The trail crimped.
One moment the smuggler's path was wide enough for two horses abreast, scrub pines scraping at their shoulders. The next, limestone walls squeezed tight, forcing them single-file into a cut that felt like walking down a rifle barrel. Eloy's HUD drew the wireframe overlay and flagged the cairn marker ahead.
He stopped. Not because of the walls.
Cairn's top stone had fresh edges. Chisel marks. Less than three days old.
Above the ravine, the sky held grey at the eastern edge, not yet gold. False dawn. The kind of light that made everything look cold and slightly unreal, like a loading screen that hadn't finished rendering.
Isolde swayed beside him. Her face was grey, the same color as the limestone, and her right hand pressed flat against her thigh before she took her next step. A half-second pause. The knee. Eloy's HUD tracked the movement, flagged it, then dismissed it. No hostile tag. Just her body cashing checks her will kept writing.
