And the waypoint dropped them at the boundary of the Mantel Stone Realm in the early morning when the light was still low and the air carried the particular cold of a place that did not warm up in predictable ways.
Neil stood at the boundary marker and looked into the Realm without moving for a long moment.
The terrain beyond the line was unlike anything in the surrounding landscape.
Enormous stone formations rose out of the ground at angles that suggested the earth had been pushed and cracked by something vast and geological rather than shaped over time, dark and jagged and massive, their surfaces covered in a growth that absorbed light rather than reflecting it, pale blue-green in colour and dense enough in places to produce its own faint illumination independent of the sky.
