The second anchor point was under a river valley.
The geological substrate here was different from the mountain formation's interior — younger rock, shallower formation, the void layer's frequency present at surface level in the way of something running through more recent geology that had not had the same depth of time to settle. The drift at this point was less severe than the mountain point — fifteen years rather than seventeen, and in a geological formation that held the working's frequency more stably, which meant the drift rate was slower.
He contacted it in three hours.
The contact was different from the first point.
Not easier. Different. The living specification was here as it had been in the mountain formation, the working's original frequency in the deepest foundational layer. But the surface expression of it — the way the specification presented through the shallower geology of the river valley — was a different quality. Not a different frequency. The same frequency in a different medium, the specific variation of how the same voice sounded in different acoustic conditions.
He worked through the drift variations.
He came out after three hours. Not eleven. Three.
Dain had not needed the disruption technique — no entities had been present at the point, the shallow geology making it a less attractive location for sustained entity presence.
He sat on the river valley's stone and looked at the void layer's reading of the point's new condition.
Ninety percent. Better than the mountain point's first session. Closer to specification. The shallower geology more responsive to the maintenance work, the drift less deeply embedded.
He sat with this for a moment.
He thought about his father's letter. The third or fourth point. The moment when the living specification and the fragment's frequency align completely.
He was at the second point.
One more to the threshold his father had described.
He stood.
He looked east.
The third point was four days' travel. The void layer showed it to him as a specific quality in the geological substrate — present, directional, the same reading from distance that he had developed in Vera's basement but stronger now, more precise, calibrated by two points of actual contact rather than the theoretical sensitivity of the basement work.
Dain was already packing.
Corvin fell in beside him.
He walked east.