The spring winds sweeping down from the southern cape carried the sharp, salt-kissed fragrance of the open ocean, but they also brought a strange, unfamiliar chill that did not belong to the seasonal shift of the Verdant Reach. High upon the terraced orchards of New Hearth, where the fruit-heavy boughs of pomegranates and figs basked under the unhindered sun, the atmosphere felt subtly altered. It was as though the quiet pulse of the earth had paused to listen to a foreign footstep.
Eve stood at the edge of the lower stone retaining wall, her hazel eyes scanning the winding trade road that meandered up from the Red Sand Delta. As High Navigator, she spent weeks mapping uncharted archipelagos and distant shores, yet nothing in her vast experience had prepared her for the encounter of yeste
