We don’t take the King’s Roads.
Not because they’re dangerous in the obvious way—bandits, beasts, broken bridges. We don’t take them because they’re recorded. Every mile-stone has a witness sigil hammered into it. Every tollgate takes a vow-mark. Every innkeeper asks the same question with the same polite smile—Name and purpose?—and the question itself becomes a contract the moment you answer.
In Valtheris, roads don’t just carry people.
They carry paperwork.
And right now, paperwork is the weapon aimed at Aris Vale’s throat.
The caravan moves through the back seams of the continent instead—old river cuts, salt flats that erase tracks by sunrise, and scrubland where the wind scrapes scent and sound down to nothing. The Waystation Caravan doesn’t hide like criminals.
It relocates like
