The Kael's Seat entity's conducted pattern faded on the first day.
He had expected it. The sovereign seed's connection to the road network ran through Kael's Seat's substrate, and distance attenuated the signal the way distance attenuated everything. By the end of the first day's travel it had dropped below what the sovereign seed could hold as continuous ambient awareness. He could still feel the chain was connected. He could not hear what the chain was carrying.
What replaced it was different.
Not a conducted pattern. A push. Unstructured, continuous, increasing as the distance to Vael's Crossing decreased. The sovereign seed read it without filtering. By the fourth day, with Vael's Crossing visible on the eastern horizon, the push had become impossible to ignore.
