Chapter 201: White Meridian

It waited past the edge of the known map.

Grand Meridian didn’t send Austin Veyron alone.

All the route boards in the lobby stayed open while the team got ready. Marcus didn’t name a head of the team. He only kept count of how many were walking. Elena had the exit paths. Nahlia monitored the connections to the safe houses in the north. The three Deep Table map copies were given to Ceryn, Calder, and Veyra to carry, folded until they needed to see where the routes lined up.

Veyra checked the group’s cold-weather gear by the east crossing line, tightening every strap with her one working arm and ignoring her damaged shoulder. Sable hid the broken shard of her crown under her coat, its glow muted against the snow symbols already creeping across the map.

Nyra stood in front of the route boards, holding her heart shard.

"It’s traveling past every marked path," Nyra said. "The White Meridian has no route system. It’s hiding in the blank space."

Austin Veyron looked at the pale branch on the map.

He wanted to go see what was there. If he traveled fast enough, he could reach the frost fragment before it remade itself. If he went alone, there would be no waiting for others to come to an agreement. No listening to people tell him that chasing the hunger didn’t make him the one meant to devour it. Every moment they spent counting gave the echo more time to rebuild. It was a logical thought, and it kept nagging at him the same way the cold was about to nag at his body.

Veyra noticed the expression on his face.

"Name it."

"I want to go first."

"And what would it make?"

"My path, because I discovered it."

"Then we go when the count is ready," Sable said, her shard glinting.

A woman appeared at the northern crossing mark. She was tall and dressed in white clothing trimmed with fur, and she walked with an ice staff that had a hook on the end. A silver route tag was pinned to her coat. The snow on her boots melted onto the lobby floor.

"My name is Ilyra," she said. "I travel the paths of the north when the markers are frozen over. Marcus sent the warning."

"Will you walk with us?" Austin Veyron asked.

"I’ll walk until I reach the first path I judge unsafe," Ilyra replied. "Then I’ll decide whether to continue. No one owns a whiteout."

"Good," Elena said. "Then we have an agreement."

The team crossed into the White Meridian.

There was no land that could truly be called the White Meridian. It was a stretch of the north where everything was distorted by the snow. You could walk straight for miles and suddenly come across a cliff on your left, or have it appear on your right instead. The sky was always bright, but it never felt warm. Austin Veyron could feel the cold seeping through his clothes after only a few minutes outside. His breath was already starting to freeze his collar stiff.

Ilyra stuck her staff into the snow at a ridge.

"When we reach these ridges, we have to say our path out loud," she told them. "The cold mirrors hear silence as permission."

"What are cold mirrors?" Rin asked, looking out over the landscape.

The ice answered for her.

Mirrors rose out of the snow, thin slabs tinted blue and white, each one reflecting a single member of the team. In every mirror, they stood alone.

In Austin Veyron’s mirror, he was walking ahead of everyone along a clear path. It led him straight to the frost fragment with no resistance at all. All he had to do was go and take it.

ONLY THE FIRST WALKER FINDS THE TRUE ROAD.

DEVOUR began to stir.

The path looked so simple in his reflection. No one was arguing or taking their time. It was just Austin Veyron, reaching the end of the path. He didn’t even look tired.

Veyra placed herself in front of Austin Veyron’s mirror.

"Name it."

"I want the true path."

"And what would it make?"

"The only person who decides where the true path is."

"Then the mirror isn’t showing you the true path," Sable said, lifting her shard.

The cold mirrors closed off parts of the team from one another, separating each person behind walls of ice that showed different paths. Austin Veyron lost track of most of them, including Rin and Orena. All he could see was Veyra’s reflection through her wall.

"Say your path!" Ilyra shouted, striking the snow with her staff.

"North by our shared map," Ceryn called out.

"North by our shared map," Veyra answered.

"North by our shared map," Calder finished.

The maps began to shine through their clothing. Once all three matched, a thin dark line appeared across the snowfield between the mirrors.

Austin Veyron saw the command phrase inside the mirror.

ONLY THE FIRST WALKER FINDS THE TRUE ROAD.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The first-walker truth claim. Not the mirrors. Not the path. Not the people."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable replied.

He placed his white root chain against his reflection.

DEVOUR opened. The claim tasted like a map folded into one person’s pocket.

ONLY THE FIRST WALKER FINDS THE TRUE ROAD.

He consumed first.

The cold mirrors shattered, revealing the true path through the snowfield. There were still plenty of obstacles ahead, but the line they all shared stayed visible down the center of the snow.

Ilyra nodded for them to start moving.

For a while after that, they walked in silence. Every few hundred yards, Ilyra had them say their path out loud. It always took a little time for everyone to answer, but no one ever fell behind or wandered off to follow a path of their own.

They arrived at the first outpost of the White Meridian at dusk.

Several huts sat half-buried in the snow, all gathered around a pole with wires running from it to each hut. The wires were coated in ice almost as thick as someone’s wrist. Snow was piled up to the tops of the huts, and trenches had been dug between some of the doors so people could pass. No one should have been living in the outpost this time of year, but the blue lights were on, and people were moving around inside, studying route boards.

Nyra’s heart shard pulsed once, strongly.

"It’s close," Nyra told the team. "It isn’t inside these huts. It’s using the lights."

Ilyra studied the snow around the pole. "There must be a Winter Archive here. They used to keep records under the ice showing rescue paths for when blizzards hit."

Tessa looked at the Deep Table map. "The frost fragment made it here. It’s showing people rescue paths."

One of the lights on top of the outpost began to glow brighter.

It projected a rescue path leading to people stranded in the north.

FOLLOW THE ONE SAFE LINE.

"Calls are coming in from the northern safe houses," Nahlia said through the relay from Grand Meridian. "They’re all starting to see this path, and some are getting ready to leave their stations."

The echo was offering them a path that promised to save them from the cold.

Austin Veyron stared at the path being projected.

He knew that feeling. Having a path you knew was safe and correct, one no one else needed to check or agree with. It was the same offer that had followed him since the Ashen Stair.

"I know what you’re thinking," Austin Veyron told Veyra. "I want to follow that path."

"And what would it make?"

"A path I trust because it agrees with me."

"Then let’s verify that path before we trust it," Sable said, pushing her shard into the snow.

Ilyra led the team to the middle hut of the outpost instead of the archive. Three women stood inside, staring at a fire that gave off no heat. Each of them held a different rescue map. Their skin was pale from the cold and from not sleeping for days.

"It showed me a path to my sister’s house," one of the women said. "It’s leading me to safety."

"My home was on that map too," another said. "But it didn’t give me enough time to travel that far if I left now."

"The path from the archive doesn’t show the winds or how much fuel you’d need," Tessa told them, laying out the real map beside theirs. "And it doesn’t show all of the homes that need rescuing."

"So what do we tell the others?" the last woman asked, looking at the light outside.

"We tell them the facts," Ceryn said. "And we warn them that the bright path may not be safe."

Together, they decided to use the outpost’s old relay slate to reach every safe house affected by the rescue maps. Ilyra gave them the weather count, and Tessa warned them about the crevasse field. Nahlia passed the message across Grand Meridian’s relay network.

STAY AT MARKED SAFE HOUSES. TELL EACH OTHER HOW MUCH FUEL YOU HAVE. DO NOT TRUST A SINGLE PATH.

The rescue maps fought back, showing the people who would need help if no one followed the path. Austin Veyron felt the urge to go and help them himself. It would be quicker than warning everyone about all the dangers waiting for them.

"Smaller," Veyra warned him as he gripped his root chain tighter.

Austin Veyron forced himself to look at the small details of the path instead of rushing to help. There was something the map wasn’t showing them. The path looped around beneath the archive and back into itself.

"That path only collects witnesses for the echo," he said, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. "It wants people to believe it will lead them to safety, one at a time."

The three women studied the map, and one of them began writing the truth on the relay slate. Once it was written out, they could all see it.

The rescue paths faded above the outpost.

Beneath it, the Winter Archive opened its door.

A gust of cold air rose from underneath, making Austin Veyron’s eyes water.

But beyond the outpost, where the warning hadn’t reached yet, people were still following the rescue maps.

Under the ice, the final fragment of the sovereign echo was putting its claim back together.