The Ashen Wastes live up to their name.

Gray stretches to the horizon in every direction. Not sand, not soil—ash. Fine and pale, it coats everything, drifts in low dunes, rises in clouds with every step. The sky is hazy, the sun a pale disk that provides light without warmth.

Nothing grows here. Nothing lives. The land itself feels dead.

“Pleasant,” Neve mutters, pulling her scarf over her mouth. “How far to the library?”

Your ally consults the map. “The records say it was three days’ walk from the edge of the green lands. That was before the fire, obviously. Now…” They gesture at the endless gray. “We’re looking for a valley. The library was built into a hillside. If the hill survived the burning, we might be able to find the entrance.”

You walk.

Hours pass. The landscape doesn’t change. Occasionally you pass remnants of what was—a stone foundation, a well that’s now just a hole, the skeleton of a tree frozen mid-collapse. Whatever happened here was thorough.

“What burned this place?” you ask.

“Depends who you ask.” Your ally kicks at the ash, revealing blackened earth beneath. “The official histories say wildfire. A dry summer, a lightning strike, an inferno that consumed the eastern forests.”

“And the unofficial histories?”

“Say Seraphine did it herself. Before she went to help found Eldermoor. The library held too many secrets, things she didn’t want falling into the wrong hands. So she burned everything—the books she couldn’t carry, the forest that had sheltered her, the land itself.”

You think of the woman in your visions. Sad. Wise. Willing to make terrible sacrifices.

“That sounds like her,” you say quietly.

The sun begins to set, painting the gray world in shades of pink and orange. And in the fading light, you see something.

Movement. On a ridge to the north.

Someone is watching you.