Morning came in layers of stone and coughing.

  Matas woke to somebody hacking three bunks over and the soft, rhythmic creak of a door he could not see. The barracks did not have windows, just a narrow slit high in one wall where a strip of cold light leaked in and pretended to be dawn. The air tasted of old sweat, damp wool, and the ashes of fires he had not seen.

  For a few seconds he did not move. His body did a quick roll call all on its own. Ribs: sore, but holding. Wrist: stiff, noisily unhappy about any plan involving torque. Leg where the wolf had tried to turn his thigh into a chew toy: tight, but not screaming. Left eye: dull ache, like it had slept on a rock.

  Better than it had any right to be after almost losing an argument with a mountain.

  Voices moved through the haze: low, sleep-rough, practical. A mutter about rope. A complaint about a brace that had shifted wrong in the night. A laugh that did not quite make it past tired.

  Hill-hand noise.

  The new boots sat on the floor next to his pallet like small, patient animals. Someone had lined them up neatly, toes pointing out. His old pair lay farther down, kicked half under another bunk, dried mud flaking from the soles.

  Hill-hand does not walk in soft shoes. Serh’s voice from the fire room threaded through memory and stone. He was not sure if she had actually said it that way or if his brain had filed it under proverbs and stamped it official.

  Either way, the boots waited.

  He pushed himself upright, slow enough not to spook anything that might have decided to stab him overnight. The bruises along his ribs complained. The world did a lazy half-tilt and settled.

  The boots were as honest up close as they had looked yesterday. Heavy. High-ankled. Thick sole with metal bites hammered into the bottom, stitching tight where it mattered. Built to grip stone and not apologize about it.

  His thumb traced the leather once. He could have just put them on like a normal, grateful worker.

  Curiosity beat common sense to the punch.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s see what the universe thinks you are.”

  He focused on the boot the way he had on the short sword. The mailbox flag in the corner of his vision twitched, then flared a shade darker.

  A thin strip of text edged into view.

  Identify: Hill-work boots.Material: treated hide, iron hobnails.Condition: serviceable.Attunement: none.Effect: increased friction on stone surfaces.

  Flat as always. No sales pitch. Just a parts list and a warning label he did not know how to read.

  The text barely had time to fade before the world lurched sideways.

  His guts went hollow, then heavy. Muscles misfired like someone had swapped a couple of wires at random. Breath stuttered in his chest. For a heartbeat, every bruise and bite and pulled tendon he had collected since waking up under the wrong sky decided to hold a union meeting.

  The mailbox flag went from steady pulse to a hard, bright strobe. Not golden light—more like a sour halo that painted the edge of his vision in migraine colors.

  Behavioral data: continued contracted risk-for-shelter.

  Subject: Matas.Level Classification: Index 7.Resources: partial restore.Unspent Allocation Points: 10.Unresolved.

  “Figures,” he muttered.

  No fanfare. No chime. Just a cold notation while his body remembered all over again how much it hated adapting.

  He sat back down hard on the pallet. The boot slipped from his fingers and thumped against the stone.

  Seven. Somewhere between the Blessing, the shove, the wanderer, and almost dying on a scree slope, the system had pushed him past six without bothering to say it out loud. The last time it had rung him like this—after the crystal heart—he had been too busy not screaming to check the paperwork.

  “Of course,” he whispered. “You change the number and forget to mention it.”

  The panel shifted, text compressing.

  Core Stats:

  Strength —Dexterity —Endurance —Perception —Willpower —

  Additional Allocation Points: 10.

  No values. Just headings and the quiet suggestion that numbers existed if he wanted to bleed for them.

  Ten points. Back on the slab, unspent points had felt like a live wire. Now, sitting in a room full of strangers who thought his eye meant void, the choice felt simple.

  They had not bound him as hill-hand because he hit hard. They had done it because he saw bad lines and did not look away.

  “Fine,” he said under his breath. “You want my eyes? Let’s see how much you like them.”

  He focused on Perception. The word brightened. Faint bars ghosted into place beneath it, little empty rungs waiting.

  He dragged all ten.

  No hedging. No saving some for later. No pretending he was going to punch his way out of this mountain.

  The panel flickered as the last point snapped in.

  The room did not get brighter. It got sharper.

  Hairline cracks he had ignored last night jumped out like someone had inked them while he slept. Blanket fibers resolved under his fingers, tiny knots and stray threads. The cough three bunks over separated into wet and dry notes. Somewhere beyond the door, metal scraped stone in a rhythm he could almost count.

  And through all of it, his left eye screamed.

  Pain lanced back into his skull. For a heartbeat he saw double—not two rooms, but two versions sliding out of sync, as if one had been laid a fraction of an inch wrong.

  The mailbox mercifully faded its panel. The flag settled back into its four-count pulse, stretched a little taller, like it was satisfied.

  He breathed until the vertigo eased enough that he trusted his stomach to stay put.

  “New rule,” he told the boots. “If it hits that hard again, I check. I don’t wait and hope the glow was decorative.”

  The boots offered no opinion.

  Another line flicked into existence, thin and sharp as a snapped nail.

  New Affinity-Linked Utility Unlocked.Identify Weakness [Structure] — Rank 1.Feedback: delayed probability destabilization. Ocular strain anticipated.

  The ache behind his eye twisted harder, like it wanted to be recognized.

  “Absolutely not,” he said, like he was refusing a bad warranty. “You can keep that.”

  The panel dissolved. The flag went back to pretending it was harmless.

  He reached for the boot again. His hand shook once, then steadied. He slid his feet into the leather. They resisted, then settled, gripping his ankles with firm intent. When he stood, the weight was there—but so was the bite of hobnails on stone.

  Less slide. Less guesswork.

  Around him, people moved with the brisk efficiency of a shift change. Belts buckled. Straps tightened. Someone cursed quietly when a knot refused to behave. No one lingered on his face. A couple of glances slid off his left eye like water off bad flashing. One man made the throat sign without quite looking at him.

  Void-eye. Hill-hand. Upgraded problem.

  “Up,” someone said.

  Merrik stood at the foot of his pallet, spear in hand, hair still damp and trying to decide which direction to point. His coat was only half-laced, as if he had given up halfway through and decided structural integrity was a group project.

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  “You alive?” he asked.

  “Define alive.”

  He snorted. “You’re answering. Good enough. Eat. Then south walk. Serh’s already up.”

  “Does she sleep?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “When she remembers how. Move.”

  Matas grabbed his belt, checked the knife and short sword out of habit. The wrist twinged at the thought of Weighted Strike and settled when he did not call it.

  Breakfast was thin porridge and a strip of salty meat that had lost the argument with open air a week ago but was still pretending. He ate fast, more for the heat than the taste. The first spoonful hit his stomach like a small mercy. The second reminded ribs and leg that they were still on speaking terms.

  Around them, work talk flowed. “Need two more lengths of good rope for the north face.” “Braces on twelve creaked all night.” “Who’s got eyes on the ice shelf above the scree run?” One phrase kept cutting through, over and over. Bad lines.

  By the time Merrik nudged his shoulder with the butt of his spear, his bowl was empty and his fingers felt mostly like his own again.

  “Come on, Snake,” Merrik said. “Before Serh decides to walk the south without us and leaves me doing paperwork.”

  “You have paperwork?”

  He made a face. “I have Tharel. Same thing.”

  The tunnels twisted toward the south walk, a slow incline that pretended to be gentle until your calves disagreed. The boots gripped well. Hobnails bit when he set his weight properly and scraped when he got lazy.

  “Don’t,” Merrik said once when Matas dragged a foot around a turn. “Leaves marks.”

  “First day,” he muttered.

  “First day is when they decide if they regret not throwing you off the ridge,” Merrik said cheerfully. “Best footwork.”

  The stone around them was different from the outer approach paths. Less weather, more stress. His newly sharpened Perception kept trying to read it like a job site. Tiny shifts in color where water had found seams. Spots where the ceiling sagged just a hair between supports, shadows settling thicker.

  Nothing screamed failure. Not yet. But the whole place had that overbuilt, under-trusting feel of a roof someone had kept adding braces to instead of fixing the load.

  They stepped out onto the ledge.

  Stone to the left. Air and distance to the right.

  The south walk curved along Samhal’s outer skin, a ribbon of worked ledge clinging to the mountain. Braces and anchors jutted at intervals—some old, some new, some patched with whatever had been at hand.

  Differences leapt out now—hue, texture, the way light soaked into one stone and skated off another. Perception did not believe in leaving well enough alone.

  Serh waited near the first brace, back to the drop, eyes on them. Her bow was unstrung but close, as always. The wind had pulled a few strands of hair from her braid and stuck them to her cheek. She did not seem to notice.

  “You took your time,” she said.

  “Had to negotiate with my nervous system,” Matas said. “We reached an agreement. For now.”

  Her gaze flicked to his left eye and back. “You read bad stone,” she said. “Now read ours.”

  Merrik took rear, spear butt planted against the inner wall. Serh gestured with her chin. “Walk. We mark what you call. Then we argue with Tharel about what he lets me fix.”

  “Looking forward to being controversial,” Matas muttered.

  He started with a timber brace sunk deep into the wall. Old wood, dark with age and mountain air. Water scars along the lower span, where melt had wept and refrozen. Iron bands held everything tight.

  “Take a look, hill-hand,” Serh said.

  Matas set his palm against the upright and listened with everything Perception had decided to make loud. Grain lines. Tiny shifts when the wind pressed the outer stone. A memory of once, maybe twice, taking more weight than it liked.

  “Not urgent,” he said. “But not immortal. Put it on a list before next freeze.”

  Serh marked it with a short stroke of chalk. “Noted.”

  A bracket farther along looked suspect at a glance—bolt heads rusted, face stained. He tested it with his weight. The metal gave a bare millimeter, then held like it had bitten into clean bone.

  “Looks ugly,” he said. “Holds fine.”

  No chalk.

  Another stretch pinged wrong in his gut on first look—stone darker, hairline lines spidering from an anchor point. He followed the path with his eyes and fingers, tracing where the force flowed. The suspect bit tied into older stone that had not moved in a century. Someone had over-braced a good section because they did not trust it, and the scars were cosmetic.

  “Sound work,” he said. “Somebody did more than they had to. Let it be.”

  Merrik snorted. “Don’t say that where Martuk can hear. He’ll try to dock someone for wasted effort.”

  “Martuk can—”

  “Later,” Serh cut in. “Eyes on stone. Mouth for after.”

  They moved, step by step, along the curve of the mountain. The wind came and went in gusts that smelled of snow and distant smoke. Below them, the drop ran down into teeth and shadow. Above, the cliff leaned in, close enough in places that you could touch both mountain and empty air with the same reach.

  Perception kept whispering. Minor flaw here. Old patch there. A spot where grit had gathered in a hairline seam, promising a later argument if water decided to join the party.

  He filed them. Said nothing if the feel was later and not now. He was not here to make work. He was here to keep the mountain from winning cheap.

  Then the air changed.

  Not much. Just enough.

  The hair on his arms rose. Sound dulled. The scrape of Merrik’s boots on stone went a little hollow, like they were walking inside a drum.

  His left eye throbbed, sharp and insistent.

  “Hold,” Serh said behind him, voice gone flat.

  The patch sat under a shallow overhang, where the wall had once sheared away and been rebuilt. The replacement stone was lighter than its neighbors, mortar lines fine and careful. Someone had been proud of this once.

  Nothing screamed failure. But the world around it thickened.

  Vision tunneled, edges going soft while the center sharpened. Every line in the stone pulled his gaze toward the same invisible point, like all the weight in that section wanted to whisper the same secret.

  Bad line.

  He set his hand to the stone.

  Omen pressure hit like a held breath. Not the full body slam from the Blessing, or the red curve in the void. This was smaller, closer. A coil under his palm.

  For a moment there were futures stacked against his skin. Workers moving along the walk, boots slipping just enough. A brace complaining a little more with each thaw. A heavy cart hitting the wrong rhythm. Stone humming with stored argument—and then not storing anymore.

  Weight shifted. Lines went bright in his mind. Failures deferred and cashed all at once.

  Every path ended the same. This section failed.

  Behind it all, the system watched. A ghost-line shimmered where the crack would run, faint and pale, like chalk before the hand that held it made a choice. Text tried to force its way through—

  Identify Weakness [Structure] —

  —glitched, and vanished. The half-born panel snapped back into nothing. Pain spiked in punishment, sharp and mean, like a nail driven under the eye from behind.

  He swallowed a noise.

  “Like rotten plywood,” he said, jaw tight. “Over a bonfire. Looks fine until it doesn’t. When it goes, it won’t be alone.”

  Serh’s expression did not change, but her chalk line was longer this time, bracket to bracket.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Depends who walks it,” he said. “How much weight, how fast they like to pretend they’re not afraid. But it’s already arguing. You leave it through another full freeze and thaw with full loads, it picks when to quit. Not you.”

  Merrik’s face had gone still. “Anyone else feel that?” he asked.

  “Feel what?” one of the other hill-hands farther down called back.

  “Nothing,” Serh said, before Matas could answer. “Keep your eyes on your own stone.”

  When he pulled his hand away, the pressure loosened—but it did not vanish. His fingers trembled. Nausea rolled in slow waves that did not care which way was down. The rest of the wall felt louder somehow, every imperfection leaning closer to whisper its CV.

  He chose not to lean on it.

  Serh noticed. Of course she did. Her gaze flicked to his shaking hand, then to his eye. “Can you walk?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he lied, because the alternative was being carried back like a broken tool on his first day.

  Merrik shifted closer behind him, just enough that if he did happen to forget which side was stone, the spear and shoulder would be there. He did not say anything. Neither did Matas.

  They finished the walk slower after that. Plain work. Hands and chalk and the thin sound of hobnails kissing stone. He left Identify Weakness alone. Whatever delayed probability destabilization meant, his morning had enough words in it already.

  They flagged two more later problems—a brace that had taken a glancing rockfall, a section of railing that had seen better winters. Nothing that hummed in his bones the way the bad patch had.

  By the time they reached the far anchor, fatigue sat bone-deep. His left eye had downgraded from screaming to sulking, but every blink came with a gritty reminder that there was more going on behind it than optics.

  Serh rapped her knuckles against the last brace, more habit than test, and nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “For today.”

  “For today,” Merrik echoed. “Stone is greedy. It will want another word soon.”

  “Stone can get in line,” Matas muttered.

  The walk back ran the same path but felt different. Chalk marks stood out like accusations. The rebuilt section under the overhang tugged at the edge of his awareness even when his back was to it, as if the mountain did not appreciate being told no.

  Inside the tunnel, the air warmed by half a breath. Voices and work noise seeped in, thinning the pressure.

  They checked in with a runner at the junction, rattled off the marks. He scratched notes on a thin slate, eyes flicking over Matas’s face once, then deliberately not returning to his left eye.

  “Tharel will want to hear it from you,” Serh said quietly when the runner trotted off.

  “Of course he will,” Matas said. “Why trust secondhand panic when you can get it live?”

  Merrik’s mouth twitched. “Try ‘live expert testimony.’ Sounds less like you’re trying to sell fear.”

  “I don’t sell fear,” Matas said. “I just point where it is.”

  * * *

  Tharel listened.

  In a small side room off the main hall, with a map-slate on the table and the lines of Samhal’s outer skin scratched into it like a scar, Matas traced the problem sections again. First the minor brace. Then the glancing rockfall. Finally, the rebuilt overhang.

  Tharel’s jaw tightened by half a degree at that one. He did not argue.

  “We knew it would need watching,” he said. “The last shift bought us time, not peace.”

  “Well,” Matas said, “time’s getting bored.”

  Tharel tapped the map once with a blunt finger. “We will talk to Martuk about work order and men. You rest. The bad lines are not done with you.”

  “Good to know the feeling is mutual,” Matas said.

  Merrik made a sound that might have been a laugh. Serh did not. Her gaze had gone to his eye again, the way it did when she thought he was not looking.

  “Go,” Tharel said. “Eat. Breathe. Do not look at anything that is not trying to kill you today.”

  “Good,” Matas said. “Short list.”

  They let him go.

  Later, alone against a quiet stretch of cool stone near the barracks, he slid down until he was sitting with his back to the wall and his knees up, boots planted. The rock at his spine felt honest. Mostly.

  The mailbox pulsed. Of course it did.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s see the bill.”

  Status: Displaced.Level Classification: Index 7.Resources: Stable.Affinity Channel: Rus…Om….Unresolved.Unspent skill points: 25.

  Twenty-five unspent skill points sat there like another live wire. The new utility—Identify Weakness [Structure], with its delayed probability destabilization—hovered at the edge of his attention like a bad idea he had already tried once without meaning to.

  Every time his left eye screamed, the system took notes. Every time he did not use the tool it had put on the table, it waited.

  Hand for the Hills, Martuk had said. Work, risk, or waste.

  He leaned his head back until it touched stone and closed his eyes.

  The pulse in the corner of his vision kept time. Four-count. Four-count. Four-count.

  Hill-hand. Void-eye. Index 7.

  And somewhere deep under Samhal, under all the braces and bad lines and careful chalk, the hum rose again—not the lazy settling of a mountain resting on its own bones. This was rhythmic. Intentional. Like something underneath had heard what he’d found on the south walk and was answering.

  The stranger’s voice drifted back to him, thin as smoke: Put your hand on the floor. Pay attention to which direction the weight is moving.

  He put his hand on the floor.

  The weight was moving down.