The vibration faded as suddenly as it had begun.
The pillars stilled. The pressure receded, leaving the clearing unnaturally calm, like the breath held after something almost happened.
Kael didn't move.
He waited.
That restraint mattered here. Whatever this place was, it didn't respond well to impulse.
The silence inside him hovered closer now, no longer dormant but not aggressive either. It felt… attentive. As if it recognized the shape of the space and adjusted itself accordingly.
Kael stepped forward again, slower this time.
The ground did not resist him.
That unsettled him more than hostility would have.
He crossed the clearing and stopped at its center. The air there felt heavier, layered, as though several moments existed on top of one another. When he breathed, it felt like the space remembered the act rather than reacted to it.
Kael crouched and pressed his palm flat against the stone.
Images surfaced.
Not memories. Not visions.
Impressions.
Movement without sound. Pressure without force. Figures passing through this place without leaving footprints, their presence bending space just enough to matter. No gates. No rupture.
This place hadn't been breached.
It had been used.
Kael pulled his hand away, pulse steady despite the chill creeping up his arm.
So this was an old route.
Not between places.
Between conditions.
He stood and turned slowly, taking in the broken pillars with new understanding. They weren't anchors. They weren't seals either.
They were limits.
Markers set to keep something contained by defining where it could not go.
Most had failed.
One hadn't.
Kael's gaze settled on a pillar half-buried near the edge of the clearing. Unlike the others, its surface wasn't smooth. It bore deep scoring, long vertical grooves cut deliberately into the stone.
A weapon had done that.
Not recently.
But not ancient enough to be forgotten.
Kael stepped closer and knelt, tracing the edge of one groove with two fingers. The stone responded faintly, not with pressure or resistance, but with alignment. The hum inside his chest shifted subtly, settling into a quieter rhythm.
His silence didn't recoil here.
It fit.
Kael exhaled slowly.
So this was where restraint had once been enforced.
Not through dominance.
Through precision.
He stood and looked back toward the path he'd taken into the clearing. It had already begun to blur, the invisible route dissolving as if it had never existed.
The token in his hand warmed once.
Then cooled.
Message delivered.
Kael closed his fingers around it and slipped it back into his pocket.
He wasn't meant to stay here.
He was meant to remember it.
Whatever weapon he would eventually carry, it wouldn't be about power. It would be about definition. About deciding where force ended instead of how far it reached.
Kael turned away from the pillar and walked out of the clearing without looking back.
Behind him, the space settled again.
Quiet.
But no longer empty.