At first light on Day 126, the wind on Empty Choir dropped to a faint, whistling draft that barely stirred the wool fringe of Kezra Venn’s scarf. The high alpine sky was clear and pale, glowing with the clean light of an unclouded winter dawn.
Carrying her long fifty-pace measuring cord, her brass water-tube level, and the charcoal rubbings of Nym Correl’s archive plates from the Needlehouse, Kezra walked out to the northern boundary of the plateau. Voss and Yseld accompanied her. She carried target staves and iron sighting pins. Meanwhile, Paxa remained at the west cabin to prepare dry rations and melt snow for the day’s work.
They reached the northern edge. Then, the plateau ended not in a jagged cliff, but in a massive stone-built stairs carved directly into the mountain’s granite spine.
Across the entire thousand-pace span of the northern boundary, the ancient survey corps had chiselled the living bedrock into three huge level steps. - The western third, from pace zero to pace 340, formed a broad terrace at base datum. - At the 340-pace mark, a clean, upright bedrock riser climbed exactly four paces in height. That created a middle bench that extended to pace 680. - At the 680-pace mark, a second upright riser climbed another four paces. It formed an upper eastern terrace eight paces above base datum.
