Nothing they looked at felt clean enough.
Every route had some kind of problem, something that made it too risky or too obvious, and the more they checked, the more it became clear that there wasn't an easy path waiting for them. They were going to have to think around the problem, not through it.
Aurelian's gaze moved slowly across the map, taking in the different regions again, until it stopped on something he hadn't fully considered before.
The Mournveil Nebula.
He had already passed through part of it during the Voidshade Fenrir hunt, and that mattered more than any secondhand report.
He had seen it himself. He had seen at least two systems inside it, and what he found there stayed with him.
There were no clear signs of organized civilization, no inhabited worlds, no steady traffic moving through it.
Just dust, scattered stars, and large stretches of space that felt like they had been ignored for a long time.
That kind of emptiness wasn't common.
