The black ridge was exactly as the villagers had described: a long, dark escarpment of stone that looked ordinary until the eye tried to decide how far away it stood. Distance refused to remain fixed. Sometimes the ridge was an hour’s walk. Sometimes it felt already under their feet. The party advanced in careful stages, using rope markers and spoken counts to keep their own sequence intact.
At the crest the world changed.
On the far side lay a wide, shallow valley filled with pale grass and standing stones. Every stone was marked with the same divided circle. In the exact center of the valley a vertical line of darker air rose from the ground to the height of a tower—an absence rather than a structure, a door-shaped slice of pure threshold. Looking at it produced the distinct sensation
