The path climbed.
Stone underfoot, pale and smooth, each step slightly higher than the last. The canopy thinned as they ascended - branches spacing wider, leaves becoming sparse, the cloud glow and the festival lanterns filtering through in patches that grew larger with each meter of elevation gained. The sound of the festival fell away behind them in stages, the music fading first, then the voices, then the ambient hum of a city celebrating, until the only sounds were their footsteps on the stone and the quiet breathing of two people walking upward toward something they hadn't seen yet.
The path curved once, following the contour of a trunk so massive that the stone had been laid around it rather than through it, and then opened.
