Chapter 73: The Ones Who Came Before

Chapter 73: Chapter 73: The Ones Who Came Before

They followed the outer passage west, then south, keeping as far from the central chamber as the twisting tunnels allowed.

Jason walked near the front now, one arm hooked beneath Cassius’s shoulder, with Skyler supporting the other side. Reeve led, and Wen followed at the rear, her steps slow and careful.

Nobody spoke. Every few minutes the stone creaked somewhere above them, and the whole, listened, and moved on.

It took nearly twenty minutes to reach the end of the passage.

"This is the way back," Reeve said quietly. "If we follow it east for another hour, it should connect with the entrance corridor."

He stopped.

A wall of stone filled the tunnel ahead.

It rose from floor to ceiling, perfectly flat, and it had not been there when Reeve had walked this route earlier. Jason studied it with a growing unease.

It did not look like it had caved-in. There were no broken slabs, no scattered rubble or even any jagged edges.

The surface was smooth as polished glass, and across it ran a series of narrow, carefully cut grooves, spaced in repeating patterns.

Jason knew those patterns.

’The metallic fragments.’

He thought of the scraps of dark metal he and Reeve had pulled from the dust near the chamber. They had carried the same lines, the same angles, the same strange repeating rhythm.

"It looks like was built pretty recently."

Skyler laid her palm against the stone and flinched. "It is still warm."

Nobody tried to break through it. Jason did not even suggest it. Instead he let go of Cassius, handed him to Wen, and walked slowly along the base of the wall, studying the floor.

Something caught his eye.

There were scratches along the left side of the tunnel, shallow and parallel, running at about the height of his hip. Beneath them, pressed into the dust, was a series of broad, shallow impressions, evenly spaced.

He crouched.

"Someone has moved heavy equipment through here," he said.

"On a cart, or something. The marks are fresh. They are not more than a few weeks old."

Jason stood and followed the trail.

It led away from the wall and along a side branch of the passage, down a short slope, and into a narrow dead end.

At the far end of it lay a fallen pillar, its broken top half buried in rubble. Behind it, half hidden in the shadows, was a small recess in the rock.

Inside the recess, someone had left a supply case.

It was dented and scorched, its lid hanging open on a single hinge. Jason knelt and sifted through the contents with the tip of his spear.

There was empty medical packaging, a handful of burned-out mana crystals, a coil of frayed wire.

And at the bottom, half buried in ash, a flat metal plate.

Reeve picked it up.

He turned it over once, then froze.

Jason watched the change come over his face. It was subtle, a tightening around the mouth and a stillness in his eyes, but Jason had been studying him all day, and he saw it clearly.

"You recognize it," Jason said.

Reeve ran his thumb across the edge of the plate.

"I recognize the insignia. It’s the Hunter Association’s." Reeve’s voice was flat.

"This is an identification plate. It belongs to someone on an official expedition."

"You told us the Association had not sent anyone into this Gate."

"That is what I was told." Reeve held the plate toward the light. "According to the information I received, no earlier expedition had entered it at all.

For the sake of the gods I thought this thing just formed."

Jason took the plate from him.

It was heavy and cold. The edges were worn smooth, and one corner had been bent as though it had been stepped on.

Near the bottom, a string of numbers had been stamped into the metal, and half of them had been scratched away.

He ran a finger over the damage. The scratches were straight and deliberate, crossing the figures at a clean angle.

"Someone removed the serial number on purpose."

Skyler leaned close. "Why would anyone do that?"

"Do you really have to ask?"

---

They searched the recess carefully.

It took Jason several minutes to find the crystal. It was lodged in a crack beneath the case, a small, smoky-gray stone, no larger than a coin. The casing was cracked and chipped, but when he turned it over, he felt a faint, lingering warmth.

"A recording crystal," Wen said.

"You think it still works?."

He cupped it in both hands and let a thin thread of essence flow into it, as little as he could manage, barely more than a breath. A First Level cultivator could have done as much.

The crystal flickered.

At first there was only static, a rushing, hissing noise, with indistinct voices rising and falling beneath it.

Jason adjusted the flow, and a man’s voice sharpened out of the noise.

"...the formation is failing."

"Then shut it down," another voice said.

"We cannot. The core has already begun drawing mana from the surrounding Gate."

A pause. Jason heard the rasp of someone breathing hard.

Then the first voice spoke again, lower now, almost a whisper.

"How many people know about this?"

The recording shattered into static.

Jason tried to hold it together, feeding in a little more essence, but the crystal gave a thin crackle, and the glow bled out of it entirely. It lay in his palm, dark and dead.

Nobody spoke.

The silence stretched.

"That is all there is," Jason said finally.

"We can’t even tell what kind of formation they were speaking of," Skyler said.

"Same way we can’t tell who was talking, either."

But he did not need more. He turned it over in his mind and counted what the recording had told them.

Someone had known about the underground structure before they entered. It held something, a core, that could draw mana from the Gate around it. And the people who had been here before had already been losing control of it.

Reeve sat down heavily against the wall, his face cupped in his palms.

"This was not in the report," he said.

Jason looked at him.

"Which report?"

Reeve opened his mouth and closed it again.

For the first time since Jason had known him, he looked genuinely uncertain. His eyes moved from Jason to Skyler to the dead crystal and back, as if he were searching for a way to take the words back.

Jason did not press him.

---

They had evidence of an earlier expedition. They had a failing Gate. And their own situation was getting worse by the minute.

"We could go deeper," Reeve said slowly. "If the previous team left traces, we may learn what happened to them."

"We may also get trapped," Jason said.

"That is a risk."

"It is a large one."

Jason looked around at the group.

He wanted answers. He wanted them badly. But he was not willing to spend four lives to buy them, and he had promised Novaria that he would come home.

"We find a stable route out first," he said. "Then we decide whether we come back, and with whom. We can’t help anyone if we are dead."

Reeve nodded.

"I agree."

"Good."

Jason pocketed the crystal and tucked the metallic fragments into his pack, the ones he and Reeve had found earlier.

They were more valuable than any monster core in the Gate now. They were proof that whatever was wrong here had a human hand behind it.

He turned toward Reeve and held out his hand.

"The plate."

Reeve passed it over.

As he did, his eyes fell on the back of it.

He stopped.

Beneath the scratched serial number, almost hidden in the grime, a few lines had been stamped into the metal.

They were small, neat, and easy to miss. Reeve rubbed the dirt away with his thumb and read them silently.

Then he read them again.

The color left his face.

"What does it say?" Jason asked.

Reeve did not answer. His grip had gone tight on the edge of the plate.

"Reeve."

Slowly, as if every motion were a struggle, Reeve turned the plate around.

Two lines were stamped into the metal. The first was a date, several months old. The second was a string of characters, an operation designation, short and precise.

Jason read it.

Then he looked at Reeve.

"That code," Reeve said hoarsely. "It is the authorization code on my assignment papers. It is the same."

Jason looked back at the plate.

"So.... Our assignment came from the same operation."

Reeve did not answer.

He did not need to.

The implication was clear enough to everyone standing in that cramped, dusty recess. Someone connected to the earlier expedition had arranged for this team to enter the Gate.

Whether that person meant to recover lost equipment, or to investigate a failed formation, or to use the group for some purpose of their own, none of them could say.

But the match was too precise to be chance.

Jason stared at the date, and the code, and the scratched-away serial number.

’We were sent here to find out what happened to the people who came before us.’

And whoever had arranged it had left them with half the story, a Gate tearing itself apart, and no way to call for help.