The cairn trail ended at a cliff face that wasn't a cliff face.
Eloy spotted the seam three paces before he would have walked into it. A vertical line where the rock grain didn't match, the edges too clean for natural weathering. Pre-war construction, same precision as the way station floor. He pressed his palm against the stone. Cold. The vibration from the cairn still hummed in his shinbones, a frequency Caldera's Edge matched from its sheath.
"Here." He didn't raise his voice. Maya was already watching his hand. Isolde had stopped five paces back, scanning the treeline.
A slab of rock rotated inward on a pivot mechanism that didn't grind. Hinges greased this decade.
Behind it, lantern light.
The alcove was deeper than the overhang they'd slept under, ten meters across and carved in a rough semicircle. Two oil lanterns hung from iron hooks. Their flames didn't flicker, protected from the wind by the cliff's curve.
