Chapter 27 - Another One

His laughter faded, carried away by the wind. The sky had shifted, brighter now, with a horizon stained in the color of rusted copper.

Ren took a breath and kept walking.

Not hurried. Not desperate. Just steady. A man who had remembered how to hope.

He reached a narrow rise where two ridges dipped inward, forming a shallow natural basin, wind carved and mostly dry. Cracks webbed across the ground, but the soil wasn't empty. Pebbles had shifted strangely, like they'd been disturbed.

He knelt, reached into his satchel, and unrolled the map.

At first, nothing.

Then it pulsed.

A shimmer, faint but real, flickered across the lower corner.

New ink crawled across the page. Circle, not a path. Different from the vein-line patterns before.

Ren narrowed his eyes. "That's new."

He moved closer to the basin's center.

The shimmer deepened. Another thread extended from the mark, tracing toward the edge of the ridge. Toward… a mound of collapsed stone.

He followed the ink's direction like it was a compass, heart thudding in his chest.

That's when he saw the glint.

Just a flicker, caught beneath dust and fractured rubble.

He knelt again, scraping carefully.

The stone gave way to something smooth. Metal. Fused to the rock.

A relic.

He dug it out, wiped the face with his sleeve.

The box was palm-sized, curved like a river stone. One end was flat, the other tapered like a sculptor's chisel. He turned it slowly.

A button.

No writing. No runes. Just a symbol, a six-pointed lattice. Like a crystal diagram.

He pressed it.

Nothing happened.

Then, a soft click.

A faint blue glow traced the edge of the device, humming softly. Alive.

He stared. The tip began to warm, just slightly. A line of tiny glyphs lit up, ones he couldn't read, but instinctively understood.

He reached into his pack, unwrapped the jadeite first. No reaction.

Then the shaped diamond.

The device pulsed.

The glyphs flickered. One stayed lit.

Ren's breath caught. "A detector."

Old-world. Maybe pre-magic. Maybe something else entirely. But it worked.

Not just heat, conductivity, maybe. Mana signature, or something stranger.

He looked back at the broken ledge where he'd found the stones.

This place wasn't just rich.

It was mapped, surveyed, and tested before he ever came.

This was once a mine. Or a vault. Or a battlefield.

And someone had left the tools behind.

Ren stood slowly, tucking the relic into a cloth pouch and tightening the strap on his satchel.

A new thought took root.

He hadn't just found value.

He'd found a method.

***

The sun dipped below the ridge, and the cold crept in fast.

Ren hadn't gone far. Just to the center of the cracked basin, where the land dipped again into a shallow, darkened hollow.

Not quite a cave, but something like it. The way the rocks curved inward, how the soil had been cleared, didn't feel natural.

"Someone dug this," he murmured.

He stepped inside. Just enough room to sit upright. Dry, sheltered from the wind. The remains of a fire pit. Ash long since scattered, were buried in the dust near the back wall.

He dropped his pack with a sigh.

He had food. Water. Enough warmth if he rationed his body heat right.

This would do for the night.

He sat down slowly, the relic scanner in his hand. Its faint glow had dimmed, but it hadn't gone out. The edge still shimmered with light.

He turned it over. Again. Again.

"How?" Ren asked aloud, not to the tool. But to the empty space it came from. To the question that now buzzed behind everything he'd touched.

First the drill. Buried beneath ruins, reacting only when he approached.

Now this scanner. Clean. Still powered. Left like a breadcrumb.

Both felt too familiar. Too… intentional.

"This isn't magic," he said quietly. "It's engineered or maybe both mixed."

He looked down at his own calloused fingers. He remembered reading about devices like these. Thermal conductivity testers, spectrometers, pulse sensors, from textbooks and field notes back home. From Earth.

That word still felt heavy. Earth.

This wasn't Earth. But somehow, fragments of its past. Its logic. Iits tools, had found their way here.

Or had always been here?

His eyes flicked toward the map. It lay open beside the fire pit, unmoving now. But not silent.

The veins it had revealed earlier, they weren't trails. Not exactly.

They were connections. Lines between nodes. Like an old subway map, or a power grid.

Or something even older.

And then the name came to him again.

"London," Ren whispered.

Not the village. The name itself.

A city. On Earth. A place no one here should know.

And yet some parent, in a world of sword and magic, had named their child after a forgotten metropolis across another sky.

It didn't make sense.

Unless…

Ren stared at the stone wall before him. Cold. Silent.

"Something bigger," he muttered.

He didn't know what yet. Couldn't prove it. Couldn't chase it.

But he felt it, like a low hum in the ground.

This world was built on top of something else. And whatever it was, the map responded to it. The tools were part of it. Maybe even the people.

He didn't move for a long time. Just sat, thinking.

The fireless cave held no comfort, only silence.

Ren sat still, unmoving, his back against the stone wall.

Before him: the map, spread open and waiting.

In his hand: the relic detector, its faint blue edge still pulsing with dormant energy.

He stared at them both with a blank, unreadable expression.

No movement.

No words.

Only thought.

His eyes flicked once to the map, then back to the device.

Three pieces, he thought. Three pieces of something bigger.

And he hadn't even found the edge of the puzzle yet.

His body sat still, but inside. His mind roared.

How do I use this?

What's the right move?

How do I extract the most value without breaking it, without triggering something I can't control?

He wasn't thinking like a warrior. Not like a scavenger, either.

He was thinking like a planner.

A man who needed one move to count for ten.

Minute after minute passed.

Then an hour.

Then another.

The wind moaned faintly outside the hollow, scraping sand across the basin. Cold crept in slowly, but he barely noticed. His hands didn't shake. His brow didn't furrow.

But the thoughts kept spiraling.

If the map reacts to relics... can it predict them? Can it lead to more?

If the tools respond only to me... does that mean others can't see them at all?

And if that's true…

Maybe there's a way.

A way to make everything tip in his favor.

He didn't know it yet.

But something inside told him, there's a way to get everything he needs in a single move.

He just hadn't seen it.

Yet.

His head finally dropped against the wall, exhaustion dragging down every inch of his frame. The relic slipped gently to the ground beside the map.

Ren's breathing slowed.

Not from peace, but from collapse.

From hours of thinking so hard it drained the strength from his muscles.

He drifted into sleep without meaning to.

Not give up, only paused.

Because he would find it.

The answer. The move. The path.

Eventually.

And when he did…

The world around him would change.