Glowly's Arc

Chapter 1 of 16

Glowly had chased the same rumor for a year, and it still gave her nothing she could walk toward. The relic sat in the world's deadliest ruin. She meant to take it. But every trader told a different story, and no two agreed on where the ruin even stood. She climbed the rope ladder to her treehouse and spread her maps across the floor. Faded wood creaked under her knees. The little porch groaned in the wind outside. She had marked four possible sites in charcoal. This morning she crossed out the fourth. A river guide had sworn it held only mud and snakes. Three maps left. Three guesses. Guessing wrong meant weeks of walking into empty country. She had no coin left for a wrong week. Glowly pulled out the crate she kept under the workbench. Inside lay everything her father had gathered before he vanished chasing the same relic. Old rope. A cracked compass. A leather journal she had opened a hundred times and never finished. She opened it again, past the pages she knew, into the water-stained back. There she found a torn map corner she had always skipped. It showed no roads, no names. Only a coastline and a single inked mark far past it, beside three words in her father's hand: "below the drowned steps." Her breath caught. She pressed the corner against her largest map. The coastline matched the southern shore exactly. The mark sat where no trader ever pointed, because no trader had ever come back from there. That was why the rumors scattered. They circled the ruin and never touched its center. Her father had touched it. He had drawn it. Then he had gone quiet forever. Glowly sat still and let the fear pass through her. She had wanted a lead, not this one. This one meant walking the exact path that swallowed him. But it was real. It was a place on a map, with a direction and a distance she could measure. She traced the route with her finger. Down to the southern coast. Along the shore until the land dropped into the drowned steps. Twelve days, maybe more, through country she did not know. She rolled the maps together and tied them with the old rope. Then she packed the cracked compass and the journal into her satchel. Her hands did not shake. The vague rumors were gone. In their place sat one true line to follow. Glowly climbed down the ladder before she could talk herself out of it. She had a place now, and a direction, and a father's grave to reach before she reached the relic. The next twelve days would tell her whether she was ready for what killed him.