Chapter 192: Three Miles

They didn’t immediately turn down the western branch. They spent another hour walking the remaining section of the main Old North Road, adding a badly damaged stone culvert and a long stretch of uplifted tree roots to the survey log. Loaded merchant carts would struggle there, but nothing was unfixable.

Emily was thoroughly finished with road inspection by the time they turned around.

"How much character have we built?" Emily asked, kicking a loose paving stone off the road.

Arthur checked the survey sheet. "Financially? Negative."

"I knew this contract was shit."

Chloe had already started cleaning up the survey notes as they walked, rewriting Arthur’s rough marks into something Sylvia could actually read.

They reached the moss-covered marker again and turned down the western branch.

Three miles didn’t look far on a map, but the path leading toward Saint Orlan’s had been completely abandoned for years. The cracked stone disappeared entirely under thick layers of rotting leaves and heavy roots. Massive fallen trees forced them off the path several times, and the only evidence they were still on a road were the occasional weathered stone markers sitting half-buried in the brush.

Arthur stopped checking his phone. There was only one direction left to go.

"What are you actually expecting to find?" Emily asked, ducking under a low-hanging branch.

"Something useful," Arthur said.

Emily snorted. "That’s vague."

"I’m still deciding how much I know."

Chloe glanced over her shoulder at him and held his gaze for a second longer than usual.

She didn’t ask.

The western branch narrowed as they walked. Roots had split the old paving apart in several places, forcing them into the brush before the stones appeared again farther ahead.

About halfway down the branch, the trees opened slightly around an old, weathered stone memorial sitting off the side of the path.

It wasn’t the shrine itself. It was a single, broken statue of a kneeling figure, the stone face worn smooth by decades of rain. The base was covered in thick lichen, obscuring most of the carved text.

Chloe stopped and pulled a small scraper from one of the exterior pockets of her medical bag. She carefully cleared the worst of the growth away from the center of the base while Emily leaned against a nearby tree and watched.

"...in memory of those who marched beside the Hero," Chloe read quietly, tracing the faint lettering, "during the final sealing..."

Arthur recognized the broad event immediately. It was standard background game lore. In the game, players usually clicked past text like this while scanning the area for hidden loot drops or minor quest items.

Now he was standing in front of the actual, physical memorial for a war that had almost ended this world.

Arthur read the inscription again before moving on.

Emily read the remaining visible words, then pushed off the tree. "Anything else?"

Chloe gave the memorial another look before following them.

They reached Saint Orlan’s Wayside Shrine as the sun dropped toward the western treeline.

Saint Orlan’s was a sturdy roadside sanctuary built for travelers.

An old stone chapel sat near the center of a large clearing. Beside it stood a small, partially collapsed bell tower. A walled graveyard stretched out behind the main building, and a long, low-roofed pilgrim shelter sat near the tree line.

Near the chapel steps sat a rusted hitching post and a cracked stone trough half-filled with rainwater. Both had clearly been built for the travelers who once stopped here before continuing north.

It was quiet. The only sound was the wind moving through the trees that had encroached close around the stone walls over the decades.

Arthur noticed a discrepancy immediately.

In the game, the chapel roof had been half-collapsed, open to the sky and choked with vines. The roof in front of him had clearly been repaired at least once since the shrine was abandoned. Newer timber and mismatched stone filled the gaps where the original structure should have been failing.

Arthur frowned at the repaired section.

That hadn’t been there in the game.

Before deciding where to camp, they checked the immediate grounds.

Chloe walked the perimeter of the low graveyard wall and stopped near the back corner. "Disturbed soil here."

Emily found a grave near the center that had partially collapsed inward.

Arthur activated Eagle Eye and scanned the grass near the wall. He found a set of heavy, dragging tracks where something had pulled itself out of the wet ground and hauled its weight toward the road.

The tracks pointed east, back toward the Old North Road. That was enough to connect the roadside undead to the shrine.

"Several of these graves are still completely intact," Chloe noted, standing near a row of older headstones.

Arthur looked over the remaining graves. If the whole cemetery had risen, they would have met far more than three corpses on the road.

Whatever was causing it hadn’t reached every grave.

Emily looked from the intact graves to the chapel.

"So we’re going underground tomorrow."

Arthur looked toward the heavy wooden doors of the chapel. "Probably."

"Good."

They pushed the heavy doors open and stepped into the above-ground chapel before the remaining daylight failed completely.

It was dim inside, smelling heavily of dust and old stone. Rows of simple wooden benches sat facing a plain stone altar at the far end.

Faded religious symbols were carved into the walls. Near the altar, a newer candle stub sat surrounded by melted wax, and a fresh bundle of dried herbs lay on the stone.

Arthur walked straight toward the back corner of the room. In the game, a cracked stone statue of a saint stood in an alcove here, concealing a relatively simple mechanism that opened the path into the crypts.

The statue was there.

But the wall behind it had clearly been repaired. The cracked masonry the game relied on had been sealed with thick mortar, and the statue itself sat flush against the solid stone.

Arthur ran his hand over the mortar, checking for a hidden catch or a loose block.

Nothing.

Emily watched him checking the wall, noticing the slight tightening of his jaw.

"Missing something?" she asked.

"Apparently," Arthur muttered.

Arthur stared at the repaired wall. Great. Apparently the world had been renovating without consulting the developers.

Chloe slowed near the altar and rubbed one hand over her forearm.

"Do you feel that?"

Arthur stepped closer.

The air around the base of the altar was colder than the rest of the chapel. Not winter-cold, but enough that the difference was obvious.

Chloe crouched and held her hand near the floor. "It’s coming up through here somewhere."

Something below the chapel was still active.

Now they just had to find the way in.

The sun was too low to start tearing apart an unknown underground ruin, so they backed out of the chapel and headed for the old pilgrim shelter near the tree line.

The shelter was intact enough to keep the wind off them. Emily immediately started breaking dead branches for firewood. Chloe cleared a section of the stone floor and started sorting the supplies they had used during the fight from her medical bag.

Arthur sat down on a stone bench, pulled out the survey sheet, and updated the notes by the light of Emily’s growing fire.

Road mostly usable. Repair points logged. Undead activity traced to Saint Orlan area. Underground site not assessed.

Chloe eventually took the sheet from him and read through the final notes. She crossed out one word, replaced it with another, then handed the page back without saying anything.

Arthur looked at the correction.

"Was that necessary?"

"Yes."

Then they ate.

Emily had brought a small pouch of aggressively spiced dried meat she had bought in the city. She offered a piece to Chloe. Chloe took one smell of it and flatly refused.

Arthur, assuming Emily was exaggerating the heat, tried a piece.

He immediately regretted it. He coughed, his eyes watering slightly as the spice burned the back of his throat.

Emily grinned, looking incredibly satisfied with herself, and ate another piece without flinching.

They talked quietly about the chapel, speculating on what might be causing the necrotic leak.

Chloe shifted closer to the fire, eventually leaning comfortably against Arthur’s shoulder while she drank from her canteen. Emily stretched her legs out, throwing them casually across Arthur’s thighs, and used him as a convenient rest while she checked the straps on her gauntlets.

Before sleeping, Arthur stood up and stepped outside the shelter to check the perimeter one last time.

The graveyard was completely still. The dark outline of the chapel stood silent against the night sky.

Then he heard it.

It didn’t come from the woods or the graves.

A dull, heavy scrape came from beneath the shrine.

Then another.

Something heavy was dragging itself over stone.

Emily appeared in the doorway of the shelter behind him. She had heard it too.

"That underground enough for you?" Emily asked quietly.

Arthur looked toward the dark chapel.

"Yeah," Arthur said.