Chapter 384: The Civilization Beyond

The Silent Gate wasn’t silent anymore. It hummed, sending a low vibration through the ground as Kai and the others stood in front of the enormous stone structure.

The gate was older than everything around it, and its surface was covered in the same broken-circle symbol they had seen in the black tower, with three sections dark and the fourth glowing faintly.

Aren stood several meters back, staring at it. "I’ve been here seven times."

Sera looked at him. "Seven?"

"Seven. And it never did this."

Lily was already scanning the structure, and she looked more confused with every second. "This isn’t a gate."

"That’s what I’ve been saying," Aren said.

"No, you misunderstood me." Lily walked closer. "This isn’t a gate at all."

Kai followed her. "Then what is it?"

Lily pointed to the massive circular structure behind the stone doorway. At first it had looked like an ordinary wall, but now that the mechanism had activated, thousands of faint lines were appearing across it, circles and channels and energy conduits. "This whole structure is connected." She swept her scanner across the ground. "The gate is only the front."

Aren frowned. "The front of what?"

Lily didn’t answer. She kept walking deeper into the ruins, and the others followed as more ancient machinery appeared around them. Huge stone pillars rose from the ground, some broken and some half buried, and massive metal rings were sunk into the earth, linked by old cables made from a material none of them recognized.

At the center of the ruins was a crater, a perfectly circular depression nearly a kilometer wide. In the middle of it stood a massive structure that looked like a tower, except that it wasn’t pointed at the sky. It was pointed beyond it.

Lily stopped. Her scanner went dark, restarted, then shut off again.

"What’s happening?" Sera asked.

"I don’t know," Lily said, staring at the tower.

Kai looked up. The structure vanished into the clouds, its upper section broken, but even from the ground it was enormous.

Aren walked slowly forward. "I’ve never seen this."

Kai glanced at him. "You’ve explored this area before."

"I explored the ruins around the gate. This wasn’t visible." Aren pointed at the ground. "It was here, but it was buried. During my first expedition, this entire area was covered by several meters of earth. On my fourth, the ground shifted. I thought it was an earthquake."

Lily looked at the tower. "It wasn’t."

"No," Aren said.

"Then what happened?" Kai asked.

"It woke up," Lily said.

The ground trembled, and a deep mechanical boom echoed across the ruins, shaking dust from the surrounding structures. A second followed, and the tower began to move. Stone plates shifted, metal rings rotated, and deep beneath the ground, something enormous began to turn.

Sera stepped back. "That doesn’t look good."

Gabriel raised a barrier. "Everyone, stay together."

Kai watched the whole structure transform. Its upper sections separated as huge circular rings rose from the earth and began rotating around the central tower. Blue light ran through the ancient channels from ring to ring until the entire crater was lit up.

Lily’s mouth slowly fell open. "Oh."

Kai looked at her. "What?"

She didn’t answer.

"Lily."

She pointed at the structure. "That’s not a tower."

The rings spun faster, and the air changed. Wind rushed toward the center of the crater, lifting loose stones off the ground and bending the trees inward, and even the clouds overhead began to twist.

Sera shielded her face with one arm. "What is that thing?"

Lily’s scanner finally flickered back on, and her eyes went wide at the readings. "This is a launch system."

Nobody spoke.

"A launch system?" Kai said.

"Yes."

Aren stared at the massive structure. "Launching what?"

Lily looked up at the broken top, then back at the energy readings, and her voice grew quieter. "I don’t know. But this wasn’t built to move people around Nexus. It was built to leave the continent."

The wind roared around them.

"You mean airships?" Aren asked.

"No."

"Something faster?"

"No. Whatever used this..." Lily hesitated as she checked the readings again. "It wasn’t designed to stay inside the atmosphere."

Sera’s expression changed. "Wait. You mean..."

Lily nodded and looked toward the sky. "This wasn’t built to reach another city. It was built to leave the planet."

Nobody moved. Even Gabriel looked stunned.

Aren slowly lowered his hand. "You’re saying..."

"Something left this planet," Lily said.

Kai stared at the launch system, and it all began to fit together. Aegis had warned them about something beyond the Disasters, and one civilization had survived the Third Judgment and then vanished without leaving ruins, descendants, or even a name. Unless it had simply left.

Sera looked at him. "You were right."

Kai shook his head. "I guessed."

"Still counts."

Aren walked toward the central mechanism. "If they had technology like this, why did nobody know about it?"

"Because whoever built it didn’t leave records," Gabriel said quietly.

"Not exactly," Lily said, pointing at the base of the tower. "They did."

A massive panel had opened there, and inside it were thousands of ancient symbols. Some were completely unfamiliar, but others matched what they had already found, the first three stages, the fourth door, and the broken circle. Beneath them was a single line.

Lily translated it. "The Path Beyond."

A second line appeared.

"For those who survive."

"They built this after the Third Judgment," Sera whispered.

"Probably," Lily said.

Aren looked at the broken mechanism. "Then where did they go?"

"We don’t know."

"Can we find out?"

"Maybe." Lily walked around the central platform, and then she stopped. "There’s a problem."

Kai joined her. A large section near the center of the mechanism was empty, not broken, but missing, leaving a perfectly shaped gap where a component had been removed.

Lily examined the edges. "This was the power regulator."

Aren frowned. "How important is that?"

"Extremely."

"Can we activate the system without it?"

"No."

Sera sighed. "Of course."

"Can we build another?" Kai asked.

Lily shook her head. "Not easily. I don’t even know what this material is."

"Can the Church identify it?"

"Maybe."

Aren laughed. "Nexus has been searching for answers like this for years and never found anything close."

Lily ignored him and scanned the empty space again. "There are traces of energy left behind."

Kai leaned closer. The missing component had left a faint residue, and Distortion reacted to it, offering him one possibility and then another. He reached toward the empty space, and the air shifted.

For a fraction of a second, he saw a city. It wasn’t Nexus or Mythal, but something enormous, with buildings rising into a dark sky and ancient structures floating above the ground, and a blue light shining in the distance.

Then the vision was gone, and Kai pulled his hand back.

Sera noticed immediately. "What did you see?"

Kai hesitated. "A possibility."

"What kind?"

"I don’t know."

Aren looked at him. "Did Distortion react?"

Kai nodded. "Which means the component still exists."

Everyone turned to him, and Lily stared. "What?"

"If it had been destroyed, I don’t think I would have seen a path to it," Kai said, looking at the empty slot. "The missing piece may still be out there somewhere."

Gabriel stepped closer. "On the continent?"

"Probably."

Lily was already searching the Church database on her tablet. "Then we can track it by its energy signature."

Aren smiled. "Ancient technology nobody has seen in hundreds of years? That’s going to be difficult."

Lily smiled back. "Good."

Sera laughed. "She likes impossible problems."

"I do."

Kai looked at the launch system again. If the missing component was somewhere on the continent, then they had a destination and a real reason to search the ruins, a way to connect the fourth stage to the missing civilization, and possibly a way to find out where that civilization had gone.

Then the launch system went silent. The rings stopped moving, and the blue light began to fade, one section after another going dark.

Aren looked around. "What happened?"

"It’s shutting down," Lily said.

Kai frowned. "Wait."

Lily looked up. "Why?"

Kai had felt something, not from the mechanism, but from somewhere very far away. Distortion reacted, one possibility, then another, then thousands, and his eyes went wide. The launch system wasn’t shutting down. It was switching modes.

The central ring turned bright blue, and a beam of light shot straight up. It didn’t stop at the clouds or at the edge of the atmosphere. It kept going, higher and farther, until it disappeared into the sky.

Sera stared upward. "What is it doing?"

Lily’s scanner began to shriek. "It’s transmitting."

Gabriel’s expression hardened. "To where?"

Lily looked at the readings, and her face slowly went pale. "I don’t know."

The signal went on for five seconds, then ten, then twenty.

Then something answered. Far beyond the atmosphere, a single blue light appeared, impossibly distant, but everyone saw it.

"Something heard us," Aren whispered.

The light pulsed once, and the launch system pulsed back. A message appeared on Lily’s scanner, not in any language she recognized, not the ancient language of Aegis or modern Nexus script. There were only three symbols, the broken circle, the fourth door, and a single word.

"What does it say?" Sera asked.

Lily slowly translated the last symbol, her voice barely audible.

"Return."

Kai’s eyes narrowed as the signal pulsed again, and far beyond the sky, something answered a second time. Whatever was out there wasn’t just responding.

It was calling someone home.