[Northern Mountains — Eastern Island — Day 72 — 7:00 AM]
The camp was broken in twenty minutes.
The team did that well — breaking camp, moving it, setting up the next — with the efficiency of people who had spent weeks learning to do it fast because there wasn't always time to do it slowly.
This morning there was time.
They did it fast anyway.
The descent began with the sun still low over the snow‑capped peaks, the northern mountains of the Eastern Island more familiar on the way down than they had been on the ascent — the team knew the terrain now, the points where the rock gave way, the angles where the wind changed direction, the three kilometers before the Silent Threshold where the fauna stopped appearing.
Now the fauna still didn't appear.
Not because of the Threshold.
Because of the team.
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Raven walked.
