An Answer Sent Back

Seraphine woke them by striking the stone with the flat of her knife.

“Listen,” she said. “The channel is answering.”

A thin note came from the central ring, faded, then sounded again from the passage where they had entered. Jorren sat up beside the packs. Kharos was already on his feet, one hand at his chest where the tether drew faint blue beneath his armor.

“How long has it been doing that?” Aren asked.

“Only since I started tracing the lower inscription.” Seraphine knelt beside the ring. She had covered the stone around it with charcoal marks and tablet rubbings. “I thought the scratches were damage. They’re directional marks.”

She pointed to a shallow cut that curved away from the ring, then doubled back before reaching the wall. The line was almost worn smooth. “The Returning Step doesn’t carry a traveler onward. It receives a step, then sends an answer back along the route.”

Jorren rubbed sleep from his face. “An echo, then.”

“An echo repeats what it hears. This is more deliberate.” Seraphine tapped the stone beside the cut. “The inscription distinguishes the step from the return. It says the station carries the answer, not the bond that made the question possible.”

Aren looked at the tether. It crossed the threshold and ran east, past the station’s seven channels. “So it can’t carry Kharos’s connection to Mavren.”

“I don’t think it can.” Seraphine’s hand hovered above the nearest channel. “I need to see what it does with a signal. Then we’ll know whether the words mean what I think they mean.”

Kharos looked down at the line. “And if it takes the tether?”

“Then we stop,” Aren said. “Before we test anything, we agree on what we’re offering it.”

Seraphine glanced at him, then drew her hand back from the channel. Kharos’s gaze stayed on the stone.

“I will offer a call,” he said. “Not the tether. If the station tries to draw the connection into the ring, we end the test.”

Aren waited until Kharos looked at him. “I’ll witness. I won’t give it a destination or make myself a route.”

“Good.” Kharos set his spear down beside the central ring, its butt resting on bare stone. “And no one touches the channels once I begin.”

Jorren shifted the packs farther from the ring. “I can manage that.”

Seraphine checked the marks once more, then took her place against the outer wall. “Use the channel nearest the doorway. Its return cut is intact.”

Kharos stepped to the threshold. The tether remained taut, a dim line crossing the floor behind him. He did not reach for it. Instead, he looked east and called Mavren’s name.