[Before everyone received the notification]
Seven days. Seven days since Neville had abandoned the false security of his campsite, and the wilds had done nothing but sharpen their teeth against him. His pack hung light on his shoulders, his boots scuffed to the welt, and every rustle in the undergrowth carried the promise of violence. But none of that mattered now.
Because of the cliff.
It wasn't a wall—it was a verdict. A sheer, merciless face of weathered stone, slick with tendrils of moss and crumbling shale, rising thirty feet into the fading light. The path he'd been following simply ended here, as if the earth had grown bored of his journey and cut him off. One misstep, one flake of rock giving way beneath his fingers, and he'd be nothing but a red smear on the boulders below.
