Ash drifted over the plateau in whisper-thin veils, spiraling in downdrafts before settling on boot leather and the matte plates of dented breast-armor. It coated every surface with a colorless sheen, turning steel, stone, and skin alike into a single shade of weary gray. Stormlight no longer flickered on the horizon, yet the air still pulsed with the metallic tang of spent lightning, as though the sky itself nursed bruises no one could see.
Draven walked through the haze with the unhurried precision of a surveyor taking measurements invisible to anyone else. His coat—salt-stiff, black, frayed along one hem where acid mist had nipped at the fabric—ghosted behind him, swirling fresh eddies in the ash. Every four steps he paused, felt for the faint vibration underfoot, revised the mental map he carried of the plateau's fractured understructure. The residual tremors were weaker now, but each one told him how close the stone was to another collapse. He filed the timing in silence.
