The rain followed them for two days.
Not a storm. Not dramatic. Just a steady, patient fall that softened roads into mud and blurred the distance into gray suggestion. Aurelia didn’t mind. There was something honest about the weather that didn’t try to mean anything.
They walked anyway.
Boots soaked. Cloaks are heavy. Conversation is sparse but comfortable.
At some point, Aurelia realized she no longer measured travel in proximity to events. There was no map in her mind marked with unstable regions or places where tension might ignite. The world had stopped arranging itself around potential crises.
It was simply terrain again.
She found that both freeing and disorienting.
They reached a low settlement built along a shallow rise above marshland. Houses stood on stilts, wood darkened
