The stranger stopped two switchbacks above the first real sight of Samhal.

  From here, the carved terraces and stacked ledges of the village showed in slices between rock teeth—smoke threads, rope lines, the dull gleam of watch posts. The outer gate’s cut mouth sat low on the slope, more shadow than structure from this angle.

  “This is far enough,” they said.

  They stood on a narrow spur of stone that jutted out over the fall like the prow of a ship. One knee up, arm draped over it, the other leg hanging into empty air as if the drop were just another piece of furniture.

  “Far enough for what?” Matas asked. His calves burned from the last pull. His hands had left little rust-brown smears on the rock.

  “For me,” they said. “Samhal and I have an understanding. I stay on the slopes. They pretend I do not exist.”

  “Healthy relationship,” he said. “Very modern.”

  They gave him that almost-smile again. It died quickly.

  “You go on from here,” they said, nodding downslope. “Follow the line where the stone is darkest. It will curl you down to the side of their gate. You will smell smoke before you see it.”

  He followed their chin. The route they meant was there if you knew how to read it—a faint discoloration where boots and weather had worn a less-bad path into the mountain’s face. Not a road. More of an admission of defeat.

  “And if I miss a turn?”

  “Then you will learn how much stone likes you today,” they said. “Or you will not.”

  “Comforting,” Matas said. “You’re all about comfort, you know that?”

  Their eyes flicked to his face. For a heartbeat, the air around their irises darkened—purple edging into shadow, like bruises trying to leak into the world. Then it was gone.

  They looked past him, upslope, toward the line where he’d gone over. “Hunters will tell a story,” they said. “They like stories where they are clever and the stone is obedient.”

  “Already got a taste of that,” Matas said.

  “If you tell a different story, they will not thank you. They will ask how far you slid, how loud the rock was, who else saw. They will ask what I told you, and whether I listened when the Hills spoke.”

  “You don’t want that.”

  “I do not enjoy being counted,” they said. “Samhal counts everything. Meat, arrows, cracks, rumors. Wanderers are not good at staying in ledgers.”

  They shifted, knife hilt bumping their shoulder. “You climbed. You found a safer line. That is enough truth. The rest is for the slopes.”

  “You want me to pretend you weren’t there.”

  They tilted their head. “I want you to survive. That is easier if the only strange thing they must decide about is your eye.”

  His left eye pulsed at the word, a tiny, traitorous twitch behind the socket.

  “You saw that,” he said.

  “I saw enough,” they said. “Keep it pointed at the stone when you can. They do not like eyes that bleed wrong.”

  “Noted.”

  They studied him for another long moment, weighing something he couldn’t see. Then they pushed to their feet in one fluid motion, as balanced on the lip as if the drop were a suggestion.

  “Go,” they said. “Before the wind changes its mind.”

  “Any chance you’ll be here if I need another rescue?”

  “If you are wise, you will not need one,” they said. “If you are not, the Hills will decide whether I notice.”

  “Love those odds,” Matas said.

  They were already turning away, picking their own impossible line up and along the slope—moving with that easy, center-held grace that made the stone seem like it bent under them on purpose. In three breaths they were a smaller shape against the rock. In ten, they were gone, swallowed by distance and angle.

  For a second, standing alone on that spur, the wind tugging at his torn clothes, Matas considered just staying. Walking sideways along the mountain until Samhal was a memory behind him and the void was a rumor ahead. Nobody would chase him. Nobody would care enough to bother.

  Then his knees reminded him what they thought of more climbing. His ribs reminded him he was one bad day away from not being able to haul a bundle of shingles, let alone his own ass.

  He turned toward the darker line in the stone and started down.

  The path did what the wanderer had promised. It was still a bastard—crumbly sections, mean little drops, stretches where you had to turn sideways and trust friction more than was healthy—but it held. Every time his boot slid, there was a ledge within reach. Every time he thought this is where I die, some ugly outcrop stuck its nose out in time to argue.

  By the time the carved mouth of Samhal’s lower gate came into full view, his legs were shaking and his lungs felt like he’d been running bundles up a three-story walkup all day. The smell of smoke hit a beat before the sound of voices—a thin, familiar tang of cookfires and people living the best they could.

  The last bend funneled him into the shadow of the gate cut. Stone rose on either side, close and vertical. The wind died.

  * * *

  Gerath was waiting just inside the wind-shadow of the outer gate.

  His lungs were still arguing with the climb and the slide and the second climb. His right hand throbbed where he’d punched the rock. There was probably gravel embedded in places he didn’t want to think about.

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  The stone around them folded into Samhal’s mouth—heavy lintel overhead, carved posts scarred by generations of spear-butts. The open-slope noises cut off like someone had shut a door in the sky.

  Gerath leaned against the inner jamb like he owned it. Spear propped casual, boot braced on the wall. He looked more rested than anyone who’d walked the same ridge had any right to. His eyes tracked from Matas’s scraped hands to the dust ground into his clothes. Then to the empty stretch of air behind him.

  “Mighty snake,” he said. “You find your way back after all.”

  The two other hunters from his patrol were already past him, stripping gloves as they headed deeper into the tunnel. Neither looked at Matas long enough for eye contact to be an accident.

  “Stone was feeling generous,” Matas said.

  Gerath pushed off the wall and stepped into his path. Up close, the bruises on his knuckles looked old and comfortable. His spear blocked half the tunnel. The other half was all him.

  He reached out and brushed dust off the wolf pelt with two fingers. The touch was light, almost fussy. A foreman straightening a hi-vis vest before sending you back up a ladder he knew was bad.

  “Stone doesn’t care,” he said. “Men do.”

  His hand slid from Matas’s shoulder to the harness strap across his chest. Tightened it with a sharp jerk that rocked him half a step closer.

  “You need something?” Matas asked.

  “I need the Hills quiet.” His voice had gone flatter than the scree Matas had just crawled across. “We walked a clean line. You slipped. That’s the story.”

  The word slipped sat there between them like a stone set on a load-bearing wall—wrong place to move it.

  “I slipped,” Matas said. “Rock went. I went with it.”

  Gerath smiled without showing teeth. “Good. You watch your footing, Snake. We all do.” He leaned in just enough that Matas could smell sweat and old leather. “You start telling people you were pushed, or that your line left you? Hills might start asking why you think you’re important enough for them to bother.”

  His fingers tapped twice against the harness, right over the ribs that still remembered wolf teeth and gnawer claws. A sharp, warning rhythm.

  “Don’t say,” he murmured. “Not to Tharel. Not to the elders. Not to your hunter-friends.” The way he said friends made it sound like a joke.

  Matas swallowed what he’d been about to say. “Fine. I slipped.”

  Gerath’s hand left his harness. For a second, Matas thought that was it. Then his fingers snapped up and caught Matas’s chin, turning his head so his left eye hit the light from the gate slit.

  It had been doing that thing again on the climb—ache behind the socket, a faint sense of something trying to crawl sideways in his vision. The pain had settled into a steady, wrong pressure now, like a splinter you couldn’t quite work out.

  Whatever Gerath saw there made his grip tighten a hair.

  “Void-eyes bleed wrong,” he said softly. “Stone will take care of that, if we let it. Don’t give us reason to help.”

  He let go like Matas’s skin had offended him and stepped aside, opening just enough space to pass.

  Matas walked through the gap, every inch of his back aware of how long it took the spear to clear his shadow.

  Nobody called after him. Nobody laughed. The tunnel swallowed the outside light and left him with the chill stillness of stone and the slow drip of water somewhere far down the line.

  Nobody called after him. Nobody laughed. The tunnel swallowed the outside light and left him with the chill stillness of stone and the slow drip of water somewhere far down the line.

  He’d made it back. The mountain hadn’t finished what it started. Some people were disappointed.

  Good to know where everyone stood.

  * * *

  Merrik found him two turns later.

  Matas had made it as far as the first junction toward the barracks, hand trailing along the wall for balance. His legs burned in the long-job way, not the Level 5 vertigo way—a small victory. His right hand had puffed up nicely; every pulse reminded him not to punch geology.

  “Matas!”

  Merrik’s voice hit first, bouncing off stone. Then he was there, cutting down from an upper passage in a rush of leather and fur and anger. Serh followed a breath behind, not running, but moving fast enough that people in the corridor pressed themselves flat against the walls to let her through.

  Merrik grabbed his uninjured shoulder hard enough to hurt. “Where in all cold ridges did you go?”

  “Down,” Matas said. His throat tried to laugh. It came out as a cough. “Then sideways. Then up.”

  Merrik made a sharp sound that might have been relief disguised as annoyance. His eyes swept over Matas, taking inventory—scrapes, torn sleeve, swollen hand.

  “Gerath’s line came in without you,” he said. “Said you slipped a bad patch and took another way. That was all.”

  “That,” Matas said, “is impressively accurate.”

  Serh stopped an arm’s length away. She didn’t reach for him. Her gaze moved like a plumb bob—feet, knees, ribs, face, eye. Paused there a fraction too long.

  “Where did you go over?” she asked.

  He could still see the exact spot if he closed his eyes: the pinched ridge, the cracked overhang, the way the grit had waited until he’d put his weight on it.

  “Half a mile past the second rope. Where the path necks down and the wall leans in. Bad line. Stone decided it’d had enough of us.”

  “Who was on either side?” she asked.

  “Gerath behind me. Bowman upslope. Quiet one behind.”

  “So Gerath behind you,” Merrik said. “No rope.”

  “Didn’t have time to tie a nice bow,” Matas said. “Rock moved faster than I did.”

  He could feel the shade of what he wasn’t saying: hand between his shoulders, that not-quite-steadying pressure, the deliberate second shove. It lived in the gap between words like a crack under fresh paint.

  Matas could feel the shade of what he wasn’t saying: hand between his shoulders, that not-quite-steadying pressure, the deliberate second shove. It lived in the gap between words like a crack under fresh paint.

  Serh’s jaw flexed. “And no one came down,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question.

  “They shouted,” Matas said. “Couple of times. Then the whole section looked like it wanted to join me. Hard to blame them for not turning it into a group trip.”

  Merrik’s mouth twisted. “Hard,” he repeated. The tone said he found some parts less hard than others.

  Serh nodded once. Not happy. Not surprised. Filing.

  “Who brought you back?” she asked.

  “A friend of the slopes,” Matas said. “Or someone who doesn’t like watching idiots die alone. Lean sort. Patchwork gear. Bow with no string on it.”

  Merrik’s brows went up. “Trapper?”

  “Something like that,” Matas said. “Didn’t give a name. Didn’t ask one. Just pointed out where the stone was lying to me.”

  Serh exchanged a look with Merrik that Matas couldn’t read. A whole conversation hung in that glance—names, histories, grudges.

  “You will tell Tharel all of this,” she said finally. “Soon.”

  Matas’s stomach did a small, unhelpful twist. “Does he want the full version or the Gerath-approved one?”

  “Both,” she said. “He will hear the hunter’s first whether we like it or not. Then he will decide what to do with the difference.”

  “That sounds promising,” Matas muttered.

  Merrik’s hand squeezed his shoulder again, less hard this time. “Come. You walk. You breathe. They will want to see that.”

  “Great,” Matas said. “Love being evidence.”

  They headed toward the inner levels, the tunnel air growing warmer with each turn. Word moved faster than they did; by the time they reached the hall outside the chief’s fire room, a couple of lookouts were already posted there, spears crossed.

  One of them glanced at Matas’s eye, then away, making a sign he didn’t know with two fingers against his throat. Void-eyes bleed wrong. Gerath’s words echoed in his head, greasy and hateful.

  Merrik and Serh peeled off to the side, taking up positions like structural supports—close enough to be in it, far enough to pretend they weren’t the reason he was still breathing.

  The guards at the inner doors hesitated just long enough to make their opinion clear, then lifted their spears and hauled the heavy doors inward. Heat and firelight spilled out, along with the low murmur of too many voices in one stone box.

  Matas set his jaw and stepped through.

  The doors boomed shut behind him. The fire pit glowed at the center of the room, the same sullen red as the night of his verdict, but the benches around it were full now—elders, hunters, faces he hadn’t seen before. And at the far side of the pit, in a seat carved from the living rock itself, someone sat who made every other person in the room look like they were leaning against borrowed walls.

  The mailbox in the corner of his vision snapped to attention, flag rigid, pulsing a color he hadn’t seen before—not gold, not red, but something between them, like heated iron just before it bends.