The Way Under the Bell

The bell rang once. Oliver kept his hand away from Mercy’s whistle.

Across the gap, Otta’s tower stood on its narrow shelf of stone, the old landing hanging below it in broken pieces. The bell’s rope moved once in the dark tower doorway, then went still.

“She heard us,” Oliver said.

Nadia studied the gap. “That’s all we know.”

Behind them, Mercy waited where the bypass had delivered the engine. The track ended at their feet. The lower route had carried them forward once, and the cracked bracket they’d crossed was no path back. They had the engine, a hand winch, and a coil of safety line. None of those things made the tower’s landing sound.

Nadia crouched beside the rail end. The stone beneath it had broken away in a steep drop. Far below, the cliff face bent toward the tower’s foundation, mostly hidden by a shelf of jutting rock.

“Could be a ledge,” Oliver said.

“Could be a wall that looks like one from here.”

She took the weighted probe from his kit and lowered it on a thin cord. It struck stone once, swung, then touched again farther out. Nadia let out another length. The weight slid across a hard surface. She pulled it back and checked the chalk marks on the cord.

“Twenty feet down. It runs toward the tower.”

“Surface or loose rubble?”

She tested again. The weight scraped, caught, then dropped a few inches before stopping. “Mostly stone. There’s a break.”

Oliver looked from the probe line to the tower. The old landing was too damaged to use. The cliff shelf might go around the gap, but they couldn’t see where it narrowed or ended.

He tied the safety line to Mercy’s forward frame. “We can use the engine as an anchor while we inspect. No pull from the rail.”

Nadia nodded. She checked his knot, then tied the other end around her waist. Oliver clipped in behind her.

The first iron eye was set into the cliff wall beneath the track. Oliver leaned his weight into it while Nadia watched the bolt. It held. The next one looked rusted through. She skipped it, fed the line around the third, and tested the route by pulling hard enough to rattle grit from the stone.

They descended one at a time. Nadia went first, boot finding the shelf where the probe had touched. Oliver kept the line taut from above, following as the cliff hid them from Mercy’s windows.

The shelf was narrow but solid, barely wide enough for their feet. A low overhang scraped Nadia’s shoulder. She moved sideways, one hand against the rock and the other holding the line clear of the iron eyes. Halfway to the tower, the shelf pinched down to a slant of broken stone. The route continued around a jut in the cliff, out of sight.