The fog smelled of curdled iron and wet wool.
It clung to the jagged black shale of the northern ridge. It rolled down the mountain pass in thick, choking billows that muffled the heavy clanking stride of their iron-strider beasts.
Lin Ke leaned forward in the saddle, his burned right hand wrapped tight in coarse linen bandages. The damp mountain air bit into the raw blisters. It sent sharp, rhythmic pulses of throbbing pain straight up his forearm nerve.
Beside him, Shen Yue sat straight on her mount, her fingers twitching in a quiet, asynchronous rhythm across the wooden surface of her magic charm satchel.
Two independent spiritual threads spun inside her glabella, humming with low-level background threads. One kept an outer edge dampening rune. The other parsed sky humidity readings.
“The air pressure is dropping three millibars every hundred paces,” Shen Yue whispered, her voice crisp and low behind her dark silk veil. “Heat emissions ahead are flat. No campfires. No forge exhaust.”
“Outpost Nine had eighty men and two Foundation Establishment sub-captains,” Meng Shan grunted from the rear strider. “They shouldn’t be dark.”
Lin Ke raised a fist. The three iron-striders halted, their air-powered bronze joints hissing softly as pressure bled into the damp moss.
