Stone grated on stone, rings biting their fingers, until it finally slid far enough that a crack of dark showed along one edge and stale air breathed out over their faces.

  It smelled tired. Old dust, old sweat, something metallic under it all that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with load that had been sitting too long without a fresh hand on it.

  "On three," Serh said. "Same as before."

  They dragged. The slab surrendered another hand-span and then stopped like a rope that had taken all the strain it meant to. The gap it left was just wide enough to slip through sideways.

  "After you," Merrik said.

  Matas's ankle complained when he shifted his weight. "Just remember who your canary is."

  "Hook, weight, trust," Merrik said. "Still your job."

  They filed through. The stone plug thudded back into place behind them with an ugly kind of final: no rings on this side.

  The flag pulsed.

  Trial of Ascension — final structural vector.

  Witness vector (Omen): active.

  Milestones remaining: 1.

  "Of course it's counting," Matas said under his breath. "Wouldn't want to lose track of how many times it can drop a ceiling on us."

  Serh and Merrik both cracked a laugh at that.

  The new corridor didn't waste time pretending to be friendly.

  It sloped down at a shallow angle, stone blocks laid just wrong enough that his bad ankle hated every step. Narrow at first, then widening into a long, low space with no benches, no altars, just a single stone span crossing a black cut in the floor.

  Matas went to the edge and looked down.

  Bad idea.

  The gap wasn't bottomless, but it was deep enough that the torchlight only reached partway before getting eaten by shadow. The walls on either side fell straight for twenty, maybe thirty feet before they broke into ledges and outcrops. Old hooks and dead ropes studded the stone—some still fixed solid, some hanging by a single bent nail of iron.

  The span itself was a single slab three men long and barely wide enough for two boots side by side. Hairline cracks spidered along its underside where it met the ledges on either side, like someone had trusted it for too long.

  "Charming," Matas said. "Whoever designed this needs to stop bidding low on jobs."

  "Take the read," Serh said. Her voice was tight but had the sound of hope in it.

  Matas did.

  The hooks closest to them looked solid enough—deep-set, rust around them, but no flakes, no telltale weeping down the wall. The ones farther along told an uglier story: rust-stars bigger than his thumb, streaks of old stress running out and down where stone had tried to slough the metal free and hadn't quite managed it.

  Then the world split.

  One version: they rigged the ropes the way any sensible hill-hand would. Redundant anchors—two near, two far. One line for hands, one for harness. They went across one at a time, slow, steady, no tricks.

  The other version kept the rigging but changed the order of the failures.

  An anchor that should have held another decade pulled sideways instead of out, shearing a whole plate of stone off with it. The far-end hooks went together, tearing loose in perfect sympathy. Merrik dropped with the slab. Serh went after him when the stupid part of her brain forgot about self-preservation and remembered she was built entirely of duty.

  Matas's stomach lurched. Pain punched behind his bad eye.

  The futures snapped back together.

  "Don't trust the middle anchors," he said, voice rough. "They're rougher than the rest."

  Merrik's gaze went to the same rust stars he'd just seen in the might-happen. "You see something, or you just being pessimistic?"

  "Yes," Matas said.

  He grunted once. Not argument. Just acknowledgment.

  They set to work.

  They had enough rope left to pretend they were professionals. Harness clips. Two coils. A handful of spare hooks off Merrik's belt and the ones Matas carried to feel less naked.

  They set the near side as clean as they could: two old hooks that still rang right when he hammered them, one new one Matas sank himself into a seam that felt hungry for it. Every strike vibrated up his arm and down his spine.

  "Far side," Serh said. "One of us crosses. We don't all trust the same guesses."

  "That's not how you pitched this job either," Matas muttered.

  She ignored him.

  Merrik and Matas traded a look.

  "I go," Matas said.

  Merrik snorted. "And leave me to watch Serh try to pull you out of a fall alone? No thanks."

  "You're limping," Matas said. "We both heard your knee pop."

  "And you're seeing three bridges where there's one," he shot back. "You're staying on the solid side till we know what lies to ignore."

  Serh settled it. "Merrik crosses. Matas anchors. If the mountain takes offense, it can start with the younger bones."

  Merrik grimaced but didn't argue.

  They clipped him in, double-line to the near anchors, harness snug. He eased onto the span on a low stance, spear in one hand, other hand on the upper rope. Brace sat in the lines of his legs, ready, whether he meant it to or not.

  "Slow," Matas said.

  "Tell the stone that," Merrik said, and started forward.

  The first half went fine.

  The second half got paid for.

  As Merrik reached the worst of the spider-cracks, the flag pulsed again.

  No text this time. Just a brightness that made the back of Matas's eye itch.

  He felt the failure before he saw it.

  A soft grunt from the stone through his boots. The kind you get right before a roof deck decides it's sick of pretending to be flat.

  "Left!" Matas snapped.

  Merrik shifted just as the far-right anchor sheared out of the wall.

  It didn't come straight. It tore sideways, ripping a strip of stone with it. The attached rope went slack, then whipped as weight transferred onto the remaining lines.

  The span dipped under his boot. His knee folded.

  Matas's hands were already on the main line.

  Brace hit like a hammer swung in reverse—through his soles, up his calves, slamming into his thighs and spine as he locked himself in against the far wall. The rope bit into his palms. Merrik's full weight turned the line into a live thing trying to saw through his fingers.

  Pain flared hot and white along the old ladder-fall ache in his back. His bad ankle shrieked as it took load it had no business carrying.

  "Stone's not done," Merrik grunted. "You good?"

  "Define good," Matas said through his teeth. "Get off the middle."

  Merrik crabbed those last few steps in a half-crawl, span tilting under him, until he could slam his shoulder into the far wall and grab a surviving hook. Once his weight came off, the rope eased enough that Matas could breathe again.

  The flag's pulse settled.

  Behavioral data: voluntary load assumption recorded.

  Milestone: 2 of 2 satisfied.

  Witness vector (Omen): stabilized.

  Structural integrity: critical.

  Matas's knees chose that moment to try to fold. The skill caught them halfway. The rest of him decided horizontal was fine and took the fall.

  "Still with us?" Serh asked.

  "Bits of me," Matas said. "The rest is drafting a strongly worded letter to the union."

  She didn't smile. Her eyes did, a fraction.

  Merrik started rigging the far side with new hooks and rope while Matas lay there and pretended the ceiling's hairline fractures weren't crawling wider in his peripheral vision.

  By the time they all three reached the opposite ledge, the span behind them was groaning in a language only stones and idiots spoke.

  They unclipped the lines.

  The system stamped its next verdict.

  Behavioral data: Trial of Ascension — completed.

  Subject: Matas.

  Level Classification Index: 9.

  Resources: partial restore.

  Unspent Allocation Points: 6.

  Whiplash hit a breath later.

  Matas's heart stuttered. Heat flushed through his legs and chest in a wave that felt like someone had decided his blood was grout and was trying to trowel it smoother.

  Stats ticked at the edge of his vision when he let the panel crack open a hair.

  Willpower +3. Perception +2. Endurance +1.

  Ocular strain: severe.

  Evolution vector: Omen — locked.

  The band around his skull tightened another notch. The quiet behind his left eye, such as it had ever existed, went from angry hive to high-tension wire.

  The flag wrote one more line.

  Behavioral data integrated: new path prescribed.

  Previous profession tag: Architect (provisional) — rescinded.

  "Great," Matas croaked. "Didn't like that hat anyway."

  More text rolled in.

  Combat role reassessment.

  Initial assignment: Hills-Knight (service-bound).

  Justification: sustained risk for others under formal obligation.

  "Absolutely not," Matas said aloud.

  Serh's head snapped toward him. "What?"

  "System wants to pin a banner on me," Matas said. "It can shove it."

  The panel hesitated, which was new and worse than any answer.

  Selection rejected.

  Recomputing class vector from recorded behavior…

  "That seems unwise," Merrik muttered.

  "That seems accurate," Matas said.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  When the text sharpened again, the words had changed.

  Combat class update: Honor-bound Omen Scout.

  Behavioral basis: forward risk, structural assessment, probability anomaly carrier.

  Revision limit: reached.

  Scout. Not knight. Still a leash, but one he was already dragging.

  "Fine," Matas said. "We'll call that a compromise."

  The system wasn't done.

  A second header bled in under the first.

  Profession slot: recalculating.

  Nothing else. Just that and the slow, steady pulse of the flag. Four counts. Eight. Twelve. Long enough that the pain behind his eyes had time to find a rhythm and start humming along to his heartbeat.

  Finally:

  Profession: Omen-Step Engineer.

  Behavioral basis: applied load-path analysis under omen flux.

  Scope: structure, route, and failure pattern prediction.

  Matas didn't like how much that read like a job description for someone who would be very easy to break in interesting ways.

  "Try again," he said, because habit was harder to kill than sense.

  The log flickered.

  Reroll request registered.

  Result: denied.

  Path specialization: final.

  "Figures," Matas said. "Ask once, you get shuffled off the knight track. Ask twice, it slams the door."

  A small, tacked-on line closed the book.

  Concurrent witness adjustment:

  — Merrik: minor resource increase.

  — Serh: minor resource increase.

  Merrik rolled his shoulder, testing his knee. "Feels like it liked something we did," he said. "Not sure I appreciate the compliment."

  "Appreciate it or not, we're still under stone," Serh said. "Move."

  ~

  The corridor beyond the ledge bent twice and then spit them into a chamber that felt...finished.

  Smaller than the Witness Chamber. Round, not long. No benches, no altar. Just a ring of carved supports around the edge and a low dais in the center, big enough for one man to lie on if he didn't mind being very deliberate about it.

  Somebody lay there now.

  Not human.

  Humanoid, sure. Two arms, two legs, head where you expected it. But the proportions were wrong in a way even Matas's tired brain caught.

  Limbs too long. Hands and feet ending in dull, worn-down claws instead of nails. Plates of something that had started life as scale or bone armor fused to the shoulders and chest, eroded by time and heat until they looked like bad roofing tiles no one had bothered to replace.

  Wings—if you could still call them that—lay half-fused to the stone at its back. Membranes gone, just the arched finger-bones left, pitted and dark.

  Its face had once been a problem all its own. Horns or crests had broken away, leaving stumps. The jaw looked too strong for the skull under it. Eye sockets sat deep, empty.

  Empty except for a faint, banked glow, like coals cooling under ash.

  In its hands, held close to its chest like it had been guarding it for a very long time, was a shard.

  Not big. Knife-blade length, no wider than two fingers. Dark, but with a wrong-colored glimmer at the edges. Matas knew that light. He'd seen it in the first not-place the system had thrown him into. He'd seen it hanging there in front of him like the universe's worst safety line.

  For a heartbeat, the chamber wasn't stone at all.

  Black. Weightless. His own hands out in front of him, empty, as something bright and jagged drifted closer. No breath. No weight on his feet. Just the shard and the sense that if he grabbed it, something permanent would happen.

  Then the world snapped back.

  Matas was on his feet in the circular room, heart hammering, bad ankle singing, staring at the same shape, now duller and resting in the thing's hands.

  "I don't like this," Merrik said quietly.

  "Join the club," Matas said.

  The mailbox flag pulsed.

  Behavioral data: Trial of Ascension — final vector contact.

  Witness vector (Omen): active.

  External entity: classified.

  That was the least helpful the log had ever been, and that was saying something.

  "Stay back," Serh said.

  They didn't listen. Not really. They just moved slower as they circled, weapons up, trying to see if the dais was rigged, if any of the supports were waiting to drop on their heads.

  Nothing shifted. Nothing clicked.

  The only thing that changed was the shard.

  Its edge brightened a hair as Matas drew nearer, like it was remembering how.

  The thing on the slab moved.

  No breath before. No tensing of muscle. One instant it was as it had been—hands folded, shard resting. The next, its right arm was up and out, closing the distance between them like it had walked through the middle and left the intervening seconds behind.

  Claws wrapped around the side of Matas's head. Not crushing. Just holding.

  The shard punched through his good eye.

  There was no time to flinch, no chance to twist. One blink it was halfway to his face. The next, white heat lanced straight in where no part of anything sharp had any business being.

  Sound went somewhere else. His own shout sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the old throat. His legs stopped pretending to cooperate.

  Cold, at first. Clean, surgical. Then the cold turned to a different kind of fire—the raw, electric kind you got when you hit a live wire with a metal ladder.

  The shard shoved through everything delicate and important behind the eye and came out the back in a spray of pain he didn't have language for. Nerves lit up, burned out, lit again, each one filing a complaint on its way down.

  Then, before the black could close in, warmth poured in through the same path.

  Golden.

  If that sounded pleasant in someone else's story, they were lying.

  The light crawled.

  It moved slow and deliberate, retracing the damage, setting each broken thread back in place with all the grace of a man trying to weld spiderwebs back together in a windstorm. Every millimeter it reversed, Matas felt twice—once from the wound being undone, once from whatever thing was riding the light taking measurements while it worked.

  He hit his knees. Hands went to his face on their own. The thing's grip didn't stop him, didn't tighten, just held him steady while it finished.

  Something roared close by.

  Human, this time.

  Merrik.

  His shoulder slammed into the dais. His spear drove up under the thing's ribs and in, deep enough that the point should have come out the spine.

  Rotten plate and old bone gave way with a sound like wet plaster being kicked off lath. The creature's chest bowed around the wood. Its other hand spasmed in the air above Matas, claws flexing on nothing.

  The golden light didn't stop.

  It chased itself around the back of Matas's skull, across to the left. For a terrifying second, both eyes filled with it. He saw nothing of the room—just bright, hammered metal, weight and heat and wings that had never belonged to him spreading against a black sky.

  Then something inside him snapped the circuit.

  The shard left the way it had come in.

  There was no physical piece to pull. No splinter on his cheek. Just a sickening sense of absence, like someone had yanked a nerve out by the root and forgotten to put anything back.

  The light winked out.

  Sight—some version of it—slammed back in. Both eyes. One rimmed in red pain, one rimmed in gold.

  The log, very helpfully, chimed in.

  Ocular overwrite: bilateral.

  Damage repaired: structural.

  Strain index: extreme.

  Affinity cross-coupling: pending.

  "Get off him," Serh snarled.

  She drove her spear in from the other side, low and mean, cutting through whatever organs the first thrust had missed.

  The thing on the slab didn't bleed.

  It cracked.

  Plates along its chest and shoulders fissured. The wounds Merrik and Serh carved didn't gush—they crumbled. Flesh—if it had ever been that—dried and brittle, sloughed away in a fine, gray ash that smelled faintly of old, burned cedar and something deeper under it Matas didn't want to think about.

  Its hand stayed on his head a heartbeat longer than it should have, claws still gentle at his temple, thumb resting over his cheekbone.

  Then that, too, came apart.

  Dust poured over his shoulders and into his lap. The weight on his skull vanished.

  As the last of it went, something brushed the inside of Matas's head.

  Not the system's clerk-voice. Not the crystal heart's cold pressure.

  Older. Worn thin.

  "May your wings never fold…"

  A whisper so faint he couldn't swear it had been words. Blessing, curse, or wish from something that had forgotten how to die properly.

  His breath rattled. His stomach rolled. He let himself fold the rest of the way to the floor.

  "Matas." Merrik. Close. Rough. "Talk to me."

  "Still me," Matas said. "Both eyes. No guarantees on what they're seeing."

  The chamber swam when he tried to look. Lines doubled, then snapped back together. The red-tinted eye picked up every crack, every fatigue line in the stone. The other...the other caught motion that hadn't happened yet. A flinch, a shift, the way dust wanted to fall.

  "Don't push it," Serh said.

  "Too late," Matas said. "Button's welded down."

  ~

  Something dark tucked behind one of the support pillars at the back of the room had been waiting quietly while they screamed.

  It was the wrong kind of shape for natural rock. Too square. Too careful. Too much intent in the way the dust had built up around its feet without ever quite touching the sides.

  "Chest," Matas said, nodding toward it.

  "Of course there's a chest," Merrik said. "Mountain wouldn't want us walking away without a souvenir."

  He hauled it out with a grunt. Dark lacquered wood, the finish gone dull in places but still resisting the damp. The hinges didn't squeal when he opened it. Someone had oiled them, once, and the stone had remembered.

  Inside, neatly packed like a contractor who'd hated empty space, lay the haul.

  Three items. Four vials. A pale roll of something like parchment bound with a strip of red. A scattering of coins that caught the torchlight cold.

  The flag pulsed.

  Environmental cache: discovered.

  Contents classification: uncommon grade.

  Acquisition log: registered.

  Note: items present affinity resonance. Recommend caution.

  "I don't like it when it recommends anything," Matas said.

  "We're not leaving it for some other fool," Serh said. "Start naming."

  The first item took up most of one half of the chest—a vest, or what passed for one. Thick, dark hide stitched in overlapping panels, the seams so tight they might as well have been grown that way. When Matas laid a hand on it, the leather was faintly warm, like an animal that had gone still but not yet cold.

  Identify itched.

  He gave in.

  Hide Chest — Uncommon.

  Material: spiritually awakened boar hide.

  Attunement: passive.

  Effect: glances one blow per encounter.

  Endurance bonus: +3.

  Binding status: unbound (no current bearer).

  "Chest'll keep you on your feet longer," Matas said. "Might argue about who's wearing whom."

  Merrik grunted. "We've both been held up by worse." He grabbed the chest and began fitting it to himself, the movement practiced enough that he'd done this work before, somewhere, on some other job.

  The second piece sat in a small slot above the first. Thin circlet, dull metal that might have been silver once. Notches cut along the inside, tiny and regular as teeth.

  When Matas picked it up, there was a half-second when his skull felt lighter, as if it already knew its weight.

  Circlet of Sharpening — Uncommon.

  Material: refined whitewood-metal composite.

  Attunement: cognitive resonance.

  Effect: focus duration increase (+2 Perception).

  Binding status: unbound (no current bearer).

  "Helps you stare at things too long," Matas said. "Lets more of the system in while it's at it."

  "That sounds like a you problem," Merrik said.

  "I'm aware."

  The third item lay in a fitted groove at the bottom: a dagger with a blade the color of slate and an edge that caught no light at all. When Matas shifted it, the air around the point seemed to drag a hair farther than the steel actually reached.

  The hilt fit his hand like it had been waiting for it.

  Omen Dagger — Uncommon.

  Material: probability-locked steel.

  Attunement: active (Omen-vector candidate).

  Effect: effective range extension (+1 meter, orientation-dependent).

  Dexterity bonus: +2.

  Binding status: unbound (no current bearer).

  "That'll take some extra training," Matas said. "Means I can target something an extra meter away, but I'll need to test whether it's permanent or activation-based."

  Four small vials nestled in a padded corner. Merrik looked lost in thought about Matas's last comment, so he kept riffling through the chest without waiting on a response. Three were a dull, familiar red. One was an off-clear that shimmered slightly when he tilted it.

  Potion — Skill x1. Identify (Common)

  Potion — Health x3. Standard restoration (~20% capacity per dose).

  Potion — Stamina x1. Standard resource recovery.

  Classification: Mixed. Common x4. Rare x1.

  Origin: non-local.

  Matas set them back carefully.

  The scroll was another problem. Thin, tight roll, tied with a strip of red that hadn't rotted. The parchment under his fingers felt wrong—too smooth, too even.

  Identify fought harder this time. The pain behind his eyes flared when he forced it.

  Scroll of Healing — Single use.

  Effect: all beings within a 10-meter radius restored (30% structural and resource capacity).

  Classification: cross-affinity artifact.

  Caution: Use within the Samhal settlement may trigger crystal heart recalibration.

  "Thirty percent," Matas said softly. "Everything in ten steps. All at once."

  Merrik let out a breath that might have been a laugh or panic. "Could fix my knee and your ankle and the part of Serh that smells like cooked hair," he said.

  "And light up the Heart like a bonfire," Serh said. "Elders would have words."

  "Elders can have words when we're not under a mountain that keeps trying to make us ash," Merrik said.

  "Or we carry it out," Matas said. "Make them look at what's buried under their throat and decide if they still like their rules."

  Twenty-three silver pieces sat in a shallow tray along the top. Neat stacks of five, except the odd three thrown in like someone had meant to make it even and never got around to it.

  "Money," Matas said.

  "Metal," Serh corrected. "Village doesn't trade in that."

  "Village doesn't," Matas said. "Doesn't mean nobody else does."

  They stared at the pile.

  It wasn't the silver that made Matas's skin crawl. It was the idea that someone had thought they'd need it down here.

  "We can't take it all," Serh said finally. "We're already carrying more than we should. Pick what comes with us. The rest waits."

  "Dagger stays with me," Matas said, before he could think better of it. The hilt still rested in his palm like it was planning ahead. He replaced his worn short-sword into the chest and slid the dagger into the scabbard at his hip. "If it's going to hang debt on anyone, it might as well be this idiot."

  "Agreed," Merrik said.

  He eyed the hide chest, settling into the leather like it was made for him. "Better than any gear I've worn, and since we fought for it, we wear it."

  "Potions come too," Serh said. "Small enough. Elders know of them, but it's been about twelve years since the last wanderer with one visited us."

  They pocketed the vials.

  "This one feels different than the rest," Serh said. "What is it?"

  Matas had already pegged it—the skill potion, the one that would grant Identify to whoever drank it. His fingers had twitched toward it instinctively.

  "I think it provides a skill," he said. "When I identified it, it said the effect grants identify."

  Merrik and Serh both snapped their necks at him.

  "You waited this long to mention this?" Merrik exploded with a manic grin. "Stone story. Haven't heard of a skill-draught on the Hills in a hundred years." He danced in a circle around Serh as she rolled the liquid around in the vial, and something in the set of her shoulders told Matas she was already calculating value.

  "You should take it," Matas said as soon as he saw her eyes. This wasn't an item that should be fought over. "Since we all got an item, I think it's fair if we take the other potions between us and you take the skill one."

  He eyed Merrik, and Merrik gave a brisk nod.

  "We both know you're more valuable in the village, Serh," Merrik said. "Having Identify would make you worth ten of me tracking line failures."

  Serh's gaze flicked to Matas, then to the vial. For a moment, her mouth worked around objections. Then she nodded once, sharp as a dropped stone.

  "Then we do this right," she said.

  With distribution confirmed, Matas turned back to the chest. The scroll he left where it was.

  It wasn't fear. Not exactly. It was the sense you got on a job when you found a perfect, load-bearing wall that someone's cut three unauthorized holes through. You don't fix that in a hurry. You bring other eyes.

  Merrik swept the silver into a small cloth bag someone had left in the chest. "Metal's metal," he said. "If we don't find a use for it, someone will."

  Matas slipped the Omen Dagger into a free loop on his belt. The weight of it sat on his hip like an extra question mark.

  The flag pulsed one last time.

  Witness vector (Omen): active.

  Trial of Ascension: complete.

  External events: queued.

  "Comforting," Matas said. "It's already planning the next thing."

  "Good," Serh said. "Means we're still alive enough to be a problem."

  They left the ash, the empty slab, and the chest half-full of somebody else's bad ideas behind them and followed the only tunnel that still smelled like it remembered the way out.