coats too clean, their eyes scanning the docks for a woman who carried the weight of a thousand lost roads in her skull.

A hand clamped your elbow. “Mira Voss sends her regards.” The voice was low, almost apologetic. A needle pricked your neck—the world swam, then steadied.

When your vision cleared, you were no longer on the dock. You were in a marble foyer, the air sterile and cold, and a man in a tailored black suit stood before you, his pale eyes fixed on yours.

“You’re harder to find than the valley itself,” Kaelen Rourke said. “But I found you. That should tell you something about what I’m willing to do.”