The transition from the scorched buffer zone to the true, untamed northern territories was not a gradual shift in topography. It was a brutal, vertical collision of jagged shale and freezing atmospheric pressure.
As the bruised, purple twilight completely surrendered to the pitch-black void of the nocturnal cycle, the endless ocean of melted black ash finally broke against the base of a massive, towering mountain range. The Old World had called them the northern peaks. To the Global System, they were an elevated, high-density mana incubator, entirely untouched by the Coalition's heavy artillery.
Ren did not break his measured, mechanical stride as the incline drastically sharpened.
