Kezra set the brass tip of her metal pen squarely upon the three-sided cairn drawn below the Snow Saddle. She looked up from the table into her brother’s face. The midday light poured through the open slats of the shed. It caught the fine dust suspended in the air.
“Here,” Kezra said, her voice quiet but unbending. “Right at this cairn. Davren, how far along this northern line did your boots actually touch stone?”
Davren didn’t flinch, nor did he look away toward the rafters. The humbling he had received from Adra Pike that morning had cleared the dramatic fog from his mind. That left behind the focused, practical clarity of a man who was done with pretense.
“To that cairn,” Davren answered plainly. “And not one pace beyond it.”
He pulled the charcoal sheet closer, resting his forearms on the pine boards so everyone around the table could see the details of the height profile. His finger tapped the three-sided symbol.
“This cairn sits at seven thousand two hundred feet,” he explained, his tone measured and precise. “It’s an ancient prospector’s marker built from flat slate slabs, about four feet high, standing on a narrow limestone shoulder just below the Snow Saddle. To reach it from Alderfast, you have to follow an old goat trail that climbs out of the northeastern rim, skirting the eastern watchtowers of Stonewake Citadel. I walked every single foot of that goat trail in person during my first autumn in the basin, before the…
