Ten grey dots sat motionless on his HUD, two kilometers back.
The constructs hadn't moved since the Caldera's perimeter. Eloy checked again. Still grey. Still labeled [ALIGNMENT: ANOMALY BEARER — STANDBY]. Still doing nothing.
He walked.
The foothills unfolded south in long, uneven waves. Scrub grass and bare rock and the kind of wind that found every gap in his coat. The golden waypoint thread ran straight through the wireframe terrain toward a destination seven days off, through land nobody had charted. His ankle throbbed on every third step. Functional enough that he could forget about it until the ache sharpened.
[ SURVIVAL MODE — ACTIVE ]
[ DISTANCE TO HERO'S SANCTUM: 7 DAYS ]
[ ROUTE STATUS: NO HISTORICAL DATA ]
No historical data. The Deviation Sense had nothing to compare against. No pre-existing route to optimize, no known shortcut to exploit. Seven days of walking into blank wireframe. A single red pulse in his peripheral vision.
