The fifth interval began before the sun fully cleared the plateau's eastern ridge, the light still gray and undecided, the monastery wall holding the seal's pressure the way it had held it for two days now — familiar enough that Raze's Perception no longer flagged it as new information, only as a fact of the terrain.
Fedora and Sera sat cross-legged six feet apart, close enough that their shoulders would have touched if either of them leaned. Neither did. They had spent the previous evening finding the right distance — too close and Sera's sensitivity picked up Fedora's own mana signature as noise, too far and the two readings drifted out of sync. Six feet. They'd measured it with a length of cord and then never needed the cord again.
"Relay's holding," Helena said. She had a notation surface balanced on her knees, the geological-survey code running down the page in her small precise hand. "Third interval's structure repeated exactly. That's two for two."
