Ethan Mercer's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Three mornings later, Ethan ducked through the dome's door and walked to the sentinel. He stood beside the stone giant and felt sun on the top of his head. The carved beard reached his collarbone now. He had passed it in six days, not nine. A work crew had planted something new beside the statue overnight. A black stone tree with red veins glowing inside it, taller than the sentinel by a full body length. A marker. They had built it for him to stand against. Ethan lined up his shoulder with the lowest branch and matched it exactly. He pulled the leather journal from his belt pouch and opened it on his knee. Sketches of the sentinel filled the early pages. He drew a new line above the old ones and wrote the number. Ten feet, one inch. He underlined it twice. His hand was steady. That scared him more than shaking. Behind him, a hammer rang on metal. He turned. A crew was bolting wide steps into the rock face near the dome. Crystal rails caught the light. The staircase climbed up to nothing yet, just open air at the top. He understood. They were building a platform because the dome would fail soon, and he would need somewhere to sit outside. The crew leader saw him watching and looked away fast. Nobody had told Ethan they were building it. Nobody had asked his measurements. They already knew. Ethan closed the journal. He had crossed the sentinel. The colony was building around his body now, not the other way around. He sat down on the bottom step, and the metal groaned under him.