Smoke from the Fogline

Day 24 since the last Blood Moon.

Ashmaw hadn't left the ridgeline since the signal hum nearly a week ago.

He wasn't pacing anymore. He was waiting.

Down below, the fogline had thickened — that strange, cold mist that coiled mid-air even in morning sun. It drifted through the mossline and blanketed the southern slope of Sector B like it was shielding something. Watching something.

Riku stood beside him, eyes on the haze, then down to the weathered map scrap he'd pinned under a stone.

Three rings. Sovereign zone marker.

Same symbols as his own territory, mirrored.

No names. No borders. But clearly: they'd been mapped.

Juran's perimeter units now operated in overlapping loops — double-layer patrols, never still. No spears were carried singly, and no unit moved without a backup scout trailing silently one node behind.

Thalya laid six fresh tremor-vine strands into the gully slope, each tied to rootstone anchors with thin resonance cords. Anything heavier than a hawk would vibrate the whole segment.

The Blind Hall was officially sealed.

Inside: the black cube, the map fragment, and the obsidian spike — the one with carving identical to Riku's own dagger, likely mined from Sulfur Cradle.

Someone else had reached that far. Someone with the same ideas. The same tools.

But maybe not the same restraint.

That night, the system whispered again.

[Enhancement Event – Unit Specialization]

Target: Emberfront Scout – Relay Watcher (#2)

Condition: Sustained fogline proximity under alert conditions

– Hearing Radius Expanded

– Peripheral Detection Boosted

– Trait Acquired: "Stilltrace"

(Scout remains undetectable while moving below half speed. Any sudden movement resets invisibility timer.)

Riku reassigned her to fogwatch permanently.

She said nothing when told.

Just lowered her hood and vanished into the mist before dawn.

Sector B's fourth perimeter sweep — Ashmaw finally moved.

He led Riku, Thalya, and Juran down a dry ridge path into a soft-cratered basin, nearly silent save for water dripping from high branches. There, buried half beneath moss, Ashmaw scratched gently.

They uncovered it carefully:

A strip of black-barked leather, stiff and thick. Embedded with eye-shaped sigils not found in any known glyph system.

The edge was crushed, not cut.

Riku turned it over.

Inside was a curved line — ringed with tiny, inked markers. Like waypoints. Not to a camp. Not to a mine.

To something through his region.

A travel path.