Location:The western plateau — The Second Dead Field
Date/Time:20 Voidmarch, 9942 AZI
Realm:Lower Realm
At first light, Yinxin was out at the cairns, and she had been there long enough that the frost had gone off the stone under her hands.
"Nineteen," she said, before Jayde had finished crossing the gray. "I counted them twice. Nineteen cairns, and the newest one has a stone on it that has not weathered."
"Somebody came out here this winter."
"Somebody comes out here every winter, and has done for so long that the first of these has sunk into the ground, and not one of them has ever known what they were marking." She did not turn round. "They marked it anyway. Nineteen generations of a family walking to the edge of a thing they could not name and putting a stone down to say not past here. I have flown over the top of this plateau a great many times and I never once looked down. They have been looking at it their whole lives."
