The Vale was not a place.
It was a pause.
A breath between stanzas.
A hollow between the mountains of might-be and never-was, where timelines thinned into transparency, and memory wore no names. Stories passed through the Vale like wind through reeds—changing, softening, sometimes dissolving altogether.
Jevan stood at its center.
The Claimed stood beside him.
Neither spoke.
They didn't need to.
Where once the creature had loomed—a tangled knot of gnashing echoes and aborted rage—it now moved with something almost like stillness. A patient ripple of breath, shoulders no longer hunched but bowed in thought. Its form had smoothed, as if Jevan's proximity reshaped the chaos. Not completely, but meaningfully.
They waited.
And the Vale waited with them.
Then came the footfalls.
The crunch of different realities converging.
