Dawn on the rim was clear and cool. Coren, with Sela’s help, finished a working chart of the route the old removal order had tried to strike from every record. The path ran south-east through high, arid country that modern maps labeled only as uninhabited range. At its far end the chart showed a second, smaller basin marked with the same dark glyph that had once sat at the heart of the Place That Was Removed.
“That is where the original wound was anchored,” Coren said. “We excised the surrounding land and the research station so that nothing living would wander into it. The wound itself was left in place under the deepest seal the builders could devise. If the network’s waking has reached it, the seal will not hold another season.”
Kael peered at the mark. “So we walk into the thing that
