His leading foot found empty space where solid rock should have been; his ankle twisted into a hidden fissure, and heat surged up his leg as his balance broke sideways.

Sals is moving blind. He has no sky, no horizon, no sight of where he stands. His only connection to the world beneath him is a wooden stick and the sound it makes against rock. He has learned to trust that sound completely. Then it disappears. His foot finds nothing. His body tilts. The stick falls and does not stop. In one unannounced instant, the agreement he had with the earth is gone. What the line notices is how ordinary the moment is. No warning. No buildup. One step, and the thing he relied on most simply is not there. You know this feeling. Not always on a mountain path, but somewhere. A conversation that shifts the ground. A door that closes. A certainty that turns out not to have been one. The thing you were counting on goes quiet, and you are left tilting, reaching, finding only air. It does not mean you are falling. It means you are pausing at the edge of something you cannot yet see. What was the last solid thing you reached for that wasn't there?