Three heartbeats after the parted northern load raced down the mountain’s main bronze stone vein toward the Hollow Summit, the return wave arrived in the Chamber of Permitted Shapes.
Crouching beside Mina behind the corner of the four-foot stone dressing-screen where Halin knelt at the western rim of the chalk circle while wiping the blood from his lower lip with the back of his bare right wrist, Seyun felt Place III beneath his chest bone—the silver curve of Nara Soth’s mark—tighten until his ribs ached.
Yet what came back up the fourteen-mile rock seam from the southern peak was not a mystical telepathic projection inside Seyun’s head. Place III was not a magical speaking-tube. It was a ledger entry of weight, rhythm, and load-bearing deep ring.
Instead, the message traveled through the physical physics of the mountain itself.
Fourteen miles to the south, at the center of the Hollow Summit’s main extraction platform where six silver spikes pinned her spine to the main pillar, the bound Crown-realm fighter Nara Soth had just taken the full, un-stepped hammer blow of the northern bypass rebound across her own ribs. Absorbing the shock into her own Crown frame so it wouldn’t crush the chests of Senn and the five junior testers chained to the backup posts around her.
