They left the mountain behind two days later, the peaks shrinking slowly into a grey line upon the horizon until even Nym, who had spent the better part of the walk glancing back at them, at last stopped looking.
The road widened as it descended toward lower ground, packed earth giving way to old stone laid down by hands long since turned to dust, worn smooth at its center by generations of cart wheels and boots before theirs. Ray called a halt at midday, not for rest, but because a signpost had appeared at the fork ahead — weathered, half-swallowed by ivy, yet legible still to anyone who troubled themselves to look closely.
FEN ALDRIC — TWO DAYS' JOURNEY
"Never heard of it," Finn said, squinting up at the sign like it might rearrange itself into something familiar if he stared hard enough.
"You wouldn't have," Corvin said. "It's a river town. Small. Quiet. Not the sort of place that draws travelers."
Ray, who'd been studying a map spread across his knee without much comment, spoke at last. "There's a reason I meant to stop here."
He turned the map so the others could see it, one finger resting on a faint mark beside the town's name — not part of the original ink, but added later, in a different hand, so small Zelene had to lean close to read it at all.
What Fen Aldric forgets, it forgets on purpose.
"That's not exactly a comfort," Finn said.
"It's a place people go to disappear," Corvin said slowly, reading it a second time. "Or to make something else disappear. That's not idle folklore. That's a fairly plain description of what Umbral is said to be capable of."
Zelene felt something settle cold in her chest — not the pull Corvin and Nym had each described on meeting one another, nothing so strange as that. Only the ordinary weight of understanding what kind of person might choose to hide in a town built on forgetting.
"You think Umbral's there," she said.
"I think it's the first real thread we've had," Ray said. "A trader in Ember Village sold me this map with the note already on it. Said he'd carried it through three towns before deciding it wasn't worth the weight in his pack. Didn't understand what he meant until I saw where the road was taking us."
Nym had gone quiet, frowning at the note in the slow, careful way he frowned at most things now — as though every thought had to be turned over twice before he trusted himself to say it aloud.
"Hiding," he said finally, the word coming out a little rough, like it had cost him something to find it. "Someone who — who has hidden a long time. On purpose. In a place that helps others forget." He paused, searching for the rest. "Hard to find. Unless they want it."
"Then we'll have to give them a reason to want it," Zelene said.
"When has anything on this road ever been simple," Ray said, folding the map along its creases and rising.
Finn groaned, hauling his pack back onto his shoulders. "I liked the last two days, is all I'm saying. Nobody tried sealin' anybody in stone. Couldn't we get a few more of those before the next sad story shows up?"
"I don't think that's how this works, Finn," Zelene said, though she couldn't quite keep the smile off her face.
"Ought to be, though. I'm puttin' in a complaint."
"With whom," Corvin asked, dry. "The road?"
"With fate, mate. Somebody's writing this and it isn't me."
They set off once more down the widening road, the mountain gone at last behind them, Fen Aldric waiting two days ahead — a town built on forgetting, and somewhere within its walls, if the note could be trusted, someone who'd spent years making sure no one, not even the mountain, could ever find them.
---
The town gate was smaller than Zelene expected — a simple stone arch, no guards posted at it, no toll collected, just a worn wooden sign swinging gently on its hinge that read *FEN ALDRIC WELCOMES YOU*, the paint faded enough that the letters had gone nearly the color of the wood beneath them.
"Not exactly a fortress," Finn observed, craning his neck to take in the rooftops beyond — modest, close-packed, smoke rising thin and orderly from a dozen chimneys, a mill wheel turning slow along the river's edge.
"It doesn't need to be one," Ray said.
They passed under the arch without incident, and for a while the five of them walked together, taking in the narrow cobbled streets, the small shopfronts, the townsfolk who glanced at them with the mild, unbothered curiosity any small town reserves for strangers — nothing like the wariness Zelene had half braced herself for.
It was Ray who finally called the stop, in the shade of what looked to be the town's central well.
"We shouldn't go about this as five strangers all at once," he said. "Draws eyes. Especially in a place like this, where drawing eyes might mean drawing the wrong kind."
"So we split up?" Corvin said, already following the logic.
"Two groups. Maybe three." Ray glanced around the square, considering. "Finn, take Nym. See what the market knows — you're good at getting people talking without them noticing."
Finn brightened considerably at being handed a job that mostly amounted to talking to strangers, which was, by his own frequent admission, his favorite activity in the world.
Nym looked less certain. "I don't know that I'm suited to that sort of thing," he said carefully. "I haven't much practice, talking to people I don't already—" He paused, searching for the word. "Trust."
"You'll be fine," Finn said, clapping him on the shoulder with more confidence than the statement probably deserved. "I talk enough for two people anyway. You just have to stand there and look mysterious. You're very good at that part already."
Something like a smile tugged at the corner of Nym's mouth despite himself.
They agreed to meet back at the well before the evening bells, and Finn and Nym peeled off toward the market stalls, Finn already chattering about which vendor looked most likely to gossip.
Ray caught Corvin's sleeve before he could follow Zelene toward the quieter lane she'd already started down.
"A word," Ray said, low enough that it wouldn't carry.
Corvin paused, and Ray leaned in slightly, his voice dropping further still — not unkind, but with the particular flatness he reserved for things he meant to be taken seriously the first time.
"Call her Lynn while we're in town," he said. "You know why."
"I know why," Corvin said quietly.
"Then don't forget it because you're distracted by something else." Ray's eyes flicked, briefly, toward the lane Zelene had disappeared down, then back to Corvin. "And don't let her out of your sight. Not for a moment. Not to haggle, not to wander, not because something looks harmless enough to leave her alone for."
"I wasn't planning to."
"I know you weren't," Ray said. "I'm saying it anyway. I trust you to keep her safe."
Something passed over Corvin's face at that — surprise, maybe, at the rare, unguarded weight of it, coming from Ray of all people.
"I understand," he said. "I won't let anything happen to her."
Ray held his gaze a moment longer, as if measuring the promise for its worth, then gave a short nod and let go of his sleeve.
"Yeah, then," he said. "I'll be watching the square."
Corvin didn't ask what that meant exactly — he'd learned by now that Ray's version of watching covered considerably more ground than the word usually implied — and turned to catch up with Zelene, who'd paused at the mouth of the lane, glancing back at him with faint curiosity.
"Everything all right?" she asked.
"Ray had a few words," Corvin said. "Nothing you need to worry over. Lynn."
She caught the deliberate use of the name immediately, and something eased faintly in her expression — the small, practiced relief of a person reminded that someone else was keeping careful watch over the details she couldn't always watch herself.
"Lynn it is," she said. "Lead the way, then. To this healers' guild of yours."
They set off together down the quieter lane, the noise of the market fading slowly behind them, neither one aware yet of exactly who — or what — waited a few streets further along their path.