The basalt platform sat in the shadow of the market district's eastern buildings until the tenth hour.
At the ninth hour, which was when the challenge started, the stone was cold.
Vane felt it through his boots the moment he stepped onto the platform. Not the compound's cold, which was mountain altitude and three hundred years of absorbed mana giving the stone a specific living density. This was the cold of stone that had been in shadow since before dawn, flat and functional and carrying no information except temperature.
He had been told about this cold for three days.
He adjusted his footing accordingly and looked at the ground under him. The basalt's grain ran southwest to northeast, visible as a directional quality in the surface texture if you were looking for it, which he had been told to look for, which meant he was looking for it before the first form began rather than discovering it mid-fight when discovering it would cost him something.
