The farther south they traveled, the more the land resisted definition. Stone gave way to sand, sand to something like powdered obsidian, each transition too gradual to mark yet impossible to ignore. Heat shimmered close to the ground, but above it the air felt cold, brittle, as though the sky itself had been stretched thin. Mana behaved strangely here, currents folding back on themselves, lines of force knotting and unknotting in slow, uneasy rhythms.
Lindarion felt it constantly now, a low pressure behind his eyes and along his spine, not pain but awareness. The inheritance no longer sat dormant within him; it observed, reacted, adjusted. He could sense distant presences brushing against the edge of his perception, not as individual minds but as vast, abstract impressions, like tides shifting far out at sea. They were not watching him directly, but they were aware that something had changed.
