The first steps down were careful only because the body remembered caution.
But the ground did not test them.
Stone accepted weight. Gravel shifted, then settled. The trees below—those patient intermediaries between height and depth—waited without leaning in.
Rhys noticed the difference not in the land, but in the intervals between his thoughts. There was less reaching. Fewer speculative angles. The vector that had clarified on the plateau did not pull. It simply rendered certain movements unnecessary.
Caria walked beside him now, no longer half a step ahead or behind. The rhythm between them required no adjustment.
"Will it change them?" Rhys asked after a while, meaning the village below, the river beyond, the places not yet seen.
"It already has," Caria said. "Not because we stood there. Because it stands at all."
