Sagiri walked the northwest grass alone while the Safaya-border presence pulled ahead of him like smoke that refused to become a body he could cut.
He had followed that pull since Galka, Archive sealed hard against the urge to reach and name whatever carried the laboratory smell under the dry wind.
Whenever he stretched Living Memory toward it, the presence thinned until ordinary hearing could not prove it had ever been there.
Whenever he let the Archive rest, the trail sharpened again, inviting him another mile across cracked earth that offered no cover worth trusting.
'It fades when I push,' he thought, boots finding the harder patches between grass roots, 'so whoever carries it knows what a Keeper can hear.'
He kept Nokai sheathed because drawing would only teach the bait how close he had come, while the empty country around him watched like a field waiting for the first wrong step.
