Field Journal – Entry V

  1st of Suncrest, 647 - Shadow Weave

  Upper Corrith Range, western face, temporary dig site

  It has been seven days since I uncovered the harmonic crescent.

  Seven days of scraping, sifting, and disappointment.

  The slope where I found it — I have begun calling it the Singing Scree — is deceptive. At first glance, the striations appear ancient, but the more I mapped them the clearer it became that the terrain is young. A landslide, perhaps two decades past, rolled down from the higher ridges. The layers are chaotic: crushed basalt, splintered pine, a slurry of earth and mica. Any deeper deposit would have been churned beyond recognition.

  Still, I dug.

  Each Light Birth I descended from camp, marked a new quadrant, and worked until the Shadow Weave wind began to howl through the gorge. The sound there has a voice of its own — hollow, alternating pitches that mimic speech. By the third day I found myself pausing between gusts as if to answer it.

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  No further artifacts have appeared. Not a shard, not a rivet, not even slag. The crescent remains singular — impossibly pristine amidst the wreckage of younger stone. It cannot have rolled down with the slide. Its edges are too sharp, its mass too perfectly balanced to have tumbled untouched.

  On the fifth Star Reign I camped lower to watch the scree under starlight. When the moon rose, the whole slope shimmered faintly, mica dust catching the glow like tiny constellations shifting beneath the earth. I thought — I felt — a resonance deep underfoot, slow as a sleeping breath.

  I recorded the vibration after I got my seismograph to work with a little percussive maintenance; the readings show a periodic pulse every six minutes, though there is no tectonic explanation for it.

  The following day I hiked laterally along the ridge, hoping to trace the landslide’s origin. The climb is perilous — loose gravel, hidden ice sheets, sudden gusts that threaten to throw one backward into the valley. But from a promontory I could see higher yet, where the stone reddens and begins to curve inward as though the mountain had swallowed a dome.

  That may be where the slide began.

  It may also be where the makers — if they exist — still dwell.

  Each Star Reign since, I’ve argued with myself.

  To climb further without proof risks everything: injury, exposure, the end of the grant. Yet after South Reach this one artifact alone isn’t enough. The object wants to return home — or so my irrational mind insists. When I bring it near the cliff face, I think it hums faintly again. When I turn back toward camp, it quiets.

  Perhaps that is my imagination.

  Or perhaps it is an invitation.

  I have decided. Tomorrow I will begin packing for ascent. I will take only the essentials: notebooks, rations for three weeks, climbing gear, bedroll, and the artifact. I’ll bury everything else here. If the storm fronts hold, I should reach the dome ridge by the end of the week.

  I can almost hear it from here — a heartbeat behind the stone.

  — A.T.