To say that Isabel stood on the edge of the ruins would be inaccurate, because the ruins never ended.  All of Crumbleport was an amalgamation of ruined, ancient structures, tumbledown but more recent buildings, and brand new construction.  The "ruins" stretched from the coast, well into the jungle, and as Crumbleport shared no borders with other principalities, nobody had ever bothered to define exactly where it ended.  

And yet Isabel stood on the edge of something.  Maybe it wasn't the edge of the ruins, and maybe it wasn't the border of Crumbleport, but it was some imaginary line.  Some line that, it was understood, marked the barrier between safety and uncertainty.  It looked no different from the rest of the town.  There was no line, no sudden dropping or even a sudden increase in foliage.  Nearest anyone could figure, the watchtower stretching out of the trees to her right(held up more by magic than by mortar these days) was the furthest one could walk without being prepared for danger.  

Isabel was as prepared for danger as she could be.  She had practiced a few spells, and the Bottle on her back had just one prepared spell preserved inside of it.  It was a kinetic field, which she could activate at a moment's notice, to protect her from attack, or a structural collapse or something like that.  The rest of the Bottle's cells she left empty, to capture ancient magic for further study.  She also carried a brand new leather bound notebook, held on a chain from her belt, to keep track of anything she needed to notate.  Currently the only words in it were the day's date at the top of the first page.  She wished she could bring a scribe student.  When working at the University, there was an abundance of scribes in training who were perfectly willing to write down anything you said just to practice their calligraphy.  But none were willing to go where she was going.  

Isabel took a final breath of safe air and then stepped forward, eyes scanning wildly around as she did so.  When nothing happened, she took another step, and another.  She smiled, pulled her notebook from her side and wrote:

"Three steps in.  Not dead yet." 

Then she continued walking.