You climb the black-streaked slope, boots biting into ash and pine needles as you look for a place where stone and earth meet cleanly. The volcano’s flank is warm beneath your hand, and every crack in the rock seems to whisper about hidden chambers and pressure held in check. Below you, the others keep working, their picks ringing like sparks in the morning air. From this height, the forest seems less like a boundary and more like a resource waiting to be named.

A seam of basalt cuts through the hillside at a shallow angle, half-hidden by roots and a tumble of broken stone. It offers shelter, defensibility, and a natural throat for a fortress entrance, but it also sits near a narrow runoff channel that could become a flood path in heavy rain. You spot old scorch marks in the soil and a cluster of heat-loving ferns curling around a fissure that exhales faint sulfur. The place feels promising in the way a blade feels promising: useful, precise, and dangerous if handled badly.