Chapter 410 - 409: Holt’s Threshold
Location:Seven Peaks — Eastern Formation Junction (Node 7), Anvil Corps Barracks
Date/Time:TC1854.11.28
Node 7 stood at the eastern edge of Seven Peaks’ formation network — a pillar of formation-enhanced stone, 3 meters tall, anchored to a granite outcrop that overlooked the territory’s eastern approaches. The node was one of twelve primaries in the network Silas had designed, and it carried the relay signal that connected Seven Peaks to the Sanctum-zone monitoring stations. When Node 7 functioned properly, the eastern communities received formation relay coverage for communication, detection, and emergency alert. When it degraded, the eastern coverage developed gaps, and gaps in coverage near the Sanctum were not something anyone wanted.
The node was degrading.
Craine could see it before they reached the outcrop — a faint irregularity in the pillar’s spiritual energy emissions, visible to his targeting eye as a shimmer that should have been steady and wasn’t. The housing — the formation-enhanced shell that held the relay crystal in alignment with the network — was cracking. Micro-fractures, accumulated over fourteen months of sustained energy cycling, propagating through the crystalline structure the way fatigue propagated through metal: slowly, invisibly, and then all at once.
They arrived at 06:00. Dawn light on the eastern hills. The air cold — Frost Season settling into the altitude, the kind of chill that made your breath visible and your fingers stiff. Holt’s augmented spine would keep her core temperature stable. Her organic hands were another matter.
"Cold hands?" Craine asked.
"Cold hands." She rubbed them together. Blew on them. The gesture of a person who’d spent fifteen years in the Imperial Guard and hadn’t been issued gloves that worked with formation interfaces because the Imperial Guard’s equipment procurement system was designed by people who had never repaired a formation node at altitude in winter.
"When the forge impulse activates, the cold won’t matter. The energy flow will warm your hands from the inside."
"And until then?"
"Until then, cold hands."