The salt air clung to them long before they even reached the shoreline.
It settled into Ruby's skin, damp and persistent, like something that refused to let go. Each breath tasted of the ocean, sharp, heavy, almost suffocating.
She lifted the map again, her fingers slightly curled at the edges from sweat, her eyes scanning the same markings for what felt like the hundredth time.
Beside her, Max exhaled. Not just a breath but a tired, jagged release that seemed to carry every mile they had walked. The sound dissolved into the steady crash of waves against rock, swallowed whole by the sea.
They had been at this for hours. Maybe longer.
Every mark on that map, every carefully drawn "X" that once sparked hope, had led them nowhere. Just broken coastlines. Jagged rocks. Driftwood bleached pale under the unforgiving sun. Empty spaces where something should have been.
But wasn't. No fish tank. No structure. No sign of Adora's trail.
