On the third day, it reached full glow before noon.
He was mid-hunt when it happened. He felt it rather than saw it, a resonance in the ambient essence of the area that registered in the background of his awareness and drew his attention backward toward the altar.
He finished what he was doing.
Then walked back.
The altar was fully lit… warm, steady, the same patient quality as the other three.
He looked at it for a moment.
Then he allowed himself to actually feel what three days of sustained work had cost—the rib that still slightly ached from the Grade Three's hit, the accumulated tiredness in his hands from extraction after extraction, the deep background fatigue of a body that had been running hard since before the three strongholds and had not been given the full recovery it was eventually going to insist on.
He gave himself ten minutes.
Sat beside the glowing altar.
Let Luton settle on his head.
Ate what he had left.
Then he looked at the record.
The fifth altar.
