The Road Is Lit by Petrified People

The road toward I.J. and Nick's farm was not empty. Lantern-bearing stone figures stood along the route, too placed to be natural and too wrong to be ordinary sculpture. Jonah used his stonecunning and understood the difference. These figures had not been quarried, carved, or shaped by a mason. They were natural stone made from living bodies by a medusa petrification effect. That turned the road itself into evidence. Someone or something near the farms could petrify people. Worse, those victims had been turned into infrastructure: lantern-bearers, markers, warnings, or decorations for travelers who might not know enough to be horrified. The threat tied back into Calithea and Xalaethra continuity, suggesting the farm route was part of a larger petrification thread rather than an isolated roadside oddity. Elmyra responded with caution, using Minor Illusion as a decoy walker and safety-squinting against gaze threats. Jonah briefly considered using his petrification ring as a rival-medusa ploy, which was exactly the sort of plan that sounded clever until it became a new problem. The party kept moving. The road had already told them it could keep people forever.