It was the hour before dawn, and the cold was different than the cold of night. Alistair felt it the moment he stepped past the threshold of the base.
The air was sharp, the kind that arrived right before the world remembered the sun.
The four of them walked out together, without formation or discussion.
Alistair was at the front because the ritual required him to be at the front. Due walked at his left shoulder, Elara walked a half-step behind on the right, and Silas walked at the rear, in the way Silas always took the rear when something mattered.
The territory was silent.
They walked toward the open ground at the eastern edge of the perimeter, the spot Alistair had marked a week ago. He had chosen it because it caught the first light cleanly, and because a person standing there could see all four directions of the Oasis of Grain at the same moment.
