The final climb began under a sky the color of hammered iron. Ysara took point with Kael. She moved like someone who had walked the same stones enough times to know which ones would shift. The path rose in tight switchbacks. The drop to the right became a clean, vertical argument against mistakes.
The echo thickened with altitude. Footsteps arrived before boots struck stone. Once, Sera’s warning about a loose ledge came back in Lira’s own voice a full ten seconds early. They adjusted. They began speaking in shorter sentences. Cal developed a system of hand signals that Sela immediately improved.
Action returned in the form of a rockfall that was not entirely natural. A section of cliff ahead let go in two stages—the first real, the second an echo that tried to catch them while they were
