The air above the caldera tasted like copper and old rain.
Alex stopped at the edge of the depression and looked down. The shadow didn't surge toward him the way it had in the dreams—didn't reach, didn't press. It simply waited, the way it always had. Patient as erosion. Patient as stone becoming sand.
He stepped down alone.
His mates held their positions without him asking. He felt the cords of their bonds taut and steady at his back, four anchors keeping him tethered to the living world while he walked toward something that had existed long before any of them were born.
He stopped at the center and sat down cross-legged on the ash, the seven stones in his lap.
"Come out. I came to ask you something before I open the threshold." He pressed his palms flat against the stones.
Silence stretched long enough that he started to wonder if the shadow communicated in anything resembling language.
