Nerith Tidecaller's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The Beacon's light held steady on the far wall. Nerith floated close to the carved symbols, reading each line, finding no meaning in any of them. The footage would show the marks. It would not show who made them, or when. Nerith pressed a palm to the cold stone and felt the problem settle in. Proof of carving was not proof of history. Without a way to read the symbols, the dive meant nothing to anyone but them. Sera Veylin drifted beside them. She had come down here alone, before any of them, chasing something large in the deep current. She watched Nerith fail to read the wall. Then she reached into her pack. "These aren't random," Sera said. She pulled out a dark handheld device. Its lens glowed faint blue in her grip. "They repeat. You just can't see the pattern yet." Nerith stared at the device. "What is it?" "A lens. It shows what's under the surface." Sera raised it to the wall. The lens threw a cold light across the stone. Beneath the carved symbols, faint lines appeared. Older marks, worn almost flat, ran under the newer ones. Two layers. Nerith's chest tightened. The symbols had been cut, then cut again, by different hands in different ages. "They built over their own writing," Nerith said. Kael moved closer, scar glowing pale along their frills. "How long between the layers?" Sera shifted the lens along the wall. A row of smaller marks lit up near the floor, spaced in even counts. "That's a tally. Depth, maybe. Or time." Her voice dropped flat. "Whoever lived here measured things. For a long time." Nerith signaled the Beacon. Its lenses rotated and locked on the lit wall. The drone recorded the under-marks, the tally, the two layers caught together in one frame. Now the footage showed more than carving. It showed a sequence. It showed people who stayed, who wrote, who came back and wrote again. "This is the proof," Nerith said. "Not that someone carved once. That they lived here across time." Kael nodded once. "Then you have it." Nerith watched the Beacon finish its pass. The obstacle was gone. The wall was no longer a puzzle they couldn't open. It was a record, and the record was on film. Then Sera lowered the lens. Her face changed. "There's a problem." She pointed the device at the floor, past the tally marks, toward the dark passage ahead. The lens lit a long groove in the rock. It was not carved. It was pressed, deep and wide, as if something enormous had dragged itself through. "The newer layer," Sera said quietly. "They weren't writing history. They were writing a warning." Nerith looked at the groove. It led down, into the current where something large still moved. The proof was recorded. But now Nerith knew the carvers had been afraid, and the thing they feared had left its mark too.