You leave at dawn.

The city gates are busy with morning traffic—merchants, travelers, farmers bringing goods to market. No one pays special attention to your small group. Just three travelers with packs and purpose, heading out on roads that have seen a thousand journeys before.

But as you pass through the gates, you feel it.

The gem.

Its presence has been constant your whole life—a hum in your bones, a warmth at the edge of awareness. But as you cross the threshold, that presence stretches. Thins. Like a thread being pulled taut.

Find them, Seraphine’s voice whispers. Distant now. Fading. Find the relics. And hurry.

Then she’s gone, and you’re outside Eldermoor for the first time in your life.

The world opens before you.

Your ally falls into step beside you. Neve takes the rear, her eyes scanning the road with a soldier’s wariness she didn’t have a week ago.

“How long to reach…?” Neve starts.

“A few days, if the roads are clear,” your ally says. “Longer if they’re not.”

“And if Varek sends his creatures after us?”

You touch your chest, where the gem’s light still burns faintly.

“Then we find out how much I’ve learned.”

The road stretches ahead. The first step of a journey that will take you farther than you ever imagined.

You take it.