THE PRUNING HOUR
The communications hub in the Eastern Reaches was carved into a mountain that had been dead for ten thousand years, and the only thing guarding its entrance was a door that shouldn't have existed.
Marcus stood at the edge of the treeline, watching the facility through field glasses. It was smaller than the installations they'd raided during the war—no barracks, no armories, no perimeter fences bristling with automated defenses. Just a single steel door set into the volcanic rock, its surface etched with the same ancient symbols that had marked the Unseen Hand's oldest temples. The symbols were wrong. Reversed. As if whoever carved them had learned the language from a mirror.
"The Archivist is inside," Aella said. Her golden light was dimmed by the signal dampeners, but
