The high ridges of Monastiraki pretend to be empty until you look close. Kethmoss, a frost thin lichen, dusts the stone like ice, skrenbirch, a wind bent dwarf birch, hugs boulders the wind cannot topple, and the soil stays locked until the brief thaw. I mark every patch the way sailors mark reefs, because the herds and the people that follow them live or starve based on those thin lines of growth. The plateau holds none of the indulgence of the rift; it rewards patience and attention more than strength.

Here kethmoss sets the pace. It grows a fingernail a year, thin enough that wind scours it away if herds linger. Watch a thessvara, the plateau horse, lower its head and rasp the crust with teeth that never stop growing, trading enamel for calories. The sound of that scraping carries across the ridges like a metronome. When the lichen thickens near iron rich outcrops, the herds slow and spread out. That gives me time to test the mineral load in the soil and guess which slopes will hold through the next thaw. When the lichen fails, skrenbirch takes over. Resin and dense wood keep sap moving even in deep cold, and bark curls peel away under a hungry muzzle with a scent of pine and sulfur. The horses leave enough to keep the tree alive because they learned long ago what happens when the last bark strip comes off.

Thessvara herds turn the circuit into a living map. They scrape kethmoss until the rock shines, then swing wide to let the crust heal, and their route is the closest thing this region has to a calendar. When hunger presses, they strip skrenbirch bark in narrow curls, but the wise riders prune the trees and smear mud over the wounds to keep them alive for the next pass. Every choice is a pact. Spare the bark now to save the herd later, and the herd carries you across stormed ridges that would kill any caravan from the rift below.

Predators and rumor move along those same paths. A vethsmara, the rift lion, cresting the ridge scatters a herd before a single roar. Even a distant scent can turn a migration route into a weeks long detour. Wolves drift up from the rift in lean winters to test the herds, and a single rek, the rift salamander, hauled out near a melt pool is enough to keep riders from watering there for a month. News of an ivramor, the steppe mammoth, carcass drifting up from the river draws migrants down toward the steam, knowing the Thalen guilds will strip it soon. The plateau is never truly remote; it listens to the valley and answers in its own slow rhythm, echoing the seasonal pulse I track in Seasons Along the Rift and the survival craft in Crafting Survival in the Mist.

Humans add their own layers to the circuit. Camps sit on old moraine lines where wind clears snow and kethmoss clings longest. Children learn to read kethmoss texture with bare fingers, counting crystal grit to gauge when to move the herd. Elders tap skrenbirch resin into clay lamps, trading light for warmth on nights when fog rolls over the ridge and blinds every lookout. Trade runs along these same threads. Dried kethmoss cakes for winter tea, skrenbirch bark for baskets, thessvara hide for felt, all carried to Thalen markets that rarely see the plateau with their own eyes. In return the migrants take salt, lacquer, and bronze bits for tack, weaving lowland goods into a life that still answers first to lichen and wind.