The foothills rose in long, uneven folds. Old stone covered in scrub grass and the kind of quiet that only showed up after sothing stopped burning. Eloy’s legs moved on autopilot. His ankle had gone from screaming to a dull persistent throb, either improvent or numbness. Probably numbness.
He’d take it.
Behind them, the fire was an orange sar on the horizon. Getting smaller. The ten signatures were down in the valley, circling a gully entrance that led to a passage they’d already left. By the ti those signatures figured out the exit vector, the trail would be cold.
Three people walking uphill in the dark.
"Water break." Isolde stopped beside a flat-topped boulder. No question in it. Eloy dropped onto the stone before his legs could argue. The pack hit the ground next to him. Water skin. Half full. He drank two swallows and handed it to Maya without thinking about it.
Maya took it. Drank. Handed it to Isolde. No ceremony. No negotiation.
[404ManaNotFound]: hydration check. finally.
[nachtfalter]: first quiet mont in a while
[crispyfry65]: bro is ACTUALLY sitting down
[coldfront44]: they’ve been running since the creek. give them a break.
The chat was slower now. ssages drifting in every few seconds instead of the frantic scroll of the fire escape. So usernas had dropped off entirely. Asleep, probably. Different ti zones. Different lives. A few remained. Watching.
[QuietLurker01]: she didn’t count the sips
Eloy rubbed his eyes.
The night sky above the foothills rendered more stars than his GPU had ever processed: no light pollution, no city glow. Real-ti particle density, running at what appeared to be maximum render distance.
He realized he was counting the stars and, instead, looked down at his boots. A useful habit. Eyes on the ground, not the sky. The ground held hazards. The sky held nothing he could use.
He pulled up the DEVIATION SENSE overlay. The foothills rendered in his peripheral vision as a topographic wirefra: contour lines, elevation markers, a faint blue grid where the terrain was stable and amber patches where the rock was loose. Standard overlay. Sa one he’d been using since the surface.
The network connection indicator pulsed once in the corner of his vision, a faint red dot. He closed the overlay. Four percent MP. Not enough to go poking at things he didn’t understand.
"So." Maya’s voice ca from the other side of the boulder, making him focus on her instead. She’d settled with her satchel in her lap, one hand resting on the leather, the other tracing the edge of the closed fan. "We are approximately four kiloters south of the capital periter. The patrols don’t extend past the second ridge line at night. We have perhaps six hours of darkness before the sweep expands."
She was establishing facts. Building a frawork out of chaos, the way she always did.
"Is that from the Alne intelligence network?" Eloy scratched his nape. "Or just knowing patrol schedules?"
"Both." Her eyes moved over him in the starlight. "You navigate well in the dark. For soone with no military training."
"I practiced a lot." It ca out before he could stop it. The sa line he always used. Technically correct. Evasion dressed as honesty.
Maya’s fan tapped once against her knee. A single click of acknowledgnt. She didn’t push. Not yet.
Isolde stood at the edge of the boulder’s shadow, looking south. Her posture hadn’t changed since they’d stopped: shoulders back, weight forward, head tilted. Listening to sothing. Or rembering it.
"There’s a way station two hours ahead," she said. "Stone shelter. Pre-war. My father’s couriers used it on the southern route."
Another piece of her childhood. Delivered flat. Like a supply inventory.
"How far to the Caldera from there?" Eloy asked.
"From what you told about it, two days. Maybe less if the trails are clear."
"Are they?"
"I was seven the last ti I walked them."
Wind moved through the scrub grass. Sowhere far below, the fire popped and settled.
"Yeah," Eloy said. "That sounds rough."
Isolde turned her head. Just enough that the starlight caught the edge of her jaw. She looked at him for exactly two seconds. Her eyes held on his face a beat longer than conversation required, then her gaze dropped to the ground and her weight shifted back toward the trail. The flat mask returned before he could read anything else.
"We should keep moving." She was already walking.
[IsoldeSimp47]: SHE LOOKED AT HIM
[dudefromfloripa]: bro that was the most isolated human mont in this entire stream and his response was "that sounds rough"
[dudefromfloripa]: and it WORKED
[LMAO_cat]: "THAT SOUNDS ROUGH" LMFAOOOO
[coldfront44]: honestly? yeah. anything more polished would’ve felt fake
[nachtfalter]: he’s learning
He grabbed his pack and stood. His ankle protested. He ignored it.
Maya fell in beside him as they followed Isolde down the ridge. Her stride was shorter but efficient, each step placed with the sa precision she applied to everything else. The satchel bounced gently against her hip.
"Vance."
"Yeah?"
"The way station. Is it defensible?"
He thought about it. Pre-war architecture. Stone walls. Single entrance, probably. The couriers would have needed sowhere they could bolt the door and wait.
"Probably. Narrow approach. One way in."
"You’re certain."
"No." He scratched his nape again. "But the people who built it were running from the sa things we are. They’d have designed it to survive."
Maya considered this. Her fan tapped twice against her palm. "Acceptable logic."
They walked.
The terrain opened up as they climbed. The scrub gave way to bare stone and patches of tough alpine grass. The air got colder. Eloy’s breath started to fog. Behind them, the fire was a dim glow on the horizon, barely visible now. Ahead, the foothills rolled south in dark waves, and sowhere beyond them was the Caldera.
Three days. Two, if Isolde’s trails held.
The chat had gone quiet. Just the occasional ssage drifting across the blue window like a firefly.
[speedGoblin_]: night cycle. low activity expected.
[crispyfry65]: good run today boys
[404ManaNotFound]: that was surprisingly cozy. goodnight chat! hve to go to school tomorrow
[mychemistryromance101]: i have work tomorrow lol i really need to sleep
[cutepie__]: goodnight everyone!! ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵)
Isolde stopped at the top of a long ridge. The ground dropped away on the other side into a shallow valley, and at the far end, barely visible against the darker mass of the hills, was a low rectangular shape. Stone. No windows. A single dark opening where a door had been.
The way station.
Isolde pointed. "There."
Maya’s eyes tracked the approach. "Single entry. Elevated position. Line of sight to the northern ridge." She paused. "Defensible."
"We’ll need a watch rotation," Eloy said.
Isolde nodded once. "I’ll take first."
"No." Maya’s voice was quiet but absolute. "You led us through the passage. You’re the most depleted. You sleep first."
Isolde opened her mouth. Closed it. Her hands flattened against her thighs, fingers pressing into the fabric for a mont before she turned away. "Fine." She walked toward the way station without another word.
Maya watched her go, then turned to Eloy. "Second watch?"
"Yeah. Sure."
Maya nodded before following Isolde.
Eloy stood on the ridge for another mont. The wind was cold against his face. The minimap in his peripheral vision was almost entirely dark: no red signatures for now, just a faint golden pulse far to the south. The Caldera.
He pulled up his status one more ti.
HP 84%. MP 4%. ANOMALY integration 23%.
Below the status window, the blood-trail marker sat dark. No signal. 4.2 kiloters SSW, behind rubble, behind an Inquisitor, Valen’s HP was doing sothing Eloy couldn’t see. He closed that window too.
The network connection indicator pulsed gently in the corner of his vision. Active. Listening.
He closed the window. Rubbed his eyes. Walked.
The way station door was narrow. The walls were thick. Inside, the air slled like dust and old stone. Isolde had already found the corner furthest from the entrance and sat down with her back against the wall, eyes closed. Not asleep. Just saving what was left of her.
Maya settled near the door. Fan open. Eyes on the threshold.
Eloy dropped his pack, sat against the opposite wall, and let his head fall back against the stone. The ceiling was lost in shadow. Hard floor. His ankle throbbed in ti with his pulse.
[XxnighttiprincexX]: they made it
[coldfront44]: for now
[QuietLurker01]: the red dot tho
The last ssage before the chat went dark. No follow-up.
The red dot.
It was still there. Pulsing in the corner of the minimized HUD like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to anyone in the room. Eloy stared at the shadowed ceiling and tried not to think about what it ant.
Sothing had noticed the ANOMALY connection. Sothing was listening. He didn’t know if it was Inquisition, pre-war infrastructure, or sothing else entirely. He didn’t have the energy to find out.
He thought about the keystone instead. The half-worn symbol on the granite in the passage. It wasn’t in any route guide. It wasn’t in any speedrun strat. It predated the kingdom by centuries and it connected to sothing the system could barely identify. He filed it.
Another question he couldn’t afford to answer right now.
I really thought this would be easy, huh?
Maya’s breathing had steadied near the door. Not asleep, she’d said she was watching, but the rhythm had slowed into sothing that could pass for rest if you weren’t paying close attention.
The fan lay across her knee. Her hand rested on the satchel.
Isolde’s breathing had changed too. Deeper. Slower. Her back was pressed flat against the pre-war stone, and for the first ti since they’d entered the passage, the tension in her shoulders had eased by a fraction. Her fingers were moving. Slow, deliberate patterns against the granite floor.
Way-finding glyphs. The sa ones her father’s couriers used to mark safe routes. She was drawing them in her sleep.
Eloy watched her hand trace the pattern twice, then looked away. Not his to catalog.
The wind moved through the valley outside. The way station walls held. The red dot pulsed. Once. Twice. A steady rhythm that would keep going whether he watched it or not.
He shifted his weight against the wall, settled his pack behind his lower back, and let his eyes stay open. Second watch. The red dot blinked.
He watched it back.
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