The test cycle Tallen had predicted arrived before dawn.
It did not come as a full loop of the amphitheater. It came as a single, stubborn echo that had followed them down the mountain: a delayed copy of the moment they had first crossed the rim, now trying to overwrite the settlement’s quiet predawn. Silver fog gathered at the eastern edge of Twin Pines. Inside it, faint outlines of the party’s earlier selves began to form—tired, tense, still carrying the full weight of the unedged Hold.
Branna rang the long-house bell once. Mountain people appeared with iron tools and the calm of those who had rehearsed this kind of trouble. Gossen handed Kael a heavier pole without being asked. Ysara was already moving toward the fog.
“It is only one loop,” she called. “A leftover. But leftovers can
