The Mark That Was Taken

The missing mark had left a clean groove in the arch.

Seraphine crouched beside it with the tablet across her knees, scraping frost from the cut. The groove ran beneath the black stone’s surface, smooth at the edges. Someone had removed the sign carefully, long before the station was buried.

Jorren set down his pack. “If you’ve learned what it means, tell us before the light goes out.”

“I’m trying to learn what was removed.” Seraphine rubbed charcoal across a strip of parchment, taking an impression from the next arch. “The other six signs repeat on the tablet. This one should be here.”

Aren stood near Kharos at the rim. The blue tether still ran from Kharos’s chest toward the east, drawn tight across the black stone. Its light had thinned to a trembling thread. Kharos kept one hand against his ribs, watching Seraphine work.

“The station refused to carry the tether,” he said. “It let me cross. That was all.”

Aren kept his hands at his sides. The urge to find a way to ease the pull had not gone away. It had only learned to wait for permission.

Seraphine turned the tablet and compared the charcoal rubbings. Six marks sat beside six lines of text. Near the end, a narrow space had been rubbed almost blank. She held the tablet up to the cold starlight at the center of the ring.

“There’s an impression under the scraping.” She traced it with one fingernail. “Two curved lines, joined at the middle.”

“Can you read it?” Aren asked.

“Not from the mark alone.” She looked at the arch’s cut groove. “The tablet calls it a bond. Or a pair joined under strain. The wording changes in the older hand.”

Jorren leaned over her shoulder. “So the missing sign means the station doesn’t like company?”

“It means something was deliberately left out,” Seraphine said. “We need the surrounding line.”

They worked around the ring. Each arch held a different inscription, too worn to read at a glance. Seraphine matched the signs with the tablet while Aren walked the inner rim, keeping clear of the gulf. He found the line cut into the black stone beneath the missing mark. It had been turned inward, toward the open center.

“Here,” he said.

Seraphine joined him with the tablet. She read the carved words once under her breath, then again aloud. “‘A step is borne by its walker. What is bound between them shall not be borne.’”

Kharos looked toward the fading blue strand. “That describes the crossing.”

“Maybe.” Seraphine tapped the scraped place on the tablet. “The lost sign is the bond. The station’s passage forms beneath each traveler, but it won’t support a connection between travelers. It doesn’t take the tether with you.”