Chapter 200: Next

The eastern gate was quieter than the western one. Only a handful of players used the old road, and most turned onto newer routes before reaching the low hills outside the city. By the time Luke and Lauren passed the first weathered signpost, the city walls were already sinking out of sight beyond the rising ground. Luke checked the timer at the edge of his interface as they continued along the old road.

[Remaining supervised session time: 36:18]

"Plenty."

"Enough if the survey really is as simple as it sounds." Lauren walked beside him with one hand resting lightly around his left arm. "We still have to report back and disconnect before the session ends."

Luke nodded and left the timer alone. The maintained road gradually narrowed as grass pushed through cracks in the pale paving stones. Someone had once planted fruit trees along both sides, but the orchard mentioned in the quest description had been abandoned long enough for its neat rows to disappear beneath weeds and wild shrubs. Several branches still carried small red fruits, most pecked open by birds or left to rot where they hung.

Luke reached toward one of the better-looking fruits, then stopped short of touching it. Lauren angled her blindfold toward him.

"Having second thoughts?"

"I have no idea what it is."

"Good. I’d rather not end our session because you decided to eat mystery fruit."

Luke lowered his hand. After everything they had eaten, fought, and nearly been killed by in Powerforge, trusting an unknown fruit because it looked harmless seemed like a poor use of their second supervised session.

They continued through the orchard without seeing another player. Small animals moved through the undergrowth, but nothing large followed them, and Luke gradually let the spear rest more comfortably against his shoulder. An overturned cart sat half buried beneath vines near an old irrigation channel, with one collapsed wheel and a rusted hand tool almost hidden among the weeds.

Lauren stopped beside it and ran her fingers across the remaining wheel. "Someone used to work all of this."

Luke looked along the half-hidden rows of trees. The orchard had needed people to plant it, repair the channels, harvest the fruit, and use the road before weeds swallowed the paving stones.

"After Lethariel, it’s hard to look at places like this as scenery."

"It is."

She stepped away from the cart and took his hand again. Neither of them said anything else about it as they followed the old road through the remaining trees, but Luke found himself noticing more of what had been left behind. Broken irrigation stones, abandoned tools, and collapsed fences were no longer decorations around a quest route. Someone had needed them once.

The quest marker appeared beyond a low stone wall at the far end of the orchard. A single dark pillar stood beside the road on the open hillside, reaching roughly to Luke’s chest and wide enough that he could not have wrapped both arms around it.

"The waystone," Lauren said.

They stopped several steps away. Time had rounded what had once been sharper edges, and pale moss covered much of the lower half. A jagged fracture split the upper right side, while another chunk near the base had broken away entirely.

The damage itself looked old. What pulled Luke’s attention toward the center was the pattern carved through it.

Nine narrow grooves radiated from a circular depression in the stone. Eight ended near the outer edge in small symbols worn smooth by age, while the ninth dropped lower than the others and vanished into the largest crack. Its surface was nearly black.

Luke moved around the pillar, studying the ground as well as the stone. No fresh tracks surrounded it, and there were no claw marks or disturbed patches of earth that suggested something had attacked the structure recently.

He crouched near the broken section. "Whatever came off here isn’t lying nearby."

"Could someone have taken the pieces?"

"Maybe."

Weather had softened most of the fracture, yet the dark groove remained sharply defined even where it crossed exposed stone. Luke picked up a fallen branch and touched the channel with the tip rather than using his hand, then dragged the wood lightly toward the circular depression. The waystone remained inert.

A system window appeared when Luke focused on it.

[Damaged Waystone]

[Function impaired.]

[Route survey available.]

"Powerforge recognizes the damage, but that’s all it’s giving me."

Lauren turned toward the orchard and the hills beyond it. Nothing moved except branches in the wind.

"I’ll check the immediate futures."

Luke stepped close enough to catch her if she lost balance but gave her room to concentrate. Violet lines brightened across the blindfold as Oracle’s Glimpse activated.

At first, the futures were mundane. Lauren saw Luke walking around the pillar again, opening the quest interface, and eventually heading back toward the city with her. Another possibility showed him continuing to prod the groove with his branch for far longer than necessary, which almost made her smile.

Then one future vanished.

It did not fade or shift into another possibility. A vertical strip of darkness cut through the vision where the ninth groove should have been, widened across the waystone, and swallowed the orchard with it.

Cold gray light replaced the afternoon sun. Pale towers rose beneath a dark sky, and lightning remained frozen between the clouds. Far between two of the towers stood the same tall, narrow figure they had seen beyond Route Nine, with no visible face beneath the branching shadows rising from its head. Lauren’s breath caught, and the glimpse broke before she could see anything more.

Luke caught her by the upper arms when she staggered backward. "Lauren."

"I’m all right."

Her voice stayed controlled, but all color had drained from the lower half of her face. Luke kept his hands on her until she had her balance.

"Tell me exactly what you saw."

Her fingers closed around Luke’s left wrist. "The towers."

The Route Nine incident returned to him at once. Pale structures beneath a dark sky, lightning suspended between the clouds, and the faceless figure moving toward the unstable passage before it closed.

"The same place?"

"I only saw it for a second, but yes. Pale towers, the dark sky, and lightning that wasn’t moving."

Luke’s hands tightened slightly around her arms. "And the figure?"

Lauren nodded. "Tall and narrow. No visible face. Those branching shadows around its head."

Luke didn’t need anything else. He released her and studied the ninth groove from farther away, suddenly far less interested in discovering what the damaged stone was meant to do. Moss still clung to its surface, insects moved through the grass, and warm sunlight covered the hillside, yet Lauren had seen something that belonged nowhere near this peaceful road.

Before either of them considered approaching again, the black groove brightened. Luke shifted in front of Lauren while she caught the back of his shirt and moved with him.

A thin gray light traveled from the crack near the base of the pillar toward the circular depression, illuminating the ninth groove while leaving the other eight dark. It reached the center and stopped.

[Waystone response detected.]

Luke brought the spear into both hands. Lauren stayed close at his left side, but she made no attempt to activate Oracle’s Glimpse again.

[Unregistered route signature.]

An empty line flickered beneath the first two messages. It vanished, reappeared, and remained blank for several seconds before new text finally formed.

[Route designation: IX]

Luke stared at the Roman numeral while the implications settled in. The Ruinborn receiving frame beneath the steel depot had been built along the old Route Nine freight spur. Powerforge labeling an impossible ninth path as IX did not prove the two were connected, but the similarity was too specific for Luke to dismiss.

The gray light inside the groove strengthened again, and another pair of messages appeared.

[Connection incomplete.]

[Receiving point unavailable.]

His attention caught on the final phrase. The Bureau had called the Ruinborn machinery beneath Route Nine a receiving frame, while Powerforge was now referring to a receiving point. Luke had no idea whether the terms described related mechanisms, and after everything that had happened around the Ruinborn, he had no intention of testing that theory himself.

He backed away another step. "We’re reporting this and leaving."

Lauren turned toward him. "You don’t want to wait and see whether it does anything else?"

"No."

The answer came more easily than Luke expected. He wanted to know what the ninth route was, why Powerforge recognized it, and whether the pale-tower world could actually connect to this waystone, but none of those questions justified opening something they might not be able to close.

The Bureau could monitor their real bodies, but nobody outside Powerforge could see the waystone or whatever might appear beside it. If a passage formed here, Luke and Lauren would have to deal with the consequences alone.

"The quest asked us whether the route is safe," Luke said. "We have our answer."

Lauren faced the stone for another moment before turning away from it. "I’m with you."

Luke opened the survey interface and selected the hazard warning.

[Roadside Survey]

[Inspect the damaged waystone along the old eastern road and report whether the route remains safe for travelers.]

[Route appears safe.]

[Potential hazard discovered.]

[Potential hazard recorded.]

[Return to the eastern gate survey clerk.]

The gray light inside the ninth groove faded. The other messages disappeared one after another until only the ordinary quest marker remained, but Luke stayed several steps away while committing the wording to memory.

Lauren saved him the effort of repeating it silently. "Route designation nine. Connection incomplete. Receiving point unavailable."

"I have the rest."

They left without touching the stone again. On the way back through the orchard, neither stopped at the cart or the fruit trees, and Luke watched the surrounding slopes more closely than he had on the way out. The hillside remained warm and ordinary behind them. No gate opened over the orchard, no pale towers appeared beyond the trees, and nothing followed them toward the city.

By the time the eastern walls came into view, the timer had dropped below fifteen minutes. They had enough time to finish the survey properly, but neither suggested spending what remained on another detour.

The survey clerk worked from a narrow booth beside the gate, surrounded by rolled maps, measuring rods, and stacks of wooden markers. He accepted the quest record, glanced over it, and frowned at the hazard report.

"What did you find?"

"The waystone reacted while we were inspecting it," Luke said.

The clerk pulled a blank sheet of parchment toward himself. "Describe the damage."

Luke explained the missing stone, the blackened groove, and the light traveling toward the center. Lauren described the brief view Oracle’s Glimpse had given her without naming Route Nine or the Bureau investigation.

The clerk’s pen stopped when she mentioned the extra groove. "Nine?"

"Yes," Lauren said.

"Draw it."

Luke accepted the parchment and sketched the pillar as accurately as he could. His drawing was rough, but the circular center and the nine routes were clear enough.

The clerk studied it, then turned toward the shelves behind him. He pulled out a rolled diagram, flattened it across the counter, and tapped the drawing of an eastern waystone.

Eight route marks surrounded its center. Their placement matched what Luke and Lauren had seen almost perfectly, but there was no ninth groove.

"Every route diagram we have shows eight registered marks on the eastern stone."

Luke leaned closer. "What did they connect to?"

"Road stations, neighboring districts, old transit stones. Depends on the mark."

"And the ninth?"

The clerk’s expression tightened. "There is no registered ninth route."

Luke glanced at Lauren. Her fingers closed around his left hand as the system message returned to him with uncomfortable clarity.

[Route designation: IX]

"If there was another mark, could somebody have added it later?"

"Not according to any route record I have." The clerk looked toward the eastern road. "That stone hasn’t worked properly for years. Most traffic moved to the newer route after the orchard failed."

"When did it stop working?"

The clerk frowned at Luke’s drawing again. "Long before I took this post."

Luke checked the timer. They still had minutes left, but not enough to start chasing a mystery involving a world that had already nearly reached Earth once.

"We’re taking this straight to the Bureau."

Lauren squeezed his hand. "Yes."

They left the booth and headed toward the arrival courtyard without spending the remaining session time on another quest. Luke had gone into Powerforge hoping to explore, handle something manageable, and enjoy being back beside Lauren, and they had managed most of that.

The final quest had simply changed what they would be reporting when they woke. Every route diagram the clerk possessed showed eight marks on the eastern waystone, while Powerforge had recognized a ninth.