Chapter 571: The Dreslic Shallows

Nyx had ruled out the Shallows months ago.

Back then, they had been searching for any viable path into a Dark World. The Shallows had looked unreliable, distant, and too dependent on a narrow tidal window to justify the risk.

Now it was the only door left that made sense.

"Nine days," Valerica said, reading from a page of old notes by lamplight. "That was my original estimate for the stable period."

She turned the page.

"It still holds."

Isole looked up.

"You kept the notes?"

Valerica gave her a look.

"I keep everything."

A pause.

"You know this."

Nyx smiled faintly from across the fire.

"She does."

Valerica returned to the page.

"We finally have a reason to build around the window instead of treating it as a reason to avoid the place."

They reached the coast the following afternoon.

At first, there was nothing remarkable about it.

Grey water.

Grey sky.

A long shoreline scattered with dark rock.

The sea stretched toward the horizon with the same endless indifference Vane had seen on a hundred coastlines in the Blessed World.

If Nyx hadn’t already told them something was here, he wouldn’t have guessed.

They walked for nearly an hour.

Then Valerica stopped.

"There."

She pointed toward the sea.

A quarter mile offshore, the tide had withdrawn farther than it had anywhere else along the coast, exposing a broad shelf of smooth stone.

Half-buried in silt stood several weathered pillars.

Not ruins.

Not naturally formed rock.

Standing stones.

Old enough that the sea had worn their edges smooth.

Vane looked at them.

"How long have those been there?"

Valerica shook her head.

"Long enough."

Nyx’s eyes narrowed.

"The frequency is stronger there."

"That’s the crossing?"

"Not yet."

She looked toward the water.

"Close."

They camped above the shoreline.

Valerica refused to trust the first estimate.

That meant three days of watching the water.

She marked the tide’s retreat.

Recorded the height.

Measured the exposed rock.

Tracked how quickly the water returned.

Then did it again.

And again.

By the second evening, she had already filled several pages.

"It isn’t behaving like a clean tide."

Vane looked over.

"You sound offended."

"I am."

She pointed toward the sea.

"Water is supposed to be predictable."

Nyx sat beside her.

"That’s adorable."

Valerica ignored her.

"The retreat varies even when the weather doesn’t. The timing shifts by several minutes between cycles."

"How much?"

"Enough to matter."

She looked toward the stones.

"I can’t explain it through ordinary tidal movement."

Nyx closed her eyes.

For several seconds, she listened to something beyond the water.

"The crossing is pulling on it."

Valerica looked up.

"What?"

"The threshold."

Nyx opened her eyes.

"Faintly."

She gestured toward the exposed rocks.

"Same effect we’ve seen around every unstable boundary. The world around it gets dragged slightly out of alignment."

Valerica considered that.

"So the tide isn’t the only variable."

"No."

"Two forces."

"Competing over the same coastline."

Valerica looked back toward her notes.

"That explains the drift."

She immediately started recalculating.

Mara watched for a while.

Then quietly opened her own ledger.

She began a separate count.

Vane glanced at her.

"Cross-checking?"

"Of course."

Valerica looked over.

"Against what?"

"My measurements."

"You’ve been measuring too?"

Mara shrugged.

"I was here."

That was apparently sufficient.

The two of them compared numbers throughout the following day.

Valerica’s tide observations.

Mara’s independent timing.

Two sets of measurements.

Different methods.

The same answer.

Eventually, Valerica closed her notes.

"I need one more day."

Ashe looked at her.

"We’ve already waited three."

"I know."

"The first window will pass."

"Yes."

Valerica looked directly at her.

"I’d rather miss one window knowing we’re right than enter the water with a guess."

Her eyes shifted toward the sea.

"We get this wrong, there isn’t a second attempt five minutes later."

Nobody argued.

She was right.

The fourth day brought the answer.

Forty minutes.

That was the actual crossing window.

Not nine days.

The nine-day period was simply the span in which the threshold could form at all.

Inside that period, the safe path appeared only twice.

Each time, for forty minutes.

The first had already passed while they were still confirming the numbers.

Valerica did not apologize.

She simply marked the second.

"Two days."

Ashe looked toward the water.

"Dawn?"

"Dawn."

"And the second opening?"

"That’s the one we use."

Valerica closed the notebook.

"The timing is narrow."

Nyx smiled.

"That’s why you like it."

"I don’t like it."

"You’ve spent four days proving exactly how narrow it is."

"That isn’t the same thing."

"It is with you."

Valerica gave her a tired look.

Vane almost laughed.

The next two days became preparation.

Isole checked every supply twice.

A crossing over dry stone was one thing.

A crossing through a shifting shoreline was another.

She packed water separately.

Wrapped anything that couldn’t tolerate immersion.

Calculated how long each of them could move without stopping once the path became unstable.

"If anyone gets hurt on the other side," she said, "we may not have a safe place to stop."

Ashe trained on the exposed shelf.

Wet stone.

Uneven footing.

Sharp edges.

She adjusted her stance until the new ground stopped feeling unfamiliar.

Every few minutes she deliberately relaxed her shoulders and reset her balance.

Vane understood why.

Kest had taught her not to let unfamiliar footing choose her reactions.

Vane spent most of his time watching the water.

He tried to read it.

Not with the Usurper.

With his eyes.

The currents.

The exposed stone.

The strange way the water sometimes seemed to hesitate before advancing again.

He had learned enough by now to distrust the first answer his instincts offered.

So he watched.

Mara recalculated supplies.

Again.

Then again.

Six people.

An unknown world beyond the crossing.

Unknown duration.

Unknown conditions.

She built contingencies for all of them.

Nyx spent the evenings listening toward the stones.

"It gets clearer," she said on the second night.

"How much?"

"Enough that I can tell when we’re close to the center."

"Anything else?"

She shook her head.

"Not yet."

Vane nodded.

That was enough.

The second window arrived at dawn.

The sea had withdrawn.

Exactly as Valerica predicted.

The exposed rock stretched toward the standing stones, glistening beneath the early light.

Water still flowed between the deeper channels, but the main path was clear.

Vane stepped forward.

The stones ahead looked different now.

Closer.

Older.

As though they had been waiting beneath the tide specifically for this morning.

Valerica checked the light.

Then her notes.

Then the position of the nearest stone.

She looked at the others.

"Forty minutes."

No one moved.

She checked again.

"Starting now."

They stepped onto the exposed shelf together.

Vane felt cold water around his boots.

The stone held.

One step.

Then another.

Ashe moved beside him.

Valerica led.

Mara counted quietly.

Isole watched everyone.

Nyx kept her eyes on the standing stones.

The tide remained still enough.

The path remained intact.

For the first time, Vane could see the shape of the threshold itself.

Not a door in the way he had imagined.

Something subtler.

A distortion between stones.

A depth where there shouldn’t have been one.

The air ahead looked thin.

Wrong.

Waiting.

Nyx stopped.

"There."

They all saw it.

The space between two standing stones bent inward.

The water beneath it reflected a sky that wasn’t theirs.

Vane stared.

Valerica checked the time.

Thirty-seven minutes remained.

"Move."

They did.

Six people walked into the receding sea.

Toward a threshold that had taken four days of measurement to understand.

Toward another Dark World.

And for once, the timing was not a matter of luck.

They had earned it.