Through the Arch

Through the Arch

The answer began with a whisper.

It came from the cavern beneath their feet, so faint that Kaelen mistook it for air moving through the newly opened shaft. Then the sound rose again, thin and uneven, like a voice carried across a great distance.

“Did you hear that?” Alster asked.

The crew stood silent among the ruins.

The mountain had settled into a deep, steady vibration. Heat continued to pour from the shaft, bending the air above it. Beyond the basin, the volcano’s dark plume had thinned to a ragged trail.

The whisper came a third time.

This time it spoke Kaelen’s name.

He turned towards a piece of a broken arch that was once part of a circle structure that now lay flat on the ground. “That came from that piece of stone arch like there is something under it.”

“Everything unpleasant comes from below,” Tajan said. “That is why sensible people remain above it.”

Anderix was already moving towards the curved fragment. “The redirected energy may have reached the ring, I am detecting all kinds of magnetic energy.”

“That is not a reason to run towards it,” Drue called after him.

“It is the best reason we have encountered.”

Blena sighed and lifted her pack. “If the volcano energy cooks him, we will have to explain it to his mother.”

“But if he is fried by a volcano at least the warrant would be void,” Tajan said.

They observed nothing happening to Anderix and gathered around the piece which lay at an angle, propped up by other fallen rocks. Pale light moved through the crystal deposits in broken pulses deep in the tunnels, leaping from one cluster to another and leaving darkness behind. The metal ribs gave off a low vibration that Kaelen felt in his teeth.

The broken ring lay upon its platform with a thin blue-white glow running along its surviving curve. Light gathered in the empty space beneath it, not as a solid image but as streaks suspended in the air. They appeared, broke apart and vanished before Kaelen could decide what they formed.

Anderix attempted to put his hand into the light until Drue caught the straps of his mech pack and pulled him back.

“There has got to be some scientist's rule about poking things before you hypothesise the results,” Drue said. “Do not stick your hand in that.”

“Release me. I am only observing.”

“Observe from back here.”

The ring snapped with energy.

A wall of light opened beneath its broken arch to the ground forming an incomplete sheet of blue.

For an instant, the crew looked into a bright chamber crowded with people. The view twisted sideways. Faces stretched into bands of colour and disappeared. A snowy mountainside replaced them, then a dark room filled with crystal columns, then the image collapsed into a storm of pale fragments.

Alster stepped closer. “Receiver-transmitter.”

“A receiver, certainly,” Anderix said. “At least at present.”

“Receiving from where?” Kaelen asked.

“Like a message on paper except on light?” Tajan asked.

The image returned.

A woman stood before them, translucent at first and then suddenly solid. Her dark hair was tied away from her face. She wore fitted silver-grey clothing beneath a short blue coat, and she was arguing with someone beyond the edge of the image.

Kaelen knew her before Alster said the name.

“Gertina.”

She looked nothing like an apparition. Colour warmed her skin. Her clothing moved when she turned. She carried a clay pot containing a trailing green plant and held it with both hands as if it were more important than the disagreement around her.

“I need to water the flowers before we leave,” she said.

A man hurried across the chamber behind her. “Gertina, the transfer begins in less than .20 time.”

“Then I have .20 time to keep this alive.”

“You are travelling to another world.”

“The plant is not.”

Blena moved nearer to the light. “I like her.”

Gertina glanced towards them.

Every member of the crew froze.

Her eyes passed across their faces without recognition and settled on someone they could not see.

“Are you packed?” she asked. “We’re being transferred today.”

The chamber tore apart before the unseen person answered.

Darkness filled the ring. Then a different room appeared, layered across the first. A translucent Gertina continued speaking while strangers walked through her body without reacting. One group laughed around a long table. Another hurried between banks of machinery. A child chased a floating sphere of light across the same floor.

“They cannot all be there together,” Kaelen said.

“They are not,” Anderix replied. “Look at the wall.”

In one image, the wall behind the table was bare. In another, it carried a geometric map made from points of light. In a third, part of it had been torn open and smoke poured from machinery inside.

“Different moments,” Tajan said.

The images shifted like reflections on disturbed water.

A broad-shouldered man paused near the gate, one hand raised in farewell. “Tell my family I’ll be back by evening.”

A woman at a worktable searched beneath stacks of metal plates. “Has anyone seen the calibration notes?”

Someone called for a meal to be kept warm. Two people argued over a missing boot.

A tired technician sat on the floor with her back against a crystal housing, eating from a small bowl while others stepped around her. None knew they were being watched.

None seemed to hear the conversations passing through their own.

The ordinary words made the mountain feel colder than the images of ruined machinery. Kaelen had expected revelations from an ancient machine. He had not expected misplaced notes, neglected flowers and promises to return before evening.

“These may be memories held by the crystals,” Alster said.

“Memories do not usually disagree with one another,” Anderix replied.

“Yeah, what if they are visions.”

“But we are all seeing and hearing the same thing. Can a vision be shared?” Tajan asked.

“Wait, look!.”

They all returned their attention to the ring.

A new figure crossed the image, flickering between solid flesh and silver light.

“Deppoya,” Kaelen said.

The Veylborn appeared younger than when they had seen him before, though Kaelen could not have explained why. His posture was straighter and his expression less distant. He stood over a projected pattern of six lines radiating from a central circle.

“Lava-flow modulation is stable at four hundred kilojoules per hour,” Deppoya said. “Alderat is returning within acceptable limits.”

Another scientist leaned over the pattern. “The Heartwell draw increased again.”

“That is expected during synchronization.”

“It has exceeded the expected draw.”

Deppoya touched the central circle. Light climbed around his fingers. “Then another transmission point has fallen out of alignment.”

“Can you compensate?”

“Temporarily.”

The image jumped.

Deppoya stood in the same place, but warning lights now burned along every wall. His face was pale.

“There is insufficient power,” someone said.

“That is not possible,” another voice answered. “The planetary central crystal is fully charged.”

“It was fully charged. The pathways are drawing faster than it can replenish.”

The scene fractured. For an instant, Kaelen saw Gertina walking calmly towards the gate. Then the chamber was empty. Then it was crowded with people running.

“Crystalline pathways are losing alignment.”

“Shut down the outer towers.”

“They are not responding.”

“Matter is failing to reconstitute correctly.”

The last sentence silenced even Anderix.

Within the ring, a person appeared only in pieces: an arm outlined in light, part of a face, the curve of a shoulder. The fragments trembled, separated and vanished.

Tajan took an involuntary step backwards.

“Was that a person?”

“I believe so,” Anderix said quietly.

“Do not say it like that.”

“How would you prefer I say it?”

“As though it matters.”

He looked at her, then back at the empty space where the figure had been. “It matters.”

The broken gate spat sparks across the platform. Images appeared faster, sometimes filling the ring and sometimes hanging in separate layers throughout the width of the light band.

Scientists shouted through one another.

“The Aethorian receiver is not responding.”

“Increase the signal.”

“We cannot increase it without a stable destination.”

“The system requires more energy from the planet’s central crystal.”

“There is no more energy.”

“Then draw directly from the planetary core.”

“That could destabilize every connected site.”

“The travellers are still in transit!”

The final word repeated.

Transit. Transit. Transit.

It stretched into a shriek of metal and voices, then fell suddenly silent.

One scientist remained visible. Blood ran from his temple, but he continued working at a shattered control surface.

“They did not arrive,” he whispered.

Someone behind him said, “Where are they?”

The man stared into the gate.

“Outside.”

“Outside what?”

“Location. Sequence. I don’t know.” His hands shook over the controls. “They are trapped somewhere outside ordinary space and time.”

The image vanished.

For several breaths, the ring showed only darkness.

Then Gertina appeared again.

## Gertina’s Disappearance

The image of Gertina did not overlap with the others. It settled slowly into place and held.

The crew saw the chamber as it had been before the alarms. Its walls curved around a complete gate many times larger than the broken ring on the platform at Alderat. Crystalline channels crossed the floor and climbed into its arch. Beyond a transparent partition, scientists worked at tiered rows of controls.

Gertina stood with three other travellers before the gate.

She wore the same blue coat Kaelen had seen earlier, but the plant was gone. A narrow crystal band encircled one wrist. She checked it twice, then laughed when the woman beside her pointed out that she had checked it twice.

“I am allowed to be nervous,” Gertina said.

“You told me nervousness was an inefficient use of thought.”

“It is. I am using it very efficiently.”

The woman smiled, but her eyes shone with tears.

“You will come back?”

“As soon as possible, or practical.”

“Gertina.” Her friend frowned and hugged her once more.

Gertina embraced her. When they separated, she placed one hand against the woman’s cheek and kissed her.

It was not a hurried farewell. For a moment the great machine, the waiting scientists and the impossible journey seemed to recede around them.

Then Gertina rested her forehead against hers.

“Don’t forget to water the flowers.”

The woman laughed through her tears. “You’ll take extra time now simply to prove they need me.”

Gertina stepped away and joined the other travellers.

Blena’s earlier amusement had disappeared. “She knew her.”

“Of course she knew her,” Drue said.

“No. When we saw Gertina, I thought…” Blena searched for the words. “I thought she had always been what we saw. Like light taking a person’s shape.”

“She was a person,” Alster said.

On the control side of the chamber, a man leaned over a device resembling the metal housing at Alderat. He was older but he was unmistakable Kahleen, his hair streaked with grey at the temples, but the shape of his face and the set of his eyes were him.

Tajan looked from the image to Kaelen.

“He looks like Kahleen no?.”

“He does, it's him but older,” Kaelen said, almost transfixed watching the scene.

“Can they see us?” Asked Alster.

“It doesn’t appear so. This is something like a memory record but kept in the machine.” Anderix was answering but he knew it was all supposition as he was also almost overwhelmed by what his eyes were showing him.

Kahleen moved like he had done when they first saw him in Alfadin. Adjusting equipment and turning things that were not shown in the light image. His shoulders still while his hands worked quickly. Even the way he glanced towards Gertina was almost exactly what he had done when they saw him. He was checking where she stood before returning to the controls. It all felt uncomfortably known.

“Primary route aligned,” called a scientist.

“Aethorian receiver?” the man asked.

“Responding.”

“Central crystal?”

“Power available and stable.”

He looked through the partition. Gertina raised her hand. He returned the gesture.

The gate opened into a waving curtain of blue light just like the remnants of what they were looking at now.

There was no door, no tunnel and no darkness beyond it. Light filled the ring in layers too deep for Kaelen’s eyes to follow. Stars appeared within it, not scattered across a sky but drawn into lines and circles. For one impossible moment, Kaelen saw a second chamber at the far end.

It was built of pale stone.

Three figures waited there beside a crystal as bright as the sun.

“Aethoria,” Anderix whispered.

Gertina and the other travellers entered the light.

The image convulsed.

Every crystal channel flashed white. The distant chamber vanished. One of the travellers was thrown backwards onto the floor. Another disappeared halfway through the gate.

Alarms erupted.

“The Aethorian receiver has dropped!”

“Increase the energy output,” the man ordered.

“The channels cannot hold it.”

“Realign the crystalline pathways.”

“We are losing synchronization.”

The man struck both hands against the controls. “Compensate for the dark-matter drift.”

The image of Gertina appeared within the gate.

She was no longer standing in the chamber. She hung within a depth of light and darkness, reaching for something beyond sight. Her body flickered between solid flesh and a translucent outline. Behind her, countless points of light streamed in opposite directions.

“Gertina!” the man shouted.

Her head turned as if she heard him through deep water.

“I cannot find the receiving point,” she said. Her voice arrived in fragments. “It keeps moving.”

“Hold on. We can get you out.”

“There are others here.”

Faces appeared behind her. Some belonged to the travellers. Others were strangers from the earlier images. Deppoya emerged for an instant, reaching towards Gertina, then was pulled away into a storm of light.

“We are losing them,” someone said.

“Increase the output again,” the man commanded.

“It will damage the central crystal.”

“I don’t care what it costs. We cannot lose them.”

A woman at the rear controls turned towards a runner. “Send an emergency audio signal. Tell Syterra there is a problem with the Aethorian receiver. She’ll know what to do on her side.”

The name moved through the crew like another tremor.

“Syterra,” Blena said.

Within the image, the runner ran to a wall of things that moved and turned. He pulled this and adjusted that. Light was in every thing that he was touching then he spoke into a stick.

“EM for Syterra. Critical overload requires reboot before collapse.”

The gate began to collapse.

Gertina’s body broke into shining fragments. They scattered, re-formed and scattered again. Kahleen tore a crystal lever from its housing and forced it into a second channel.

“Gertina, hold on!”

“We’ve lost her,” said Kahleen.

“No.”

“Her pattern is gone.”

“No!”

Gertina screamed.

The sound did not come only from the image. It filled the air around them, passed through the crystals and vibrated in their heads. For an instant, Gertina reached out her hand. Kahleen ran around his equipment to face her in the light and put two hands on hers in an action to rescue her. The moment he made contact with her Kahleen was light, pieces and flashes and became part of the blue curtain. Gertina’s luminous face turned towards the Tajan, Anderix and Kaelen.

This time, Kaelen was certain Gertina saw them.

Her mouth formed a word.

The surviving half of the Alderat ring split with a deafening crack.

Light folded into its centre and vanished.

The arc was silent.

Like Us?

No one moved until Kaelen took a deep breath.

He looked at all five faces made pale by what they had witnessed.

The ring was silent. A thin fracture now crossed its upper curve, and grey smoke curled from the crystal threads within it.

Drue was the first to speak.

“We should step back from this device.”

Anderix did not argue. That frightened Tajan more than the scream had.

They moved away from the Aldert platform and sat beyond the foundation stones where the mountain air could reach them. Evening had settled over the basin. The volcano smouldered quietly beneath a bruised purple sky, and the first stars appeared above the eastern ridge.

For a long time they listened to the wind.

Alster sat with his arms around his knees. “Perhaps I was right.”

Anderix looked at him. “About what?”

“The Veylborn. The machine killed them and sent their spirits somewhere else.”

“That is not what we saw.”

“We saw a woman disappear inside a gate and return thousands of years later as something made of light. That is something like a ghost.”

“A ghost is the spirit of a dead person.”

“Yes. They were alive and then not so ... .”

Blena watched the distant summit. “Perhaps the images were dreams held by the crystal. The mountain remembers what happened here, just as a forest remembers fire in the shape of new growth.”

“Dreams do not operate machinery or interact with the physical," Anderix said. Remember in Helion Gertina was there and she could manipulate the environment. And while I am on this topic, Gertina was in Helion, Gertina was in Alfadin. So it has nothing to do with the mountains.”

“You make a good point.” Blena conceded

“Science triumphs again.”

“Ok, don’t get smug, you don’t know what all that was anymore than the rest of us. Just what it wasn’t.”

Tajan turned a loose fragment of black stone between her fingers. “The gate opened a path to another world. We saw the other end.”

“For a moment,” Kaelen said.

“Then the path failed while they were inside it. Perhaps they became trapped between the two places, like they were in a tunnel.”

“The scientist said they were outside location and sequence,” Drue reminded them. “That sounds worse than being between places.”

“Between moments, then,” Tajan said. “They may not experience the world as aethorians do.”

Alster looked back towards the dark entrance. “Those people in the images kept repeating the same moments. Gertina was leaving. Someone was looking for notes. Someone else thought he would be home after a short time. They did not know how much time had passed.”

“Some of what we saw may have been preserved information,” Anderix said. His voice had recovered its precision, but not its certainty. “The overlapping scenes behaved like stored patterns released without sequence. That does not mean the Veylborn themselves are unaware of time.”

“Gertina knew us,” Kaelen said.

They all looked at him.

“At the end,” he continued. “She turned towards us.”

“She turned towards the controls,” Anderix said.

“No. She saw us.”

Anderix studied him, perhaps searching for doubt. Kaelen gave him none.

“Then that supports my earlier conclusion,” Anderix said. “Alfadin, Helion and now this prove Gertina is not simply dead.”

Alster opened his mouth, but Anderix raised a hand.

“She appears in our world. She possesses knowledge and awareness. She recognizes individuals and directs their actions. She can affect people, crystals and physical events. A memory cannot choose to grow an etheria tree or reveal a concealed entrance. A spirit may explain some of those observations, if one already believes spirits can exert physical force, but it does not explain the mechanism we witnessed.”

“And your explanation?” Blena asked.

Anderix looked towards the stars.

“The travellers entered the gate alive. Their matter was broken into a transferable pieces, like the crystal signals along wires that my people are experimenting with. The receiving system failed before that pattern could be restored. They did not arrive, but neither were they entirely destroyed.”

Tajan frowned. “They are both here and not here.”

“Yes.”

“Alive and not alive?” Alster asked.

“I did not say that.”

“You stopped just before it.”

Kaelen understood what Anderix was resisting. Words such as *alive*, *dead*, *body* and *place* belonged to a world with rules they had believed were fixed. The gate had broken those rules and left them with no language for what remained.

“Gertina thinks,” Kaelen said. “She remembers. She tries to speak to us. Whatever happened to her, she is still a person.”

Anderix nodded. “A living being trapped in a state we do not yet understand.”

Alster looked down at his hands. “Then Alfer, if he is dead could still be alive somewhere we do not understand.”

No one rushed to answer.

“Perhaps,” Kaelen said at last. “But the Veylborn entered a machine. We do not know what happened to Alfer.”

Alster accepted this with a small nod. It was not hope, but neither was it an ending.

Above them, more stars emerged.

Tajan began arranging pieces aloud, not as an explanation but as if placing stones along a path.

“The stars led us to the maps. The maps led us to the towers.”

“The towers gathered or moved energy,” Drue said.

“Through crystals,” Blena added.

“Into gate machinery,” said Anderix. “All connected through the central crystal.”

“The Heartwell,” Kaelen said.

The word settled among them.

The Heartwell had not been merely a symbol of the One People. It had been part of the system. Perhaps the centre of it.

“And the Veylborn were caught inside that system when it failed,” Tajan said.

“Syterra knew about the receiver,” Blena added. “They sent a message to her, like she was already here, on this side of the gate. They asked her to help because she could control it.”

“Or they believed she would know how to repair it,” Anderix said.

Kaelen remembered the control chamber, the pale stone and the crystal burning like a captured sun. He remembered Kahleen at the controls who had talked to him in the crystal forest. Most of all, he remembered Gertina turning through the collapse of time and looking into the gate remnant atop Alderat.

Stars. Maps. Crystals. Towers. Gates. Veylborn. Syterra. The Heartwell.

They had followed each mystery as though it were a separate trail. Now the trails had joined.

Below them, the ancient channels continued carrying heat through the mountain. Somewhere within the ruined ring, a final thread of blue light appeared and faded.

Kaelen looked at the others.

“We have been asking what the towers were built to do,” he said. “I think we need to ask a different question.”

“Which is?” Drue asked.

Kaelen looked towards the dark circle of the Alderat ruins.

“What were they trying to reach?”

Thy Quest 5: Reconstruct the Broken Sequence
The arch displays moments out of order and sometimes layers several moments together. Choose at least six important events shown by the arch and arrange them into the sequence you believe occurred. For each event, include one sentence of evidence from the chapter. Then identify one conclusion that is directly supported by the images and one conclusion that remains only a theory.