Chapter 175: Horrible Histories
Chapter 175: Horrible Histories
One small mark.
Only one.
Rohan stared at it for a long moment.
Maerin noticed.
She moved to the table and removed her mask, revealing a weathered face with a scar running from the corner of her jaw to just below one ear. She was older than he had guessed. Not elderly, but old enough that the authority in her posture had been earned repeatedly.
"Sit," she said.
Rohan sat across from her.
The quest panel appeared again.
[Quest Progress: Report to the Ash-House]
[Objective Complete: Follow Captain Maerin to the Ash-House.]
[Reward Acquired: Local Knowledge]
The words faded almost immediately.
Rohan waited.
Nothing poured into his mind.
No sudden download. No map. No convenient packet of facts.
Instead, Maerin folded her hands on the table and said, "Now. Tell me where you came from."
Rohan looked at the empty space where the panel had been.
Then at Maerin.
’So the reward isn’t given by the system directly.’
His intrigue sharpened.
’The quest reward is the conversation.’
That was almost more interesting. The Great System was not simply handing him answers. It was nudging him toward situations where he could obtain them.
The implications of that were enormous.
Also very annoying.
"I came from the west," Rohan said carefully.
"No one comes from the west."
"You mentioned."
"The Hollow West kills caravans, patrols, and fools. Which one are you?"
"Lost."
"That is not one of the three."
"I’m expanding your categories."
Maerin did not laugh at Rohan’s sarcasm.
Rohan sighed and leaned back, careful of his burned shoulders.
"I don’t know how much you’ll believe."
"Try truth."
"That tends to cause problems."
"Lies cause more."
"Depends how good they are."
Her stare hardened.
Rohan raised his uninjured hand slightly.
"Fine. Truth. I am not from Veyrhold. I am not from another hold. I am not from this planet. I was brought here by someone powerful, with very little explanation, and dropped into the Ashen Marches. I found the marked path, saw the settlement, got distracted by people screaming for help, fought the skarn, and then your patrol found us."
Maerin said nothing for several seconds.
The stove clicked softly in the corner.
Outside the inner room, Rohan could hear footsteps, low voices, and the distant scrape of brushes against stone.
"You expect me to believe you fell from the sky?" Maerin asked.
"No. I expect you to believe I’m ignorant enough that pretending otherwise would waste both our time."
That landed better.
Not well, exactly, but better.
Maerin’s eyes moved over him again, this time less like she was judging a threat and more like she was fitting pieces together.
"You speak our tongue but not our names for things."
"I don’t think I speak your tongue. I think something is translating."
"Something."
"Yes."
"The same something that showed you an invisible thing at the gate?"
Rohan stilled.
Maerin caught it.
"You are not subtle."
"I had a rough day."
"So did Liora. She did not wave her hand through empty air."
"Maybe she’s more polite."
Maerin leaned back.
"For saving Liora and Bryan, you are owed thanks. For bringing unknown ash-working through my gate, you are owed suspicion. Both can be true."
"I know."
"Good."
Her gaze shifted to the map.
"You said you are not from this planet."
Rohan followed her eyes.
The frustration he had been holding back stirred again, but now it mixed with hunger. Not for food, though his body certainly wanted that too.
For answers.
"Where am I?" he asked.
Maerin was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "This world is called Cael Athis by the merchants. The old records call it Kharon-7. Most of us just call it the Ash."
Rohan looked at the map.
"The whole planet?"
"The whole planet that matters."
"That is not comforting."
"It was not meant to be."
He swallowed.
"And humans live here?"
Maerin’s expression changed slightly.
Not much.
But enough.
"Yes."
"How many settlements?"
There it was.
The question that had been forming since the moment he saw the map.
Maerin did not answer immediately, and that delay told him more than he wanted to know.
Rohan’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
"How many?" he repeated.
"One."
The word landed heavily.
For a second, he thought he had misunderstood the translation.
"One settlement nearby?"
"One human settlement on Cael Athis."
Rohan stared at her.
The room seemed to shrink.
Outside, Veyrhold continued making its small human noises. Footsteps. Voices. Metal. Steam. A child coughing somewhere beyond the wall. The sounds should have made the place feel alive. Instead, they suddenly felt fragile.
One settlement.
On the entire planet.
"This is it?" Rohan asked.
"Yes."
"No cities? No other holds? No colonies?"
"No."
"What happened to them?"
Maerin’s face closed.
"There were never others."
That was worse.
Rohan looked back at the map, searching for marks he had missed. He found routes, resource sites, danger zones, old wreckage fields, skarn nests, storm regions, and areas marked with symbols that translated only as Do Not Cross.
But no other human names.
No other lights in the dark.
"How did humans even get here?" he asked.
Maerin’s gaze moved to one of the shelves.
There, behind a sheet of cloudy glass, rested a piece of metal unlike the rest of the room. Smooth. Pale. Curved. Too clean in shape despite its age. It looked less forged than manufactured.
"We crashed," she said.
Rohan slowly turned back to her.
"A spaceship."
"You know ships?"
"I know of them."
"Then yes. A ship came down in the Ashen Marches hundreds of years ago. It broke across the plain east of here. The first survivors built shelter from its bones. That shelter became Veyrhold."
Rohan said nothing.
A crashed spaceship.
Hundreds of years ago.
The only human settlement on the planet.
Each fact connected to the next with horrible simplicity.
Humans were not native here. They had not chosen this world. They had fallen onto it, survived somehow, and then remained trapped long enough for generations to be born beneath ash skies without ever seeing another human settlement.
Rohan felt frustration rise so sharply it was almost physical.
He stood.
The chair scraped back.