The causeway stretched wide and long, offering a rare stretch of calm.
After everything they had endured, the quiet felt almost unnatural.
With the cold ache in Marcus's wrist finally gone and his sigil resting at a steady baseline, the group's rhythm had noticeably changed.
Lysara's readings came faster now, marked by a renewed confidence. It wasn't that her depleted reserves had recovered. Rather, the friction that had once existed between them was gone. She no longer second-guessed her companions, allowing her to focus entirely on the environmental frequencies.
Taryn still moved with restless energy, fingers occasionally brushing across the tools at her belt, but the frantic edge had vanished. She wasn't anxious.
She was ready.
For Kael, the peaceful stretch offered his first real opportunity to examine the strange skill that had revealed itself twice before. He wanted to understand the shadow-weaving when his life wasn't actively in danger.
As he walked, the glowing rift-veins beneath the translucent stone cast long, distorted silhouettes across the path.
Kael focused on his own shadow.
He didn't force the connection. Experience had already taught him that straining only choked his sigil's output. Instead, he reached inward, toward the detached instinct that had answered the Void-Kin Scout.
For several steps, nothing happened.
He remained patient, adjusting his focus until he felt something align.
On the eighth step, the edge of his shadow rippled.
Not a trick of the light.
A genuine distortion.
The outline elongated briefly before snapping back into place.
"Did you see that?" Taryn asked immediately.
"You weren't imagining it," Kael said. "I'm trying to find the trigger."
"The shadow-weave," Lysara said, slowing to watch. "Can you repeat it?"
Kael focused again.
This time the response came sooner.
The ripple appeared after only three steps and held for nearly a second.
On his third attempt, it appeared almost immediately.
A thin strand of darkness peeled away from his silhouette.
It rose into the air like a thread pulled from fabric, hovered for a moment, then sank back into the stone.
Three inches.
Three seconds.
Kael mentally recorded the numbers.
On Floor 1, he'd managed barely an inch before the effect collapsed. This wasn't luck.
It was progress.
"Three inches," he murmured. "The threshold is stabilizing."
"You're tracking it like a case file," Taryn observed, amusement creeping into her voice.
"If it can be learned, it can be measured," Kael replied. "I'd rather know its limits before the next ambush."
"That is an exceptionally detective answer."
The comment lingered in his thoughts.
For the first time, he realized he hadn't consciously thought of himself as a detective in quite a while.
The identity that had defined his first days in the Vault had begun to change.
Not disappear.
Evolve.
"Maybe," Kael said after a moment. "Or maybe survival just requires good records."
Lysara tilted her head but let the matter drop.
The rest of the causeway passed in comfortable silence.
When they finally stepped onto the far side, Lysara stopped abruptly and raised her staff.
The violet glow at its tip narrowed into a brilliant beam that cut through the darkness.
"There."
She pointed ahead.
"The interference is clearing. I can feel the resonance properly now."
Excitement crept into her voice.
"The seam is right in front of us."
Kael followed the beam through the thinning shadows.
A massive arc of pale stone emerged from the darkness.
It dwarfed every causeway they had crossed so far.
The structure curved across the chasm in a sweeping loop that ignored the architecture around it, as though it belonged to an entirely different design.
Its pale masonry stood out sharply against the surrounding black rock.
A scar stitched through the heart of Floor 2.
"That's it," Marcus said, silver eyes fixed on the structure.
"The seam where two were drawn together," Kael said.
His attention sharpened immediately.
Whatever secrets Floor 2 was hiding, they were about to find them.
"Let's see what it's been hiding."