Chapter 238: Reminiscing
Rohan set to the work with the same steady, methodical patience he’d once applied to Veyrhold’s endless maintenance needs, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, a genuine comfort in the rhythm of it — the honest, uncomplicated satisfaction of fixing something broken with his own two hands, of watching a day’s labour translate directly into visible, measurable progress.
There was a particular kind of peace in it that combat never offered, and even the anchor point search itself rarely allowed him — no urgency, no danger, no calculation about what might go wrong if he moved a half-second too slowly. Just dust, and worn components, and the quiet satisfaction of a sorting array humming back to life beneath his hands after hours of patient, careful attention. He understood, working through those long, undramatic days, a small piece of what had kept Veyrhold’s people going through years of hardship that would have broken settlements with less stubborn pride in their own competence.
In the evenings, exhausted in the particular way that came from real physical work rather than the desperate adrenaline of combat or flight, he found himself thinking less about the anchor point, less about the pull steady in his chest, and more, unexpectedly, about the strange, winding shape his life had taken since a system message had first informed an eighteen-year-old boy that he’d finally Awakened.
’Seven months ago I was standing in a sports hall, dreading nothing worse than staying ordinary.’
’Now I’m on a mining platform at the edge of a universe that isn’t even mine, working alongside a reckless salvage pilot, chasing a door back to a world that probably thinks I’m dead.’
’And somehow, despite all of it, this is the closest I’ve felt to genuinely hopeful since the moment I fell through whatever brought me here in the first place.’
He thought of his family, sometimes, in these quiet evening hours — his parents, whatever they’d been told about his disappearance, whatever grief or confusion had followed in its wake. He tried, occasionally, to imagine the shape of it from their side — an empty room, a search that had presumably turned up nothing, months of silence with no explanation that could possibly satisfy anyone left waiting. He’d learned, over these past seven months, not to dwell too long on those thoughts, not because they didn’t matter, but because dwelling on them without any way to act on them only ever left him hollowed out and unfocused, less capable of doing the actual work that might eventually bring him home.
’Soon. If this is really it — if that numbered system really is what everyone’s evidence suggests it is — then soon I might actually have an answer, one way or another.’
He pulled Liora’s charm free from beneath his shirt each night before sleep, the same small, grounding ritual he’d maintained since the day she’d pressed it into his hand, and turned it over slowly in the dim light of his temporary quarters, thinking of Veyrhold’s buried corridors, of Maerin’s steady, unromantic warnings, of a promise he still fully intended to keep.
’I told you I’d tell you if I found a way. I’m close now. Closer than I’ve been since the day I woke up in that temple. Whatever’s waiting in that system, I’m going to find out, and I’m going to find a way to let you know, one way or another.’
The work on the northern platform stretched across sixteen days in total — longer than Corven’s initial estimate, though not by much, the two of them falling into an efficient, wordless rhythm that Rohan found reminded him, in its own quiet way, of the long hours he’d once spent alongside Jorren repairing Veyrhold’s outer defences.
Corven proved, over those sixteen days, to be considerably less reckless than his reputation suggested and considerably more thoughtful than his first, gruff impression had implied — a man who’d simply learned, over decades in the Fringe’s unforgiving margins, that caution and hesitation weren’t always the same thing, and that survival out here sometimes demanded a willingness to take risks more careful people would never countenance.
"You remind me a bit of myself, thirty years back," Corven admitted, on their final evening working the platform’s main sorting array, the automated systems finally humming back to proper, functional life around them. "Not the specifics, obviously. Nobody I’ve ever met has your particular specifics. But the shape of it. Someone who got thrown somewhere he never chose to be, and decided the only way through was straight ahead, regardless of what it cost him."
"Is that how you ended up out here?"
"More or less." Corven’s expression turned briefly distant, weighing some old memory Rohan didn’t ask him to share further. "Had a life somewhere closer to the Cradle Reach, once. Consortium contract work, steady pay, all the things a sensible man’s supposed to want. Circumstances changed. Wasn’t the kind of change you get to undo, whatever you’re willing to sacrifice trying. Ended up out here instead, doing work nobody closer to civilised space wants to be bothered with, and found, somewhere along the way, that I preferred it. Fewer people out here pretending things are simpler than they actually are."
"That doesn’t sound so different from what happened to me," Rohan said quietly.
"Didn’t figure it would," Corven said, not unkindly. "That’s usually how it goes, out here. Everyone’s got some version of the same story, dressed up different. Doesn’t matter now. What matters is the platform’s fixed, the debt’s cleared fair and square, and tomorrow, if you’re still as certain as you were that first night in the cantina, we fly toward whatever’s waiting in that numbered system."
Rohan felt the pull sharpen in his chest at those words, steady and undeniable, closer now than it had ever been in seven long months of carrying it.
This is it. After everything, this is finally it. Cael Athis, the Gilded Heron, the Halcyon Span, the raiders, all of it — every step led here, to this exact moment, on a mining platform at the edge of the known universe, with a reckless salvage pilot as my only company.
’Whatever’s waiting in that system, I’m ready for it. I have to be. I’ve run out of anywhere else left to be anything less than ready.’
"I’m still certain," he said.
Corven studied him a long moment in the platform’s dim, work-worn lighting, then nodded once, decisively.
"Then get some rest tonight," he said. "Whatever’s actually out there, we’ll both want our wits about us when we find it."
Rohan returned to his small quarters aboard the platform’s modest habitation module that night, cleaned the worst of the day’s dust from his hands and spear alike, and lay awake longer than exhaustion should have allowed, listening to the distant, patient hum of the platform’s newly restored systems, thinking of everything that had brought him to this exact point, and everything that might still wait for him on the other side of tomorrow.
[Great System Note: Preparation phase complete.]
[Objective: Arrange passage toward Unregistered System 0417. — Complete]
[New Objective: Reach Unregistered System 0417. Investigate anomalous readings. Locate anchor point, if present.]
[Warning: Elevated risk. Proceed with extreme caution.]
[Great System Note: Confidence in current bearing remains high. This may be the final leg of the search.]
[Active Quest Chain: The Halcyon Span -> The Wraithfall Fringe]
[Status: In Progress]