Ash drifted across the lowlands in patient spirals, forming pale dunes against the black-veined stone. At every gust the tiny grains hissed along the ground, whispering over weather-shattered pillars and the ribs of ancient walls that lay half-sunken like forgotten fossils. Draven—moving beneath the name Dravis Granger—strode through that muted storm, boots stitching an even cadence across soil that no longer trusted its own solidity.
He did not bother with the brittle parchment map folded in his satchel; the last tremor had rendered its hand-inked ridgelines fantasy. Instead he watched the earth itself. Each time his heel touched down he felt for the shiver hiding beneath the surface layer—three steady pulses, a hush, then a fainter echo that seemed to chase its own tail through the broken substrata. The pattern repeated every twenty-nine seconds, precise as a metronome carved from bone. He filed it under seismic baseline: deviation zero.
