The barrens rolled on, an endless expanse of salt-scabbed earth and scattered, brittle stone. The rising heat shimmered off the flats in uneasy waves, turning distant shapes into ghostly, shifting mirages. The sun hung high now, a dull, pale disc that bleached the world in shades of bone.

  The Vermillion Troupe moved in grim silence.

  ProlixalParagon rode ahead on foot, his sharp Fennician eyes fixed on the ground, the dagger at his hip a steady, familiar weight. The marbled black whorls in his silver fur shimmered faintly in the heavy light. Each step sent a puff of dust and salt up around his boots.

  The earth here had changed.

  It had been dry, cracked hardpan for leagues, but now the land slumped in shallow depressions — pitted, brittle, scattered with old brine pits disguised by a crust of pale earth. The ground crumbled in places beneath careless feet. A place where the wrong path could swallow a wheel, snap an axle, or drag a wagon down into brine-slick mud with no bottom.

  Kaelthari moved alongside, her heavy bardiche slung across her back. The chains and charms draped between her markhor horns rattled softly as she crouched to test a patch of ground, then gave a sharp, satisfied grunt.

  “Rotten under there,” she muttered. “Veer left.”

  “Mark it,” ProlixalParagon called.

  A goblin runner darted forward and dropped a small cairn of white stone at the spot, a Troupe warning mark.

  They pressed on.

  Ahead, the salt bridges rose into view — pale arcs of weathered stone and mortar, remnants of old Soohan trade roads, stretching in a jagged line across the wasteland. Parts of them had crumbled, leaving breaks and narrow spans barely wide enough for a wagon. In other places, the raised causeways dipped low, dangerously close to the salt flats below.

  ProlixalParagon’s fur bristled.

  “We get the wagons across one at a time,” he told Lyra as she approached. “No clustering. If the stone’s bad, it’ll drop us into brine holes.”

  Lyra nodded. “We’ll do it right.”

  Marx clambered down from his vardo’s bench, his mana leg hissing softly. “The approaches are worse than the bridge itself. Pitted ground everywhere. We need to rig guide stones. Keep the wheels on the hardpack.”

  ProlixalParagon agreed. He could already see it — shallow sink points, old quarry breaks beneath a crust of salt-dust. A wheel caught wrong here would snap a spoke or worse.

  He knelt and traced a quick glyph in the dirt with his dagger’s point — a Troupe trail sign for unstable ground — then waved a cluster of goblin scouts forward.

  “Check ahead. Slow. Tap every patch.”

  The scouts scattered, moving with the quick, sure-footed grace of those raised on shifting sand and treacherous ground. Spears and staves probed the earth ahead of each step.

  The Troupe slowed to a crawl.

  Vardos creaked. Oxen groaned. Creaking axles and the dry rasp of wagon wheels dragging through dust and salt filled the air. Fennicians and goblins worked in tense silence, moving as if under the weight of something they couldn’t name.

  ProlixalParagon’s pulse beat hard behind his ears. The road ahead was narrowing.

  They were committed now. The barrens wouldn’t let them turn back.

  The bridges waited.

  And whatever lay on the far side.

  The salt bridges loomed ahead like the bleached bones of some ancient, dead serpent — pale arcs of stone stretched over cracked brine flats, their surfaces sun-bleached and crumbling at the edges. Some spans were broken, reduced to jagged causeways barely wide enough for a wagon’s wheels. Others rose higher, the mortar faded and marked by old war glyphs worn to near-nothing.

  ProlixalParagon stood at the lead, his sharp eyes fixed on the faded stone ahead. His silver fur clung damp with sweat beneath his coat, the marbled black swirls along his limbs shimmering faintly in the glare. The wind here was dry and sharp, carrying the faint scent of old brine and brittle stone.

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  Kaelthari approached, bardiche slung across her back, her mulberry scales dust-caked. The small chains and charms between her markhor horns tinkled softly in the wind.

  “No good road here,” she murmured. “But it’ll hold.”

  “It better,” ProlixalParagon muttered.

  One by one, the Troupe’s vardos edged onto the first bridge.

  The ancient stone groaned beneath the oxen’s weight. Loose dust trickled down through the cracks between stones. Salt scabs and brittle mortar crumbled beneath wagon wheels. The creak of axles and the steady plod of hooves filled the air, broken only by the quiet hiss of Ralyria’s mana core and the low murmurs of wary goblins and Fennicians alike.

  ProlixalParagon paced alongside the lead wagon, eyes flicking constantly from the worn causeway to the salt flats below. Brine pits shimmered in the distance, dark holes half-disguised by a crust of pale earth. The wrong collapse here would mean losing a wagon — or worse.

  The Troupe moved slowly, careful and measured.

  One wagon at a time.

  A loose stone clattered from beneath a rear wheel, bouncing off the bridge’s edge and vanishing into the salt mist below.

  Marx grunted. “Keep them steady!”

  The oxen groaned but kept moving, muscles rippling under salt-dusted hides.

  It took the better part of the morning to cross the bridges, the entire length a nerve-straining crawl. At every step, ProlixalParagon expected the ancient stone to give, to hear the sharp crack of failure.

  But the bridges held.

  One after another, the vardos reached the far side — battered, dust-choked, and whole. The barrens stretched ahead, wide and shimmering under the noon sun. In the far distance, the faint shimmer of the coast could be seen — a long, jagged line where pale earth met the open waters of the Ashline Sea.

  Kaelthari let out a long, rumbling sigh.

  Ralyria’s voice was soft. “We crossed clean.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s over,” ProlixalParagon muttered, though his grip on his dagger eased.

  Lyra appeared beside him, silver fur streaked with dust, her staff held steady in one hand.

  “You led them across,” she said quietly. “Good work, boy.”

  ProlixalParagon let himself meet her gaze for a moment, then nodded.

  The Troupe did not stop. The salt flats remained dangerous ground, and no one trusted the barrens to grant mercy twice. The wagons creaked on, following the distant glimmer of the coastline.

  Another day’s march. Maybe two.

  But the coast was closer now.

  And for the first time in days, the wind no longer smelled of the Hollow.

  The salt flats stretched thin beneath the wagon wheels.

  For days, the barrens had been an endless wash of pale earth and brittle stone, the sun a hammer overhead, and the salt wind thick with brine and old dust. Every step forward felt like a small rebellion against a land that wanted nothing more than to swallow them whole.

  But now — now the world was changing.

  ProlixalParagon noticed it first. A sharp, sour tang in the air. A subtle give in the soil beneath his boots, no longer so brittle. Cracked salt gave way to dry earth. Pale grasses clung stubbornly to the hardpan, first in scattered tufts, then in creeping, uneven patches.

  By late afternoon, the landscape around them had begun to bleed green.

  The wind shifted, bringing the faint scent of dry leaves and loamy soil. In the distance, the barrens gave way to low hills, their slopes dotted with twisted, stubborn trees with gray-brown bark and sharp, narrow leaves that clung to the heat like old survivors.

  The Troupe’s pace quickened.

  Kaelthari raised her snout to the air, the charms on her horns chiming. “Better ground ahead,” she murmured, voice low and thick with wary hope.

  ProlixalParagon nodded. “The edge of the barrens.”

  Marx grunted from his wagon seat, his olive-tanned face streaked with sweat and dust. “It’s about damn time.”

  By evening, the Troupe passed beneath the first true canopy they’d seen in weeks. The trees here grew close in uneven copses, gnarled and sharp-limbed, but their roots bit deep into soil darkened by the memory of ancient rain. Dry grasses swayed in the wind between the trunks. The undergrowth was sparse but alive.

  No salt crust here.

  No brine stink.

  It was not safety — not yet — but it was a threshold. A place where the Hollow’s reach no longer clawed at their backs, and the land breathed again.

  Lyra called a halt as the sun slipped behind the hills, the sky bleeding rust and violet. The wagons drew into a loose circle, the oxen stamping and snorting with restless relief as they tasted green in the grass.

  “No fires,” Lyra ordered. “Not yet.”

  The air was thick with sound now — the chirr of insects, the dry rustle of leaves. ProlixalParagon’s ears twitched at every call.

  He felt the shift in his bones.

  The barrens didn’t give anything freely. If this land let them pass, it was because something else hadn’t claimed it yet.

  As the Troupe set to making camp, ProlixalParagon left the circle of wagons and padded through the thinning light beneath the trees, dagger in hand. A low, dry wind stirred the branches overhead, carrying scents he hadn’t known he missed — loam, leaf mold, old wood.

  He knelt beside a half-cracked log, brushing aside dry leaves. New growth. Green shoots. Insects.

  Life.

  A faint system prompt flickered in his vision.

  >Zone Transition: Desert Barrens → Edgewood Fringe<

  >Environmental Effect: Residual Mana Saturation (Low)<

  He rose slowly, a grin tugging at the corner of his muzzle.

  The barrens were behind them.

  And whatever waited in this new land — it would find the Vermillion Troupe still breathing.