Kaelen turned the wheel.
"The rest of the map," she said. "Your Seers didn't block chaos. They blocked connection . The Arch isn't a door to danger. It's a door to everywhere else."
And for the first time, Veridia began to walk through .
"Then let's stop living in one room," he said.
The High Council panicked. Reinforcements were ordered. The litany was chanted twice as loud. But Kaelen stopped mid-walk one morning and pressed his ear to the cold iron.
But something changed when the tremors began.
"Don't," whispered a fellow Warden behind him.
Just a garden. Wild, overgrown, beautiful. Vines heavy with golden fruit. A path of white gravel leading to a second arch, smaller, nested within the first. And at its foot, a woman in simple gray robes, holding a lantern with a steady flame.