They rested three more days in the hollow, and then the road called again, the way it always did.
The problem was simple enough to name. Eleven Skyward beings, all of them sitting just past the door of their new rank, and somewhere ahead of each of them, a wall of chains at every thousand points. Chains that only combat power could break, and stats that only Skyward resources could raise.
"So we need resources," Rin summed up over breakfast, counting on her fingers. "A lot of them. More than we will trip over by wandering."
"Then we ask the one who has never once steered us wrong," Erix said. "We go to the Shrine, and we ask for work, or at least for a direction."
The climb up the high mountain felt almost familiar now, a road worn smooth by their own feet. The storm-being's chamber was the same as always, the great turning dark, the countless lights drifting through it like slow stars.
But this time, when Erix asked, the being did not simply give them a task.
