Blinding alpine sunlight struck Kezra Venn across the eyes as she emerged from the bronze-flashed small roof-dome of the central survey shaft onto the surface of Empty Choir.
After six hours in the damp, rotten-egg dark five hundred paces below, the high mountain air felt astonishingly thin, clean, and cold. The wind swept across the plateau from the north. It carried the dry, pine-scented scent of distant subalpine spruce mixed with the sharp bite of wind-packed snow. She stood on the flagged collar terrace for a minute, her eyes watering beneath her wool cap as she adjusted to the glare, breathing the thin air deep into her lungs until the lingering taste of shaft-gas cleared from her throat.
Across the plateau, two hundred paces to the north, Yseld Arken stood atop the middle bedrock step of the northern rim. She leaned on her hooked climbing staff. She saw Kezra’s dark shape emerge from the small roof-dome. Then, she raised the staff above her head in a single, unrushed arc—the visual signal for All secure on the terrace.
Kezra walked across the level granite flat stone slabs to join her. The two hired Brackenford quarrymen, Bram and Orel, were finishing their morning work along the northern boundary curb. Working with heavy iron pry-bars and stiff birch brooms, they had cleared the entire thousand-pace northern edge of loose scree, frost-spalls, and wind-drifted gravel. They exposed the crisp, ancient chiseled margin cut by the historical survey corps.
