By midday of the fifth day—with six dawns leftover on Daro Kesh’s seven-dawn Early Jade echo—the expedition climbed out of the upper granite vent of the eastern service passage. Then he stepped back into the wind-scoured stone basin of the Hollow Summit.
After the cramped, ozone-choked darkness of the underground vault, the high mountain air hit their lungs like cold well water. Bright noon sunlight reflected off the crusted snowbanks ringing the basin, lighting up the twenty-foot black bronze pillar at the center of the stone platform and the seven low stone couches still arranged around its base.
For a heartbeat, as Seyun came up over the frost-cracked rim carrying sixteen-year-old Halin across his right shoulder. Meanwhile, Hall Mistress Soran and Nara Soth flanked the trail with their weapons ready, everyone braced for the sound of Court crossbows or backup wardens.
There were no wardens.
Around the base of the twenty-foot black bronze pillar, seven young substitution testers lay wrapped in heavy sheepskin cloaks on their stone couches. Their chests rising and fell in slow, labored breaths. And kneeling in the trampled snow between the third and fourth couches—with both of his bare, ungloved hands locked around the backup copper shunt levers at the base of the pillar—was Chief Examiner Vaska.
