Alyce Lydell's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

Alyce descended the stone steps toward the third level, her lamp cutting through the darkness ahead. The map from the hidden library had shown a chamber here, marked with three overlapping symbols. Her boots hit the bottom landing and she swept the light across the space. Empty walls stared back at her. No chamber. No doorway. Just solid rock where the map promised an entrance. She checked the journal entry again, comparing the landmarks. Everything matched except for what mattered most. The ancient explorers had either lied or the passage had collapsed centuries ago. Her hands shook as she folded the map. Three days of planning. All those supplies carried down here for nothing. She climbed back to the surface and walked through the streets in a daze. The afternoon light felt too bright after hours underground. Two blocks from her garage, she spotted something she'd never noticed before. A broken monument lay in pieces near an old building with columns. Stone figures carved in indigo, magenta, gold, and white were scattered across the ground. She recognized the style from her journals—twisted faces and strange shapes from the oldest parts of Dreamland's history. Someone had built this to mark a discovery, just like the cat monument near the library. But this one had failed. The pieces lay where they'd fallen, abandoned and forgotten. She crouched beside a carved face and traced the cracks running through it. Past explorers had been wrong too. They'd celebrated something that didn't matter or marked a truth that led nowhere. She stood and looked at the shattered monument one more time. Then she turned toward home, the failed map still heavy in her bag. A reflecting pool stretched before the building with columns. Dark water rippled with indigo, magenta, gold, and white reflections. She stopped at its edge and stared at the broken monument mirrored in its surface. The water made the shattered pieces look whole again, twisting them into something beautiful that didn't exist. She pulled out the useless map and unfolded it. Her reflection wavered below, pink hair and tired eyes staring back. Three days wasted. Three days following information that led to nothing. Maybe all the old journals were like this—full of directions to places that had collapsed or never existed at all. She walked until the forgotten district gave way to crumbling roads that led nowhere. A collapsed overpass blocked the path ahead. Cracked concrete beams hung at dangerous angles. Exposed steel rebar jutted from broken edges. The structure looked ready to fall completely. Beyond it, she could see tunnels that weren't on any of her maps. But getting there meant crossing under tons of concrete that could drop at any moment. She stood at the base and looked up at the fractured beams. This was what pushing forward looked like now—risking everything for passages that might lead to more empty walls. Her bag felt lighter without hope weighing it down. She turned away from the collapsed overpass and headed back toward her garage. Some risks weren't worth taking when the maps couldn't be trusted.