16
Ruarc
The western boundary held.
The entity's probe at the hill's shoulder marker lasted ninety minutes — long enough to test the full depth of the freshly reinforced warding, not long enough to find the path through it. He had anticipated the frequency gap in the transition layers and had addressed it in the working, laying a bridging mark that closed the interval the entity had been mapping all evening. When the probe finally withdrew, he felt it through the territory's bond the same way he always felt the Donn Scail's retreats: not defeat, not frustration, but the cold patience of something filing away what it had learned and adjusting its timeline accordingly.
He was at the western gate at the fourth watch when Ciarán Mac Fáelán came to find him.
The man moved through the night
