The wind smelled different now.
It carried ash, yes, but not the choking kind. This ash was soft, settled. The burn had passed. What remained was the silence after something too large to name had moved through the world and left everything standing... but changed.
Reven sat beneath a half-collapsed dome at the edge of the Ember Valley, watching the light shift over scorched hills and regrown roots. He didn't speak. Not yet. He hadn't spoken much since coming back.
Not because he didn't have the words.
Because he didn't trust them anymore.
Kaela crouched a few feet away, sharpening her blade on a flat piece of scrap. She didn't ask him how he felt. Didn't press. She just let the scraping fill the space between them.
Lirien stood above them, wings tucked, eyes scanning the sky.
No Riftlight. No noise. No enemies.
And somehow, that was more unsettling than anything else.
"You still feel it, don't you?" Lirien asked.
Reven didn't look up. "What?"
"That... pull. Like it's just behind your ribs."
He nodded once. "It's not gone. Just... watching."
Kaela sheathed her blade. "We've had worse houseguests."
Reven exhaled slowly, then stood. The shard-harness across his back had dimmed. No longer glowing, but not inert either. It felt like carrying memory now, not power.
"It's been quiet for three days," he said. "That's long enough."
They travelled east.
The Supreme Isles had shifted into lockdown not long after Reven stabilized the Rift. Not in hostility, more like withdrawal. The gates had closed. Steward-9 had gone silent. Whatever secrets were still buried in the sky would have to wait.
So they walked.
Through canyons shaped by ancient war machines.
Across fields where old bones marked the lines of long-dead battles.
They weren't alone anymore.
Scouts watched them. Small groups of Beast-Kin trailing their steps at a distance, some wary, some reverent. In the distance, Reven saw torches burning in places that hadn't seen light in years. Tribes returning to ruins. Survivors re-emerging.
The world was moving again.
But not all of it in the right direction.
On the seventh day, they reached a fortified outpost at the edge of the Iron Crescent ,one of the old fractured regions ruled by remnants of human-engineered factions.
Kaela stopped at the ridge, squinting down at the encampment below.
"Smoke," she said. "Too much for cooking. Not enough for war."
Lirien's eyes narrowed. "Controlled burn. Scorching the ground. Sanitizing it."
"For what?" Reven asked.
They watched as a column of figures moved through the camp. Clad in bone-white armour, faces hidden by featureless visors, they walked in perfect formation. Too perfect.
Reven felt it in his chest before he understood what he was seeing.
Curated Ones.
Not like the twisted mirror-creatures they'd fought above the isles. These were refined. Finished. The same models but perfected.
"They've learned," Lirien whispered.
Kaela's hand drifted to her weapon. "No. They've adapted."
They didn't approach the camp. Not directly.
Instead, Reven led them wide, skirting the cliffs and watching from above as the figures moved in and out of the ruins with machine-like precision.
They weren't destroying anything.
They were cataloguing.
By nightfall, Reven made a decision.
"We need to know who's running them," he said. "They don't move like independent remnants."
Kaela nodded. "Orders. Tactics. Maybe even a chain of command."
Lirien's voice was low. "And that means someone's trying to finish what the Rift started."
Reven looked out across the darkened horizon, eyes fixed on the far side of the valley.
"No," he said.
"They're trying to start something new."