The island's presence announced itself at the seventh hour, long before the horizon offered any visual proof of its existence. It bled into the ambient field the way it always did—a heavy, unmistakable pressure that rolled over the open ocean like a physical wall. Through the hyper-tuned senses of the Usurper, Vane felt the shift instantly. It was a sensation akin to sinking into deep water, the dense weight of centuries of meticulously managed mana infrastructure pressing outward against the vast, empty expanse of the sea.
Unlike the eastern continent they had left behind three days ago, which carried the sprawling, patient weight of natural antiquity, the island felt entirely deliberate. It felt like an immense machine that had been built toward a singular, unrelenting purpose and had never, in all its centuries, stopped being built.
