The road to the Capital was no longer a road; it was a battlefield.
The sky had torn. Great jagged rifts of violet light hung over the landscape, and where they touched the earth, the ground vomited up the past. Kael stood on a ridge, looking down at a valley where a jade pagoda had surged from the soil like a growing tooth.
Men in silk robes—cultivators of the modern sects—were slaughtering each other at the entrance.
"Scavengers," Kael said, his eyes cold.
"They're racing for 'Gifts,'" the Crow sneered. "A broken sword here, a half-burnt scroll there. They think they're becoming Gods. They're just looting a graveyard."
Kael watched a Stage 4 "Master" get crushed by a sudden gravity spike near the pagoda's door. The man's spiritual "Flow" snapped like glass under the sudden return of First Era pressure.
Kael walked down the ridge. He didn't run toward the jade. He walked toward a small, nondescript stone pillar half-buried in the mud nearby.
"Why that?" the Crow asked.
"The foundation," Kael murmured. He touched the stone. The Ark-Wood necklace hummed. He wasn't looking for a weapon. He was looking for the Architecture. He felt the way the stone was braced against the earth.
He didn't take a scroll. He memorized the structural stress.
"They race for the fruit," Kael said, turning back toward the Capital. "I'll take the roots."