By the fifth hour of nonstop march, the red shale trails had surrendered entirely to the brutal, chaotic scree fields of the Demon Cloud foothills.
The height had climbed past six thousand feet above sea level. Here, the dense pine forests of the lowlands shrank into gnarled, wind-blasted scrub cedar that clung to bare granite fissures like desperate claws. The air had turned thin and bitterly sharp. It carried the metal scent of old snow and rusted dark rock. Each breath burned in the throat with the dry sting of low humidity and dropping air pressure.
Lin Tao checked his internal heat ledger. His core heat sat steady at thirty-six point nine degrees, kept by the rhythmic contraction of his thigh muscles and the dense wool heat padding of his traveling coat. His right palm scar, earned during the lightning desynchronization in the northern valleys, throbbed with a dull, familiar ache, warning him that the sky slope was steepening with every upward league.
Beside him, Tie Shan’s breath emerged in rhythmic, frosty billows. The big man’s bare bronze chest and shoulders were beaded with water drops that froze into tiny beads of frost before melting against the heat of his dense musculature.
