The twelve Provenance Lifeforms did not run!
Twelve foreign Provenance Lifeforms, standing at the base of a statue of time, had felt four beings appear out of nothing at their backs, and not one of them flinched toward flight. Instead they turned and spread, and came unhurried across the storming ground.
At their front walked a woman with hair the color of old bronze, bound back hard against her skull. Her eyes had held one expression for so long that Noah doubted they remembered any other.
She wore a coat of layered grey that the storms of time slid off without touching, and she moved like a magistrate carrying a sentence already written.
"You newcomers will be smart to leave," she said.
"This Elsedimension, and every Relic in it, has been claimed by THE Vheldrani Provenance Lineage. Claimed across ages. We have paid the toll on this place a hundred times over, in blood and in years, and it is ours by every weaving that binds a thing to a claim."
