The northern draw was a brutal, jagged wound cut deep into the coastal shelf. The stone beneath their boots was a dark, bruised grey, slick with sea mist and utterly indifferent to human travel. Fen's revised gradient had been flawlessly accurate. The secondary approach lines flanking them had already pinched into narrow, vertical death traps that would require heavy rope anchors to navigate safely. The official briefing hadn't mentioned any of this. It had been lazily compiled from a fifteen-year-old cartographic survey that blindly trusted its own outdated projections.
Three minutes into the steep climb, Fen abruptly stopped walking.
"The eastern signature just moved," she reported, her eyes fixed on the towering cliffs rather than her glowing wristband. "The live-conditions update originally placed it at grid seven. It is currently sitting at grid five."
