Then a groan—brief, pained, quickly stifled. Nora gasped. “That was a person.” They didn’t stop after that. They climbed faster, pulse and focus narrowing into something sharp and brittle. As they gained height, the dark seam in the rock became clearer—what Ethan had taken for shadow resolving into something too precise to be natural.
Straight edges. Clean interruptions. The pink fluid was thicker here, no longer seeping randomly but emerging from a single point higher up. And then they saw it. Nora reached it first and stopped short, one hand braced against the cliff, the other hovering inches from the surface. “Ethan,” she said slowly, “this isn’t part of the rock.” He pulled himself level with her.