Gareth's POV
The bottom of the cliff was not what I had expected.
I had expected - I wasn't certain what I had expected. Something that matched the scale of the drop, perhaps. Something that felt like an ending.
What I found was bones.
Old ones, everywhere - the quiet record of a cliff that had been receiving things for a very long time and had never given any of them back. The fog lay over everything, thick and still, and the trees began where the cliff base ended and went on in all directions into a dark that the torches we had brought did not meaningfully address.
Kade crouched near the cliff base and looked at the ground.
"Fresh marks," he said.
I came to him. Bellick was already there.
The ground near the base of the cliff had the disturbed quality of something that had made significant contact with it recently - the particular impression of an impact, the marks of something that had lain here and then moved.
"He's alive," Kade said.
