Chapter 72: The Last Reading

Chapter 72: Chapter 72: The Last Reading

Nobody spoke for several seconds.

The tunnel was silent except for the slow trickle of dust still sifting from the ceiling. Reeve stood with the dead device in his hands, staring at the black screen as though it might change its mind.

Then he unclipped it and turned it over.

The casing was hot. A thin line of smoke curled from the cracked screen, and when he pressed the power switch, nothing happened. He pressed it again. Nothing.

"What did that reading mean?" Jason asked.

Reeve did not answer.

Instead he pried off the back panel with the edge of his knife and peered inside.

Jason could see the layout of the components from where he stood: a small crystal lattice, a tangle of thin conductive wires, and at the center a rod of pale metal that had gone black and brittle.

"The central mana conductor has burned through," Reeve said quietly. "Something sent too much energy through it at once. It is not a repair I can make."

"Was that reading normal?"

Reeve looked up.

Reeve hesitated.

"This device was not designed to measure mana at such a high concentration," he said.

"It should not have been able to display that number at all."

Jason glanced back along the tunnel toward the armored corpse.

"Then why do you think it did?"

Reeve had no answer.

But as he turned the casing in his hands, something beneath the ruined conductor caught the light.

He frowned and reached in with two fingers. When he drew his hand out, a small crystal sat in his palm, no larger than a thumbnail, a hairline crack running across its face.

A faint glow still clung to its center.

Reeve stared at it.

"What is that?" Jason asked.

Reeve closed his fist around it.

"It is an emergency transmitter."

Jason’s expression changed.

"You told us the device was @ navigation tool."

"It is."

Reeve did not respond further. His knuckles were pale around the crystal.

It was the first time Jason had openly pressed him, and the silence that followed was heavy.

Before Reeve could speak, the crystal pulsed once in his palm, a brief, bright flicker, and then the light drained out of it completely.

It was dead.

Reeve stood still.

Jason watched his face. The loss of the navigation system had worried him, but this was different.

The tightness around his eyes was much deeper, and for a moment he looked like a man who had just watched a door close.

’Seems like that transmission crystal mattered more to him than the map.’

Whatever the device had been monitoring, someone outside the Gate had been meant to receive it. And now nobody would.

---

Wen finished examining Cassius a few minutes later.

She sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with a trembling wrist, and Jason saw that she had not been able to hide how much the effort had cost her.

"The ribs are cracked, but they will hold," she said. "The leg is the real problem. The bone has set, but it is not strong. He can walk with some help but he cannot fight."

"I can still fight," Cassius said from the floor. Attempting to get up then falling right back down wincing from the pain

"You cannot," Wen said with an unamused expression.

"I’ll fight sitting down then."

"That is not a thing."

Skyler knelt to check her quiver and came up with a bleak expression.

"I have six arrows left."

"Six?" Reeve repeated.

"Six."

Jason tested his own Core quietly. It still ached from the fight, a dull, strained pressure behind his breastbone, and the Gate’s thick mana made every attempt to recover feel like swimming against a current.

They could not afford much more of these long fights.

"The device dying....," Reeve said, straightening. "It presents a far larger problem than it appears."

"Explain," Skyler said.

"The navigation system does more than show our position. It tracks the spatial structure of the Gate and tells us when the environment begins to distort.

It lets us tell a stable route from one that is collapsing."

"So what happens without it?"

"We can still walk," Reeve said. "But we cannot tell whether the passage ahead will actually lead to the entrance.

The internal geography may already have changed since we came in."

Jason looked back along the tunnel.

The darkness behind them was very quiet.

"How long do we have before the entrance becomes unreachable?" he asked.

"I....

I don’t know."

"Can it happen?"

"It’s definitely a possibility. That I know for sure."

The word landed in the tunnel like a stone.

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Wen looked down at her hands. Skyler’s jaw tightened. Cassius, for once, did not make a joke.

They were no longer simply lost in a dangerous dungeon.

They were running out of time before the road home vanished.

---

Jason waited until the silence had settled.

Then he turned back to Reeve.

"I asked you a question before the tremor."

Reeve met his eyes.

"What exactly did you bring us here to investigate?"

This time, Reeve did not look away.

He let out a long breath and lowered himself onto a flat stone, the dead device resting across his knees.

When he spoke, his voice was steady, though it carried a weight Jason had not heard before.

"The Association recorded unusual fluctuations in this Gate before our raid," he said.

"The initial classification placed it as a manageable D-Rank. Later readings showed irregularities that could not be explained by ordinary variation. I was told there might be an unusual mana deposit inside."

"By whom?" Skyler asked.

"A contact in the government."

Reeve rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

"My assignment was simple. I was to enter, confirm the readings, and report anything unusual. I was not told about the underground structure.

I was not told about the armored creature. I was not aware that the Gate might become unstable enough to destroy our equipment."

Jason listened without interrupting.

"Why did you not tell us?" he asked at last.

"I did not know how serious it was," Reeve said. "Not until we entered the chamber. I believed the information was legitimate, and I believed the risk was small."

"And your contact?"

"I do not know whether he was mistaken or whether he misled me." Reeve’s mouth twisted. "I would like to believe it was a mistake."

"I definitely have some words for your contact after we are out of here," Skyler said.

"I agree," Reeve said.

Nobody spoke.

Jason studied him carefully.

He did not feel anger. Reeve had fought beside them all day. He had held the front against the armored creature, taken the heaviest blows, and mobilized every ounce of his experience to keep the group moving. His decisions had saved them more than once.

But the truth was plain.

They had come into this Gate on incomplete information, and someone had made that possible.

’Someone knew what they were sending us into.’

The thought did not sit well, and Jason put it aside for later.

---

They were gathering their gear when Jason came to a realization.

At first he could not name the sensation. He was reaching for his spear when his hand paused halfway, and a strange, hollow stillness settled over him.

The pressure was gone.

For the last half hour, the air in the Gate had pulsed in slow, steady surges, each one pressing against his skin and his Soul Core like the swell of a tide.

He had grown used to it. He had been counting the gaps.

Now there was nothing.

The surges had stopped. The weight in the air had simply vanished, as though someone had lifted a hand.

It was far more unsettling than the pressure had ever been.

Jason closed his eyes and carefully extended his Perception.

He felt for the chaotic fluctuations that had been battering his Soul Core since they first came through.

He felt for the erratic spikes that had ruined Reeve’s device.

They were gone.

In their place, he felt something else.

The mana around him was condensing.

It was not spreading outward, the way it had been. It was moving in a single, steady direction, drawn through the stone like water down a drain. It slid past him, gentle and relentless, and he followed it with his senses until it vanished into the dark beyond the tunnel’s far end.

Toward the deeper ruins.

His eyes opened.

"The Gate is changing again," he said.

Reeve looked up sharply. "How do you know?"

"Can’t you feel it?."

Skyler frowned. "What do you mean?"

Jason looked toward the passage that led deeper underground.

"It is being pulled somewhere," he said.

No one answered him.

Cassius pushed himself up on elbows. "Then we should decide quickly."

Far off, something beneath the stone gave a long, low groan, as if it were drawing a breath.

They could still try to run for the entrance, and hope the way home had not already closed.

Or they could find out what was drinking the Gate dry before it was too late to stop it.