Page 233 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

She crosses slowly, boots finding each steel rung, breath steady, shoulders squared against the pull of the wind.

When she reaches the other side, she turns and grins triumphantly at me.

I cross the bridge next, my gloved hands sliding along the guide ropes I've strung as railings.

She watches me, and her eyes move over the anchors, the ropes, the reinforced knots, and the footholds cut into the ice.

She doesn't say anything, but I can see her trying to figure it all out. What have I been doing up here? Why have I built a bridge?

We climb for another few minutes before the last stretch narrows between two walls of stone, blocking everything but sky. Halley’s breathing is loud behind me. She's tired but steady, and the bond is bursting with curiosity.

Then the rocks thin, and it's all revealed.

For a second, she says nothing.

The wind picks up as it rolls across the surrounding cliffs, carrying the cold, clean bite of snow off the mountain peak.

Beneath our feet, the ridgeline drops down, and the mountain falls away to a striking view.

I don’t look at it. I look at her.

Her eyes widen, her lips part, the bond tightens for half a heartbeat before pure hope bursts forth.

Finally, I let myself look too.

Blackreach stretches endlessly beneath the rising sun, so vast it makes even the mountain range we're standing on top of feel small. Golden light spills across sweeping grasslands and rolling desert plains, broken by winding rivers and sparse forests dark against the earth. The early morning haze softens the horizon until the province seems to go on forever.

A beautiful, untouched land full of possibilities.

Even after all the times I’ve stood here alone, it still takes my breath away.

Halley steps closer to the edge slowly, staring out over the landscape wide-eyed and unblinking. I move with her automatically, close enough that if she slips, I can pull her to safety.

Her throat works as she looks down at the narrow trail winding between the cliffs below us. Sunlight catches in her hair while the wind whips strands of it across her face.

"That’s.. there's a path down?"

"Yeah."

She follows it with her eyes. It's not an easy route. The pathway up the mountain is tough, and going down the other side isn't much safer. The passage is barely wide enough for one person in places, disappearing beneath rock overhangs and steep declines before reappearing farther down the mountain.

No chance of moving an army through it.

But for determined people?

Survivors?

Small groups willing to brave the climb for a chance at a future life?

It's possible.

I lean against the rock beside her and let her take it in at her own pace.

"It bypasses the Pass completely," she says softly.

I nod.

Hope settles warm and aching through the bond between us. We crushed that hope the day we destroyed the Pass into Blackreach, and fuck, is it nice to feel it back.