A day after their meeting with Mystica, Galen and Magnus finally set out for the Ruined Lands.
In most high-priority missions like this, standard protocol called for teleportation—clean, fast, and efficient. But those two? Yeah, no. Portals were too borrowed and institutional. They weren't fans of shortcut sorcery that didn't come from their own hands.
Instead, they chose the train.
Not just any creaky hunk of metal, though—this was one of the myst-infused locomotives, crafted under the Kingdom's strict enchantment orders. Powered by condensed myst cores and protected by runes of acceleration, these sleek beasts could bend hours into minutes. Days into a blink.
And cutting over the enchanted tracks of the Stav Lake—an eerie, glassy body of water that stretched between Solara and the Ruined Lands—meant the journey was twice as fast. The rails shimmered across the surface like a silver scar, water lapping at the sides with whispers older than the kingdom itself.
