The week that followed was defined by the scent of sawdust and the rhythmic scraping of steel against wood. Elian and Silas spent their days at the coastal harbor, working alongside a master shipwright named Harken, a man whose hands were as gnarled as the driftwood he salvaged from the Great Divide.
"You're building a coffin, not a ship, Warden," Harken grunted, spitting into the surf as he inspected the reinforced hull of a sleek, two-masted schooner. "No one sails the Divide. The winds there are tempered by spirits, and the currents... they don't flow toward the shore. They flow toward the center of the world."
Elian didn't look up from the mast he was sanding. "We aren't going to the center, Harken. We’re going to the South."
"The South is a myth," Harken muttered, though he kept ha
