Aria’s POV
The river was louder than I remembered.
Not the warning-loud. Not the Warden-hum loud. Just water moving over stone because that’s what water does. No one was listening for traps in it.
No one was counting seconds between ripples.
We walked left. Toward water.
The path was narrow. Quarry stone gave way to dirt, then grass. Grass. I kept looking down to make sure it was real. Ten years, nothing grew that wasn’t planted by orders or clawed out of cracks. This grew without asking. Like Mara’s mint.
Tav knelt first. Dipped his fingers in the river. Lifted them.
“Cold,” he said. Like that was a discovery.
Like “cold” didn’t mean “incoming patrol”. He cupped water and drank. Then looked up, surprised. “It doesn’t taste like metal.”
Coren opened the blank map on a flat
