The western face of Stonewake Citadel dropped precipitously into the roaring shadows of the lower gorge. There, the mountain torrent boiled over black boulders five hundred paces below.
By two in the afternoon on Day 140, Kezra Venn and her survey party had reached the lower western service gallery. A narrow, rock-cut terrace that had once supported an arched stone-and-timber footbridge connecting the citadel’s lower back gate to the outside mountain trail leading toward the upper mines. To reach the gallery, they had dropped two flights of steep, spiral steps cut into the foundation rock. They passed through cold vaulted storehouses where rows of empty salt barrels and dismounted wagon wheels were stacked behind dry-stone inner walls.
Yseld Arken walked ahead, her hooked climbing staff testing each damp riser. They emerged onto the open gallery walkway. Then, the cold air struck them with the force of an open water gate. Marshal Krail’s tunnel diggers had dismantled the footbridge’s timber roadway two weeks earlier. A crew of quarry stone-cutters had dropped the central stonework arch into the ravine.
To any scout observing the castle from across the gorge with a spyglass, the service bridge was fully gone. A void of eighty paces separated the snapped stone bridge pillar from the mountain path opposite. The grey limestone cliff dropped sheer into the spray, cold, clean, and seemingly vacant.
