The knocking continued.
Kael turned back toward the ravine, listening as the sound carried through the broken stonework. It came in uneven bursts now, several blows close together followed by a pause, then another series that sounded harder than the last.
Lyra was already moving toward the edge.
"Wait," Talia said.
Lyra stopped a few paces short of the drop and looked back.
"Something wrong?"
"Besides the fact that someone might be knocking from the bottom of a collapsed bridge?"
"That was the part I was going to investigate."
"And how were you planning to get down there?"
Lyra glanced over the edge.
"Carefully."
"Wonderful. I'll put that in the report."
Kael moved beside them, keeping a safe distance from the broken paving. The ravine was deep enough that the lower sections remained in shadow despite the morning sunlight. Broken bridge supports rose from the rock below, their surfaces worn smooth by years of weather.
The knocking stopped.
All three waited.
Kael looked toward the opposite ridge. From this angle, he could see part of the old road emerging between two weathered walls before disappearing behind a bend. There was no movement anywhere along it.
"Could someone be trapped down there?" he asked.
"Possibly," Lyra replied.
Talia crouched beside the remains of a low stone parapet and examined the ground.
"Then they've chosen an inconvenient place to be trapped."
Kael frowned. "What do you mean?"
"There's no obvious route to the bottom from this side. The slope is too steep, and most of the old access steps have collapsed."
"Maybe they came from the other side."
"Maybe."
Talia picked up a small stone and dropped it into the ravine.
It struck the rock below several seconds later, bounced twice, and settled somewhere among the debris.
The sound was sharp and clear.
Kael listened to its fading echoes.
"Different," he said.
Lyra glanced at him.
"Different how?"
"The knocking wasn't coming from that low."
Talia looked into the gorge again.
"Sound can behave strangely around these walls."
"I know. But it sounded closer to the bridge."
"The bridge isn't there," she pointed out.
Kael looked across the empty space.
"That's what bothers me."
Lyra considered the gap for a moment, then drew Needle.
The shorter of her two blades caught a pale strip of sunlight as she turned it in her hand. She crouched beside the broken parapet, reached over the stone, and tapped the flat of the blade against the masonry.
Three quick knocks.
She waited.
Nothing.
"Perhaps whoever it was has moved," Talia said.
Lyra tapped again.
This time, she struck twice, paused, and struck once more.
The answer came almost immediately.
Two knocks.
A pause.
One.
Kael straightened.
Talia slowly lowered the map she had been holding.
Lyra looked at them both.
"Well."
Kael stared across the ravine.
"That wasn't an echo."
"No," Lyra said. "It wasn't."
She tapped a different pattern.
One knock, followed by three.
They waited.
Several seconds passed.
Then the same pattern returned.
One.
Three.
Kael felt a faint chill despite the morning warmth.
"Someone's answering us."
Talia looked down at the broken supports. "Or something is repeating what we do."
Lyra glanced at her.
"That's a cheerful distinction."
"It's an important one."
Kael knew she was right.
An intelligent response and an Echo repetition could sound remarkably similar, especially in a place with so much history embedded in the stone. He had heard enough strange things since meeting Lyra to understand that a remembered action didn't necessarily mean its original owner was still alive.
But the pattern bothered him.
If the sound was merely a record of an old event, why had it answered three different sequences?
Unless something was actively reproducing the knocks.
He looked toward Lyra.
"Could Refrain do that?"
She shook her head.
"Not the way you're thinking. I could repeat a knock that had already happened, provided the Echo was clear enough. But I wouldn't automatically know which sequence you were about to choose."
"So someone would have to be deciding what to repeat."
"Exactly."
Talia stood.
"Which is why we shouldn't assume the source is friendly."
A stronger series of knocks came from across the gap.
This time, the sound was fast and irregular.
Kael counted seven before it stopped.
Lyra raised Needle again.
"Should we answer?"
"Not yet," Talia said.
She was looking toward the old survey marker behind them.
Kael followed her gaze.
"What?"
"The copper pin."
The small piece of metal they had discovered earlier still protruded from the crack in the marker. Someone had scraped the stone clean around it, leaving a pale rectangular patch amid the lichen.
Talia approached the marker and examined the pin more closely.
"I thought they were using this as a reference point for measuring the road."
"Weren't they?" Kael asked.
"Probably. But look where it's facing."
She stepped aside.
The pin wasn't positioned toward the opposite end of the collapsed bridge.
It pointed slightly north of it.
Kael looked along that direction.
The line passed across the ravine and ended against a section of bare rock several metres away from the surviving road.
"That's strange," he said.
"Yes."
Lyra joined them.
"Could the marker have moved?"
"The entire pillar would have to have shifted. And if it had, I'd expect the retaining wall to show more damage."
Talia removed a narrow measuring cord from her bag and fixed one end around the copper pin.
"Kael, take the other end."
He obeyed.
"Pull it straight. Not toward the bridge. Along the line of the pin."
Kael stepped backward until the cord was taut.
"Here?"
"A little left."
He shifted.
"Good."
The cord now pointed across the ravine, past the surviving bridge support and toward the bare rock on the opposite slope.
Talia studied the alignment.
Then she looked at the old road behind them.
"That doesn't make sense."
Lyra folded her arms.
"Another entry for the report?"
"Don't tempt me."
Kael looked along the measuring cord.
He remembered what they'd discovered earlier. The two surviving ends of the road didn't align properly. The bridge could have bent, or the terrain could have shifted, but neither explanation had seemed entirely satisfactory.
Now they had another measurement that didn't agree with the visible road.
"Maybe the pin was placed incorrectly," he suggested.
"Maybe. But someone took considerable care preparing that marker. I'd rather understand what they were measuring before dismissing their work."
Another series of knocks sounded from the ravine.
Kael glanced back.
The source seemed slightly farther north than before.
Or perhaps he was imagining it.
He turned toward Talia.
"Could the two things be connected?"
"The pin and the knocking?"
"Yes."
"Possibly. But we have no evidence yet."
Kael nodded.
That was fair.
The trouble was that every new observation seemed to produce another question.
And they were running out of time.
Lyra checked the position of the sun.
"Seren told us an hour."
Talia began winding up the cord.
"We're already beyond that."
Kael looked toward the ravine.
"Are we really leaving?"
"For now," Lyra said.
"But someone's there."
"Something is making a sound. We don't know who or what, and we don't have a safe way to reach it."
Kael opened his mouth, then closed it.
She was right.
He hated that she was right.
Lyra seemed to recognize his frustration.
"Listen. If someone is trapped down there, we'll be considerably more useful with Seren and the proper equipment than we would be after falling off a broken bridge."
Kael glanced at the ravine.
"Fair point."
"Try to remember it. I'd rather not have to explain to Morrow how I lost you."
"He'd probably blame you."
"He'd definitely blame me."
Talia packed away her tools.
"We should mark the position of the pin and the direction of the sound. If we're coming back, I want to know whether either changes."
Kael helped her record the measurements.
Lyra tapped one final pattern against the parapet.
Three slow knocks.
They waited.
This time, the response came after a much longer pause.
Three knocks returned from somewhere across the ravine.
Then a fourth.
Lyra frowned.
"I only struck three."
Kael listened.
Nothing followed.
Talia made a note.
"Let's go."
They started back along the abandoned road.
Kael looked over his shoulder once.
The broken crossing lay in full morning sunlight now, its surviving pillars casting narrow shadows across the gorge.
There was still no sign of anyone.
But the unanswered fourth knock stayed with him all the way back to camp.
Morrow was eating when they returned.
He sat on a flat stone outside the shelter, holding a piece of bread in one hand and watching the prisoner with an expression of mild disappointment.
The captive sat nearby, his wrists still secured.
Seren stood beside the shelter entrance, examining a small collection of route markers he'd gathered from the surrounding ground.
He looked up as the three approached.
"You're late."
"We found the road," Lyra said.
"That sounds promising."
"And a collapsed bridge."
"Less promising."
"Someone may be trapped near it."
Seren put down the marker he was holding.
"Explain."
They told him everything.
The surviving paving stones. The repaired retaining walls. The recently cleared survey marker. The wheel tracks ending at the ravine.
And the knocking.
Morrow stopped eating.
"Someone answered you?"
Lyra nodded.
"Repeated three different patterns. The last response included an extra knock."
Morrow looked toward the western hills.
"Could be a trapped traveller."
"Could be," Talia replied.
"Could be an Echo remnant?"
"Also possible."
Morrow sighed.
"I preferred the first one."
Seren remained quiet while Talia showed him her measurements.
He examined the recorded alignment and compared it with the current route map.
"The pin points away from the surviving road."
"By several metres," Talia confirmed. "Enough that it doesn't appear accidental."
"And the old bridge ends don't align?"
"Not naturally. There are mundane explanations, but we can't establish which one is correct."
Seren studied the drawing.
"Did you find any fresh tracks besides the wagon marks?"
"Several near the survey marker," Lyra said. "Whoever was there had measuring equipment."
"How many people?"
"Couldn't tell."
Seren looked toward Kael.
"And you heard Echo?"
"A little."
"What did it tell you?"
Kael considered how to answer.
"Nothing I can trust yet. I heard what sounded like a wagon moving, but an old road would have plenty of memories like that."
Seren nodded.
"Good distinction."
Kael glanced at the map.
"There's something else."
He explained his suspicion about the surveys.
How the measurements might have been accurate at different times, rather than simply wrong.
How the attackers might be gathering old records to compare those conditions.
Seren listened without interrupting.
When Kael finished, he looked at Talia.
"Possible?"
"Under sufficiently unstable Echo conditions, yes. But we'd need evidence that the terrain actually changed between surveys."
"Could it happen without leaving an obvious fracture seam?"
Talia hesitated.
"Some anomalies don't present as a visible seam. But a recurring change affecting an entire road would be unusual."
Seren looked toward Lyra.
"What do you think?"
"I think somebody wants the old crossing badly enough to attack caravans, and we now have evidence they were surveying it recently."
She glanced toward Kael.
"And I think our young friend has a hypothesis worth testing."
Morrow grinned.
"Look at that. Kael's becoming useful."
"I've been useful."
"Of course you have."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"You're enjoying this."
"Immensely."
Seren folded the map.
"We'll investigate the crossing again. This time we'll bring enough equipment to examine it properly."
He looked toward the shelter.
"Morrow, how's the survivor?"
"Stable. Still in pain, but he's had water and kept down some food."
"Can he travel?"
"Not far. Not safely."
Seren nodded.
"Then we won't move him yet."
He glanced toward Lyra.
"I want you and Morrow here. Keep the survivor safe and watch the prisoner."
Lyra looked toward the western hills.
"You want me to stay?"
"You're the best person here to defend the shelter if someone attacks while we're away."
She considered that.
"Fair."
Morrow raised his hand.
"What am I?"
"The largest obstacle between our patient and anyone trying to reach him," Seren replied.
Morrow seemed satisfied.
"Also fair."
Talia began collecting the measuring equipment.
Kael checked the fastening on Grayshard.
Seren noticed.
"We're investigating, not fighting."
"I know."
"Then remember that when something strange happens."
Kael looked up.
"Why does everyone keep saying things like that to me?"
Lyra answered from behind him.
"Experience."
Morrow laughed.
Kael decided not to argue.
As they prepared to leave, the captive suddenly shifted against the wall.
It was a small movement.
But Talia noticed immediately.
"Something to add?"
The man looked away.
She studied him.
"You've been quiet all morning. But now that we're discussing the crossing, you seem interested."
No response.
Seren approached.
"Do you know what's making the knocking?"
The prisoner stared at him.
"Answering won't make us abandon the investigation," Seren continued. "But it might stop someone from getting hurt."
The man's jaw tightened.
For a moment, Kael thought he might speak.
Then he lowered his eyes.
Seren waited another few seconds before turning away.
"Very well."
They left him with Morrow and Lyra.
Kael had almost reached the upper path when he heard the captive speak.
"You're wasting your time."
He turned.
The man was watching them.
Seren stopped.
"Why?"
The prisoner glanced toward the western ridge.
Then looked back at the ground.
"You won't find anything there."
Kael thought of the wheel tracks.
The survey marker.
The knocking.
"Funny," he said. "We've already found quite a lot."
The man's eyes lifted.
For an instant, Kael saw something that looked remarkably like fear.
Then Seren motioned for him to continue.
They climbed toward the old road.
The knocking had stopped when they reached the ravine.
Kael found that more unsettling than he expected.
The old bridge supports stood exactly as they'd left them. Sunlight reached farther into the gorge now, revealing patches of pale stone and scattered debris that had been hidden in shadow during their first visit.
Talia returned to the survey marker.
Seren went straight to the broken edge.
He stood there for several seconds, examining both sides of the crossing before turning his attention to the steep rock walls below.
"How wide was the original bridge?" he asked.
Talia looked up.
"That's what we're trying to determine."
"Your estimate?"
"Twenty-five metres, perhaps a little more. Assuming the old road continued directly from these supports."
Seren looked across the ravine again.
"That's a substantial span."
"Yes."
"Any sign the bridge was deliberately destroyed?"
"Not enough to establish that."
He nodded.
Kael walked toward the paving stones where they'd discovered the wheel tracks.
They were still visible.
Two parallel impressions ran along the old road, shallow in places and deeper where the wheels had crossed patches of loose earth.
He crouched beside them.
"They're quite narrow."
Talia glanced over.
"Compared with what?"
"The wagons we found yesterday. Their wheels were wider."
"Different wagons use different wheels."
"I know."
Kael studied the impressions again.
He'd helped repair enough frontier carts to recognize the way wheels damaged soft ground. A heavily loaded wagon left deeper tracks, particularly when the surface was uneven. Lighter vehicles tended to produce shallower marks, though the condition of the road mattered too.
These impressions were narrow, but the depth varied considerably.
A few metres behind him, one wheel had sunk into a patch of dirt hard enough to leave a pronounced groove.
He followed it.
Near the broken edge, the groove became shallow.
Then vanished.
Kael frowned.
"Talia."
She approached.
"What is it?"
"Look at this."
He showed her the change in the tracks.
"The ground gets firmer here," she said.
"Yes, but look where the mark ends."
The groove stopped just before the paving reached the ravine.
There was no corresponding mark indicating that the wheel had turned.
Talia examined the surrounding surface.
"Someone might have cleared the tracks."
"Why only here?"
"That's what I'm trying to determine."
Seren joined them.
Kael pointed toward the empty crossing.
"If a wagon came this far, it would have needed somewhere to go. It couldn't turn easily on this narrow approach, and I don't see evidence that it reversed."
Seren looked along the old road.
"Could have been unloaded and dismantled."
"That's what we considered earlier."
"Possible, but troublesome work."
Morrow would have had plenty to say about moving an entire wagon across a ravine in pieces. Kael could almost hear him complaining about the number of trips.
Seren walked back several paces and examined the edge of the retaining wall.
"There's enough room for a small cart to turn farther behind us," he said. "Not here."
Kael nodded.
"So whatever happened, the tracks don't explain how the vehicle left."
"No."
Seren looked across the gap.
"Which doesn't mean it disappeared."
"I know."
"Good. Keep looking."
Kael returned his attention to the paving.
That was the frustrating part.
Every explanation seemed possible until they examined it properly.
Then another detail refused to fit.
Behind him, Talia was setting up a compact surveying instrument.
Its body consisted of a small metal frame mounted on three folding legs, with a narrow sighting ring that could rotate over a marked scale. The mechanism was simple enough for Kael to understand: sight a fixed point from two positions, measure the distance between those positions, and use the difference in angle to estimate how far away the point lay.
Talia secured it to a flat section of stone.
"Seren, I need two reference points."
He examined the ground.
"Here and beside that marker?"
"That should work."
Kael helped her establish a measured distance between them.
She sighted the far bridge support from the first position, recorded the angle, then repeated the measurement from the second.
The instrument clicked softly as she adjusted it.
After several moments, she frowned.
"That's inconvenient."
Kael looked over.
"What?"
"My figures don't agree with the rough survey."
"How far off?"
"Enough that I want to check them."
She adjusted the instrument and repeated the measurements.
Then she checked the reference points.
Kael watched her work.
He liked the precision of it. Talia didn't seem irritated by the possibility that she'd made a mistake. She simply went back through the procedure, examining each part that could have produced an incorrect result.
When she finished, her expression was more serious.
"Seren."
He approached.
"Problem?"
"The support isn't where my first measurements put it."
Seren looked across the ravine.
"Has anything shifted?"
"Not visibly."
"Could your instrument be damaged?"
"I checked."
"Then what changed?"
Talia looked toward the opposite wall.
"I don't know."
Kael studied the surviving pillar.
It looked ordinary enough.
Old stone. Weathered edges. A long crack running down its left side.
Nothing that suggested it was moving.
He glanced at Talia's instrument.
"Can we try something?"
She looked at him.
"What?"
"Take the same measurement again, but don't move the instrument afterward."
"All right."
She adjusted the sighting ring until the far pillar sat precisely within it.
"Now?"
"Leave it there."
Kael stepped beside her and looked through the ring.
The opposite support was clearly visible.
He memorized the alignment.
Then they waited.
At first, nothing happened.
A breeze moved through the ravine.
Loose dust shifted along the broken paving.
Somewhere behind them, a small insect crawled across a stone.
Kael was beginning to think the idea would lead nowhere when the far pillar moved out of the ring.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that its left edge no longer aligned with the reference mark.
He blinked.
"Talia."
"I see it."
She hadn't touched the instrument.
Neither had he.
The tripod remained firmly planted against the stone.
Seren crouched and examined the base.
"Could the ground be settling?"
"Not without disturbing the legs," Talia replied.
She looked through the sighting ring herself.
Then slowly straightened.
"That is not ordinary movement."
Kael looked across the ravine.
The pillar was still standing exactly where it appeared to have been before.
He could see no shaking.
No falling stones.
No signs of the opposite slope sliding.
And yet their measurement had changed.
He remembered the old maps.
Different directions.
Different distances.
The road that no longer aligned with itself.
"We've been assuming the surveys were taken from different positions," he said.
Talia looked at him.
"And?"
"What if the reference points weren't in the same positions when each survey was made?"
Seren studied the opposite bank.
"You're suggesting the terrain is moving?"
"Not necessarily."
Kael hesitated.
He wasn't sure how to express what he meant.
"If something physically moves, you can usually see what changed. The ground cracks, or a wall shifts, or a support falls."
He pointed across the gap.
"But we're looking at the same pillar. It hasn't fallen over. We haven't moved."
Talia folded her arms.
"And the measurement has changed."
"Yes."
Seren looked between them.
"Then let's establish whether the effect is repeating before we decide what it means."
They spent the next several minutes taking measurements.
The results weren't consistent.
Sometimes the estimated distance changed slightly.
Sometimes it returned close to the original figure.
And once, the angle shifted enough that Talia checked the instrument for the third time.
But the changes weren't random.
Kael began noticing that the readings seemed to settle for short periods before drifting again.
He mentioned it to Talia.
She reviewed her notes.
"You're right."
"Does that help?"
"It gives us something to test."
Seren looked toward the broken bridge.
"And something to report. Keep the instrument pointed at the support."
He stepped closer to the edge.
"Kael, come here. Slowly."
Kael joined him.
From their position, they could see the old road continuing toward the opposite hillside.
Seren pointed toward the gap.
"If the original bridge followed the direction of this road, where would it meet the far bank?"
Kael examined the alignment.
"South of the visible continuation."
"By how much?"
"A few metres, perhaps."
"Good."
Seren looked across the gorge again.
"Now forget the bridge supports for a moment. Look at the road itself."
Kael did.
The surviving paving on the far side still didn't line up properly with the near approach.
But as he watched, something about the angles began to bother him.
He moved a step to the right.
Then back.
"What?" Seren asked.
"The far road."
"What about it?"
"It looks..."
Kael stopped.
He couldn't explain it.
The road appeared unchanged.
But the uncomfortable feeling he'd noticed earlier was growing stronger.
Not pain.
Not quite pressure.
Something closer to the sensation he'd experienced at the quarry when two different histories had briefly occupied the same place.
He looked toward the gap.
There was no visible fracture.
No strange light.
No collapsing Echo storm.
Just empty space.
"Kael?"
He heard Seren's voice, but his attention had shifted to something else.
A wheel.
He could hear a wheel turning.
Not the faint creak he'd heard earlier.
This was louder.
Closer.
A wooden rim striking uneven stone.
Then another sound.
A person coughing.
Kael's eyes widened.
"Someone's there."
Seren looked toward the ravine.
"Where?"
"I can hear them."
"Below?"
Kael shook his head.
"Across."
Talia rose from her instrument.
"Kael?"
He pointed toward the empty gap.
"There's a wagon."
She stared at him.
"Where?"
"I can't see it."
He swallowed.
"But I can hear it."
Seren moved beside him.
"Don't go any closer."
Kael stopped.
The sounds continued.
A wheel creaked.
Someone spoke, too faintly for him to understand.
Then came a sharp metallic knock.
And another.
Kael looked toward the far bridge support.
The knocking was coming from the same direction as the voices.
He wasn't hearing a distant memory drifting through old stone.
At least, he didn't think he was.
Something about the sounds felt immediate.
There were movements between them.
Small changes.
The cough came again, followed by another voice responding.
He had heard Echo records before.
Some repeated.
Some arrived in fragments.
Some refused to preserve the people who had made them.
But this felt different.
Someone was speaking.
Someone else was answering.
And both were moving.
"Seren," he said.
The older explorer was already watching the gap.
"What?"
"I think they're still there."
For a moment, Seren said nothing.
Then he looked toward Talia.
"Do you have the reading?"
She glanced at the instrument.
"Yes."
"Keep watching it."
He drew his segmented climbing blade.
Kael noticed the way the weapon unfolded as Seren adjusted his grip. Several reinforced sections formed a narrow, slightly curved cutting edge, while a hooked portion near the tip allowed it to catch stone or timber when climbing. It was clearly designed for work in difficult terrain as well as combat.
Seren held it low.
"Nobody moves toward the gap without my order."
Kael nodded.
A moment later, the knocking stopped.
The wheel sound faded.
The voices vanished.
Kael blinked.
Everything was quiet again.
He looked across the ravine.
Nothing.
Talia lowered her instrument.
"The reading changed."
Seren turned.
"How much?"
"Enough that the far support no longer aligned with the previous reference. Then it returned."
Kael looked toward the gap.
"So it happened again."
"Something happened," Talia corrected.
She was trying to remain calm.
But Kael noticed that her hands were gripping the instrument more tightly than before.
Seren walked back to the survey marker.
He examined the copper pin and the narrow line it formed across the ravine.
Then he looked at the position of the sun.
"How long between the changes?"
Talia consulted her notes.
"Not regular enough to give a reliable interval."
"Could it be related to the light?"
"Possibly. Could be temperature, Echo activity, or something else entirely."
Kael looked toward the far road.
"What about the knocking?"
Seren considered the question.
"Let's try again."
He approached the broken parapet and struck it twice with the flat of his blade.
The sound carried across the ravine.
They waited.
Nothing.
He struck again.
Two knocks.
A pause.
One.
For several seconds, there was only the wind.
Then the answer came.
Two.
One.
Kael felt his stomach tighten.
Seren remained still.
He tapped a new sequence.
Three quick knocks.
Then one slow.
The reply came after a moment.
Three quick knocks.
One slow.
And then, almost immediately, another series.
Fast.
Desperate.
Talia looked up from her instrument.
"The reading's changing again."
Kael turned toward the gap.
He could hear the wheel.
Then the voices.
Louder this time.
Someone was shouting.
He couldn't make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable.
There were people over there.
People trying to get their attention.
"Seren—"
"I hear it."
Kael stopped.
Seren was staring across the ravine.
He had heard it too.
Talia stepped away from the instrument.
"Something's happening to the far support."
Kael looked.
For a heartbeat, the opposite pillar seemed to blur.
Not disappear.
Not move.
Its edges simply became difficult to follow, as though the stone occupied two slightly different positions.
Then the paving beyond it changed.
A narrow section of road appeared where there had previously been bare rock.
Kael stared.
The change lasted only an instant.
Then it was gone.
Talia made a small sound.
"Did you—"
"Yes," Seren said.
The air above the ravine shivered.
A line of pale stone became visible between the two banks.
Then another.
And suddenly, where there had been nothing but empty space, the broken bridge stood whole.
Not completely.
Its parapets were damaged, and part of the paving had sunk near the middle. Several sections were held together by temporary timber supports.
But it was there.
A bridge.
Stretching across the ravine.
Kael couldn't breathe.
A wagon stood near its far end.
Its canvas covering had been torn, one wheel was badly damaged, and several wooden crates had been piled against the side to form a makeshift shelter.
People were moving around it.
Real people.
A woman stood beside the damaged wheel, striking a metal cup against a stone support.
Behind her, an older man leaned against the wagon.
Another figure lay beneath a blanket.
And near the front, a boy was pointing toward the three explorers.
The woman looked up.
For an instant, her eyes met Kael's.
She stopped knocking.
Then she shouted.
"HELP!"
Kael took a step forward.
Seren caught his arm.
"Stay back."
"But they're—"
"I see them."
The woman turned toward the wagon.
She snatched a small object from beside a crate and hurried toward the bridge.
Talia looked down at her instrument.
"The alignment's changing rapidly."
Kael barely heard her.
The woman was running.
Not toward the far road.
Toward them.
"Seren, she's trying to cross!"
"She won't make it."
The bridge was more than twenty metres long, and she was still near the far end.
The woman seemed to realize the same thing.
She stopped, pulled a short sling from her belt, and placed the object inside it.
Then she spun the sling once.
Twice.
Released.
Something small flew across the gap.
Kael tracked it instinctively.
The object struck the paving several paces behind him and bounced against the retaining wall.
He turned toward it.
A cloth-wrapped bundle.
Before he could move, the air shivered again.
The bridge began to fade.
The woman shouted something else.
Kael looked back.
Her face was twisted with desperation.
The boy stood beside the wagon, waving both arms.
The older man had risen unsteadily and was shouting too.
Then the entire crossing vanished.
No explosion.
No collapsing stone.
One moment, the bridge and the people were there.
The next, the ravine was empty.
Kael stood motionless.
The wind returned to the gorge.
A loose stone fell from the broken parapet and disappeared into the depths below.
Talia lowered her measuring instrument.
For once, she said nothing.
Seren slowly released Kael's arm.
"Everyone saw that?"
Kael nodded.
Talia swallowed.
"Yes."
Seren looked across the empty gap.
Then toward the bundle lying beside the retaining wall.
"Kael."
He turned.
"Get that."
Kael hurried over.
The bundle was small enough to fit in one hand. A piece of faded red cloth had been wrapped around a smooth stone, with a narrow strip of paper folded beneath the knot.
He untied it carefully.
The paper was dirty and creased.
Someone had written on it in charcoal.
The handwriting was uneven, as though the writer had been working with trembling hands.
Kael read the first line.
Then the second.
His throat tightened.
"Seren."
The older explorer approached.
Kael handed him the paper.
There were only three short lines.
SIX ALIVE.
TWO CANNOT WALK.
WATER ALMOST GONE.
Seren read the message.
Then read it again.
Talia moved beside them.
"Is it real?"
Kael looked at her.
She wasn't asking whether the paper existed.
She was asking whether it could be another Echo remnant.
Another old memory.
Another repetition of something that had happened long before they arrived.
Kael looked down at the stone.
The cloth was dusty.
The knot was tight.
The paper smelled faintly of smoke.
He thought about the woman running toward them, the sling turning in her hand, and the bundle flying across an apparently impossible gap.
"I don't know how it crossed," he admitted.
He looked toward the empty ravine.
"But she threw it to us. We saw her."
Talia crouched beside the bundle.
"An Echo record shouldn't simply leave an object behind in the present like this."
"Unless the overlap was physically accessible," Seren said.
She looked up.
"Yes."
Kael glanced toward the vanished bridge.
The implication was becoming difficult to ignore.
The road had appeared.
People had stood on it.
They had reacted to the explorers.
And something they threw had remained behind after the road disappeared.
Whatever they had witnessed, it wasn't merely a picture of the past.
Seren folded the paper carefully.
"Six people."
Kael nodded.
"At least six."
"Two injured," Talia added. "And almost no water."
She looked toward her measuring instrument.
"We don't know how long that opening will last next time."
"Or when it will return," Kael said.
Seren studied the ravine.
"No."
For a moment, the three of them stood quietly beside the broken road.
Kael thought of the prisoner back at the shelter.
The warning not to take the survivor farther west.
The stolen maps.
The wheel tracks that ended at the edge of an empty crossing.
He thought about how easily they might have dismissed the knocking as a strange Echo phenomenon and walked away.
And he thought of the woman with the metal cup.
She had been striking the stone hard enough for someone on the other side to hear.
Again and again.
Perhaps for hours.
Perhaps longer.
"Seren," he said.
The older explorer looked at him.
"We have to help them."
"I know."
"We don't even know how to reach them."
"I know that too."
Kael looked across the gap.
"Then what do we do?"
Seren folded the paper once more and placed it inside his coat.
"We go back to the others. We secure the survivor and the prisoner, and we establish what supplies we have."
He looked toward Talia.
"I want every measurement you took recorded while it's still fresh. Including the intervals between changes."
She nodded.
"And then?"
Seren examined the old road.
"Then we find out what those people were trying to tell us."
Kael frowned.
"They told us they're alive."
"Yes."
"And they need water."
"Yes."
Seren turned toward him.
"But they also knew where to stand, when to signal, and how to send something across."
Kael looked toward the empty ravine.
The woman had been ready with the sling.
The bundle had already been prepared.
She had known an opening might occur.
Perhaps she had seen it happen before.
Perhaps she had been waiting for someone to answer the knocking.
He looked back at Seren.
"You think they know more about the crossing than we do."
"I think they have been living with it."
Talia packed away her instrument.
"And unlike us, they haven't been able to leave."
Seren nodded.
"Which means we have two problems. We need to understand how the crossing works, and we need to keep those people alive long enough to make use of that understanding."
Kael looked at the old road one last time.
The bridge was gone.
The far bank was silent.
But now he knew what the knocking had been.
Not a warning.
Not some ancient mechanism endlessly repeating a forgotten sound.
Someone had been calling for help.
And for the first time since the investigation began, they had an answer worth carrying back.
Six people were alive on a road that no longer existed.
And somewhere beyond the broken crossing, they were waiting for the next chance to be heard.
End of Chapter 32 — The Missing Span