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"The chemistry is too different," Kael sighed, leaning as close as he dared. He could feel the cold "wrongness" of her region radiating off the rocks. "My father says back in the Old Days, people could walk until their feet gave out. They called it 'traveling.'"

For an hour, they sat in silence—two souls sharing a horizon they could never cross. They were the ultimate neighbors, forever divided by the very earth that gave them life.

Kael reached into his pack and pulled out a sealed glass vial of Delta river water. He placed it on the line. "Don't open it. Just hold the glass. It’s warm. It tastes like the sun hitting the mud." "The chemistry is too different," Kael sighed, leaning

As the sun set, Kael stood up, his joints aching for the humidity of the deep marsh. "Same time next week?"

He had a "Border Friend," Elara. She was a High-Stepper from the peaks. Every Tuesday, they met at , the invisible line where the spongy moss of the Delta met the dry, obsidian shale of the Highlands. They called it 'traveling

"Sounds exhausting," Elara joked, though her eyes were sad. "I just want to know what the water feels like. Up there, it’s all ice and mist."

They sat exactly six inches apart, separated by the shimmer in the air—the . He placed it on the line

Kael was a , built for the humid, oxygen-rich marshes of the River Delta. He spent his days harvesting glowing peat, staring at the jagged violet peaks of the Aether Highlands just five miles away. To him, they were as distant as the moon.