Dusk fell fast over the Western Ridge, bringing a cold, needle-sharp drizzle that turned the pine duff into slick grease.
By six o'clock, Waypoint 3 was barely visible—a cracked granite obelisk sitting at the mouth of a narrow drainage ravine where two mountain streams converged. The iron bracket securing the survey marker had rusted through, and thirty years of accumulated shale and fallen timber had jammed the main outflow channel.
Drake leaned his hip against a pine trunk, rubbing his left shoulder with his mud-stained hand. "My arm's dead," he grunted, wringing out the hem of his wet coat. "That stone at Waypoint 2 was four hundred pounds if it was an ounce."
"Three hundred," James said, checking the iron bracket on the obelisk.
"Felt like four," Drake muttered.
Across the clearing, two Squad 3 cadets were trying to light an oil lantern under a leather tarp. The flint clicked five times before the wick caught, casting a dim yellow circle over Valen's crystal slate.
"The survey line needs to pass through the ravine center," Valen said, wiping rain off his cheek. He looked up at the dark slope above them. The timber jam at the ravine mouth was groaning—a steady, wet creak-crack as water built up behind a wall of wedged logs and loose shale. "We clear the outflow first, then set the brass pin."
"That jam's holding back six tons of water," Xander said. He was standing on a boulder near the stream, his eyes fixed on the sway of the branches overhead. "The wind shifted north five minutes ago. Rain's heavier up top. The water level in the seam is rising two inches every three minutes."
Valen looked at Xander, then at the groaning timber jam. He didn't ask for a spell circle calculation. "Time to failure?"
"Ten minutes," Xander said. "Maybe eight if the upper shelf gives."
Valen turned to his squad. "Caster-one, shield-two, set up a reinforced ward line across the lower trail. If that jam breaks, the runoff will wash out the path back to the Quad."
"Understood," the shield-cadet called, stepping into position and flaring his Mana ring. A clean, semi-transparent blue barrier snapped into place across the narrow track.
"James," Valen said, stepping up to the edge of the pooling water. "What's holding the jam?"
James looked at the tangle of dead oak, clay, and trapped river-rock. He didn't open his right eye. He just looked at the way the water was squirting in thin, high-pressure jets through the bottom gaps.
"Three points," James said. "Top log is wedged against the east granite wall. Middle root-ball is pinned by a boulder. The bottom is just clay."
"If we blast the top log with a kinetic charge?" Valen asked.
"The boulder drops into the gap and locks the whole thing," James said. "Clear the clay at the bottom first. Let the water drain through the feet before you touch the timber."
Valen didn't hesitate. "Kara. Can you clear the bottom clay without disturbing the root-ball?"
Kara stepped out from under the pine canopy, her wet sleeves pushed up past her wrists. She looked at the muddy surge at the base of the timber wall.
"Yes," Kara said. "Freezing."
She didn't flare her core or trace a high-tier spell circle in the air. She simply reached out with her right hand and pulled the thermal energy directly out of the water jet at the base.
A sharp, violent crack rang through the ravine as the slush and liquid mud at the foot of the jam turned to solid ice, creating a smooth, frozen spillway. The trapped water immediately began pouring over the slick ice, reducing the hydraulic pressure behind the logs.
"Now," James said. "Drake. Top log."
"Moving," Drake said out loud.
He stepped wide, giving Squad 3's shield-cadet four feet of clearance. He wedged his good shoulder under the dead oak log, planted his boots into the frozen spillway Kara had made, and heaved upward.
The top log popped out of its granite notch with a loud thump.
Above them, the upper shale bank groaned. A twenty-foot section of loosened rock and saturated soil detached from the ravine wall, sliding straight down toward Squad 3's caster, who was mid-draw on his warding spell.
"Caster! Left!" Valen shouted.
The caster looked up, eyes widening in panic as the rockslide bore down on him.
"Hold!" James called out.
The caster froze in his tracks—not because he understood James's internal logic, but because Valen's command structure had conditioned him to stop on the call.
In that half-second window, Luna reached forward. She didn't try to stop the entire rockslide. She targeted a thick network of exposed pine roots along the upper embankment, driving a thin pulse of vitality into the wood. The roots instantly swelled and locked together like a wicker fence, catching the heavy boulders and dropping only a harmless shower of loose gravel around the caster's boots.
The caster swallowed hard, looking at the wall of locked roots inches from his face, then at Luna.
Luna pulled her hand back into her sleeve. "Clear."
Within five minutes, the water behind the timber jam had drained harmlessly down Kara's frozen chute, the survey marker was set, and the survey line was recorded on Valen's slate.
The ravine was quiet again, save for the steady patter of cold drizzle on the pine needles.
Valen stood near the obelisk, his brass quill moving across the damp parchment of the official patrol log. He clicked his slate case shut with a sharp metal snap.
"Survey complete," Valen said. He looked at James, then at Drake, whose sleeve was torn at the shoulder, and finally at Kara, who was blowing on her cold fingers. "Return to Central Quad."
Squad 3 fell into formation, their Mana rings humming softly in the dark as they lit the trail back down the ridge.
Squad 7 walked behind them in the damp dark, quiet, wet, and walking in step.