The request came through the survey corps office two days after the grounds report.
A wildlife team had followed ridge-hound tracks to a rock shelf and lost them. That happened. Tracks ended. Animals doubled back.
What didn't happen was the second line in the groundskeeper's addendum.
Multiple species. Not just ridge-hound.
Nobody in the corps office knew what that meant, but it was the kind of line that got someone sent up to check. Vane was available. Brandt was available. Vale was on his rotation.
They left at dawn with the standard kit.
---
The ridge above Havenwood was quiet in a way low ground wasn't.
No birds. Fewer insects. The wind moved through pine and then stopped, like it lost interest halfway down. Vane had done surveys up here before. He'd never liked it. The ground was honest — slate and weathered granite, no surprises — but the quiet made the work feel lonelier than it needed to be.
They reached the shelf a little before midday.
Brandt unspooled the chain and started laying baseline measurements. Standard practice. If they were going to log a wildlife trail, they'd log it properly. Vane took the origin post and opened the field ledger. Vale walked the shelf with his hands in his pockets, doing what he always did first: looking at what the others weren't.
The tracks ended about three-quarters of the way across.
Ridge-hound prints, deep and clear, walking pace, heading downslope. Then nothing. Bare rock for two meters, then the shelf edge, then a drop.
Brandt knelt at the last print and studied the ground. "No slide. No scuff. They didn't jump."
"Then where'd they go?"
"Don't know yet."
Vane marked the position in the ledger. He'd expected this. The groundskeeper's report had already said the tracks stopped. What he hadn't expected was what Vale was doing.
Vale had walked past the last print. He was standing near the shelf edge, looking back at the trail they'd come up, head tilted.
"Vane."
"What?"
"Come look at this."
---
Vane walked over. Brandt followed.
Vale was pointing at the ground between the trail and the shelf. Not at the ridge-hound prints — those were obvious. At the other marks. Smaller. Lower to the ground. Some of them crossing the hound prints at an angle.
"Those aren't hounds," Vale said.
Brandt crouched. He studied the marks for a moment. "What are they?"
"Don't know. But they're not hounds."
Vane knelt beside him. The marks were faint — pressed into the dirt at the trail edge, mostly filled in by the last rain. But they were there. Three toes, wide-spaced, deeper than they should have been for something that small.
He looked back up the trail. He looked at the hound prints. He looked at the other marks.
"How many?" he asked.
"Five or six," Vale said. "Maybe more. Hard to tell."
"Same direction as the hounds?"
Vale was quiet for a second.
"That's the thing," he said. "They're not."
---
Vane stood up.
He walked the trail slowly, following the marks. Brandt followed, chain still spooled under his arm. Vale stayed at the shelf edge and watched.
The hound prints were one direction — downslope. The other marks were the opposite. Heading up.
Same trail. Same period. Opposite directions.
Vane stopped walking and looked back at the shelf.
"So the hounds came down," he said. "And something else went up."
"Same time," Vale said.
"Same trail."
"Yes."
Brandt came up beside them. He'd been silent since he crouched. He was still silent now.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
---
"The report said multiple species," Brandt said finally.
"It said multiple species heading down," Vane said. "This isn't that."
"No."
Vane looked at the trail. Then at the shelf. Then at the ridge above them, disappearing into grey rock and low clouds.
"How far up does this go?" he asked.
"Far enough," Brandt said. "Old survey route. No one uses it."
"Then somebody should."
Brandt looked at him. So did Vale.
"You're saying we go up," Brandt said.
"I'm saying the tracks stop on a shelf we can't read, and something else is coming down the same trail at the same time." Vane closed the ledger. "We can log it and go home. Or we can find out where they're both going."
Brandt was quiet. He didn't argue. He didn't agree either.
Vale had already picked up his case.
Vane looked at both of them. "One day. Up and back. If we don't find anything, we log it and we're done."
Brandt nodded slowly. "One day."
---
They repacked the kit and set off up the ridge.
Behind them, the shelf sat empty in the cold light. Hound prints on one side. Something else on the other. Both of them ending in the same place.
Vane would write it down later. He always wrote things down.
They climbed.