The summit came without warning.
One moment the path was climbing through rock and frost and the cold that had been their constant companion since the valley. The next, the trail crested a final ridge and the mountain simply ended, dropping away on three sides into a sweep of open sky that made Elowen's chest constrict with the sheer scale of it.
They stood on the highest point they had reached.
The trial ground was here.
She knew it immediately, the same way she had known the chamber, the same way Lyra knew the Keeper's platform. There was a quality to this place that did not require explanation. It announced itself. A wide flat space of pale stone, perfectly circular, ringed at its edges with ancient markers, tall pillars of dark rock carved with the same silver script as everything
