Chapter 40 - As Long As It Takes

The morning sun broke over the eastern ridge, but something in the air felt... heavier than usual.

Ren stood near the tower, staring down the main path that led out of the village.

Behind him, the sounds of hammers, saws, and shouting filled the air. Work continued. Progress didn't pause. But his mind was elsewhere.

Three days. he thought.

He hadn't heard anything yet. Not from Tarn. Not from Mikkel. Not from the road. And worst of all, he didn't know if the watchmaker had agreed to come.

What if he refused?

A low voice pulled him from his thoughts.

"Ren!" Tobren called from the southern fence, urgency in his voice.

Ren turned, already alert. "What is it?"

"Need you to come take a look," Tobren said, tone clipped. "Something's wrong with the field."

Ren's eyes narrowed. "What happened?"

"Just come. You'll want to see it for yourself."

Without another word, Ren broke into a run, following Tobren toward the southeast edge.

The crops in the southeast had grown fast. Too fast, maybe. The greenwake fertilizer had accelerated early harvests, but today the field looked... wrong.

A line of plants had shriveled overnight. The earth beneath them was soft, wet, like it had been soaked despite no rain.

Ren crouched low and ran his fingers over the darkened soil. It clung like tar.

"Not rot," Lenna said quietly beside him. "Something else. The roots aren't just dead, they're scorched."

"Scorched?" Sera asked, arms crossed, standing behind them.

Lenna nodded. "Burned from the inside. No fire touched the surface. It came from below."

Ren narrowed his eyes. "Mana reaction?"

"I don't know… maybe?" Lenna answered uncertainly.

Ren stood, brushing dirt from his palms. "We pull the row. No risk spreading it. Reseed a fresh patch just north of this one."

Tobren gave the order, and the workers moved fast.

But Ren kept glancing at the edge of the affected area, where the soil had a faint shimmer. Almost like it breathed.

And deep beneath it, he felt a whisper of something old.

He didn't know why. Just… instinct.

If I had the map with me…

He sighed through his nose. Of course… he'd sprinted here the moment Tobren called. No time to grab it. No time to think. The map was still lying on the table in the tower, untouched.

Would it have glowed again? Would it have shown me something beneath this ground, just like the tunnel? The stone?

He didn't know. And that frustrated him.

"Ren?" Tobren called. "We've cleared the bad patch. Do we reseed now or wait?"

Ren stood slowly. "Wait. Just a day or two. Let the soil breathe."

Tobren nodded, but he didn't miss the look in Ren's eyes.

"You think there is something wrong below?" he said.

Ren didn't answer. He just kept staring at the spot, the one that shimmered faintly under the morning light.

I'll come back, he thought.

Later. With the map.

Something was beneath that field.

Something waiting.

Then Ren turned and made his way back toward the tower, boots heavy with soil, his thoughts heavier still.

Halfway there, a shout rang out from the northern border.

He didn't catch the words, just the tone. Urgent. Sharp.

Ren sighed, already bracing himself. "Not again..."

With the kind of steps that only feel inevitable, he turned and headed toward the source.

At the edge of the path, there was Helrick. He now serving as a makeshift gatekeeper. He had his spear half-raised, eyes locked on the treeline.

A man stumbled forward from the trees. Thin, sunburnt, limping. He wore a cloak too fine for the Wasteland and carried nothing but a torn satchel. His eyes scanned the village like he couldn't believe it was real.

Helrick stopped him before he could collapse.

"Easy," he said. "You're not the first to show up from nowhere, but you better have a story."

Ren arrived a minute later with Tobren and two villagers. Sera watched from the tower's edge, arms folded.

The man looked up at Ren, eyes hollow. "Is this... the place they talk about? The one where the dead land lives again?"

Ren didn't answer right away. He just looked at him. At his trembling hands. At the burn marks on his boots. At the desperation.

He finally nodded. "It is."

The man exhaled, dropped to his knees, and said just one word.

"Help."

Then he collapsed.

They carried him to the tower, laying him down on a bedroll near the wall. Lenna stayed by his side, quietly cleaning his wounds and applying herbal salves. No one spoke much. They all waited for him to wake.

But Ren couldn't just sit there doing nothing.

He climbed the spiral stairs to the second floor of the tower. The steps creaked under his boots.

At the top, a single door waited. An old room, once meant for lookouts or scouts when this tower still had a purpose. Now, it was his.

His room.

A narrow bed. A small table. And on that table, the map.

He picked it up, careful, almost reverent.

Then he grabbed a hoe from beside the door and headed out again, toward the field. His pace was brisk. Focused.

Tobren spotted him midway and fell in step without asking.

He knew Ren well enough by now.

There was something to uncover.

And Ren wasn't going to wait.

In the field, he knelt beside the same scorched patch. The one Lenna said had burned from the inside out.

He unrolled the map beside him. The field on the map shimmered faintly in the dim light, breathing with a life of their own. As expected, there it was.

A pulse.

Right where he stood.

Ren nodded slowly. "You are hiding something."

He plunged the hoe into the soil. Slowly, carefully. The dirt gave way with a strange softness, like it wanted to be removed.

Tobren, silent beside him, and began helping with his hands. Neither spoke.

A few layers in, the metal edge of the hoe struck something hard.

Clink.

Ren dropped the tool and dug with his fingers.

The earth peeled back to reveal a flat metal case, no bigger than a ledger, its surface wrapped in a protective layer of waxed cloth.

He lifted it gently, brushing soil from its surface.

It wasn't locked. Just sealed.

Ren unfolded the cover slowly, revealing pages of parchment, dry and perfectly preserved. Inked in a language he mostly understood, schematic lines, angles, cross sections.

Some kind of mechanical design. Old, but intricate.

Tobren leaned closer. "What is that?"

Ren stared, eyes scanning the symbols, the moving parts. He didn't fully get it, but he didn't have to.

"It's a blueprint," Ren said softly. "For a machine. Not the drill. Not a detector. Something else."

"Looks complicated," Tobren muttered.

"Good," Ren said. "That means it's worth building."

He stood and rolled the map back up under one arm, the blueprint under the other.

Whatever this was…

It didn't just survive underground.

It waited.

***

That night, Ren stood on the tower's top floor, gazing at the stars.

Below him, the village still moved. Slow, quiet, but alive.

A flicker of lamplight here. A soft voice there. It breathed now, like something that wanted to survive.

Sera joined him without a word, leaning on the ledge beside him.

"They'll be back soon," she said.

Ren didn't respond.

"You think the watchmaker said no?"

"I don't know," Ren muttered. "It's been three days. Maybe they convinced him. Maybe he laughed in their faces."

Sera glanced sideways. "If he's smart, he'll come."

"And if he doesn't?"

She smirked. "A man like that? An old master watchmaker? He'd have to be dead not to be curious about something he's never seen before."

Ren exhaled slowly. "We've got soil that burns, strangers at our gate, and a relic that might power a future no one here understands."

"And yet," Sera said, "we're still here."

He looked at her. "For how long, though?"

"As long as it takes."