The council chamber was colder than usual.
Benedict sat at the long obsidian table, the compass artifact secured within a containment cradle beside him. It remained inert, but Benedict could still feel its pull—a hum just beneath perception. Around him, the chamber buzzed with quiet tension. The Eldest Disciples had convened on short notice, their expressions drawn tight with concern and suspicion.
Across the table, Disciple Varrin of the Deputy Masters faction tapped a finger against the polished surface. "You've been running unauthorized tests in Vehrmath's outer districts. The explosion was not a minor breach, Ashcroft. It destabilized a relay pillar and caused three sectors to lose sync."
Benedict didn't flinch. "That incident led to the recovery of something far more valuable than the relay itself. A technology fragment that predates the First Master's records."
"And you thought it wise to act without reporting it?" Varrin's tone sharpened. "We are not a rogue state."
Before Benedict could respond, Yara cut in, seated just behind him. "He did report it. I logged it with Research Registry Forty-Nine. You just didn't read the attached subdata packet."
Marin, sitting across from them, gave a ghost of a smile. "They never do."
"The relay wasn't sabotaged," Benedict said, redirecting. "It failed by design. Something buried beneath it disrupted the foundation—deliberately. And that something led us to this."
He tapped the cradle. The sphere inside blinked once.
Silence.
Disciple Kelran, a neutral faction arbiter, leaned forward. "What is it?"
"A compass, or maybe a key. It carries data from a city that no longer exists. A city none of us knew ever existed. Our systems label the memory as 'erased.' Not corrupted. Not lost. Erased."
Yara added, "And it's still pointing somewhere. To coordinates that don't exist on any map."
Kelran's eyes narrowed. "You intend to follow it?"
Benedict nodded. "Yes. I've already begun preparing an expedition team."
Gasps and murmurs followed.
Varrin scoffed. "This is madness. You plan to pour resources into chasing ghost cities beyond the Vehrmath border when we are already at political risk?"
Benedict stood slowly, voice cool. "You worry about risk. I worry about stagnation. If we let fear dictate our boundaries, we'll choke on our own progress."
Yara murmured under her breath, just loud enough for Marin to hear, "There he goes again."
Kelran looked between the parties. "Permission for independent exploration under emergency clause Delta-Seven is granted, pending weekly reports. Ashcroft, you are to document everything. If this turns political, we cut you loose. Understood?"
Benedict inclined his head. "Perfectly."
Varrin leaned back with a scoff. "If you dig up another catastrophe, it's on your head."
"Better that than dying bored," Marin said, casually checking her notes.
---
Later that evening, the expedition team assembled in Benedict's private workbay. The lights were dimmed to reduce interference with the compass's resonance. The orb hovered between them, its pulse steady but unreadable.
Alec frowned. "Still pointing beyond survey range. How do we know it's not glitching on junk data?"
"We don't," Yara replied. "But junk data doesn't give coordinates with a gravitational echo."
Marin tapped her datapad, rotating a projection of the projected route. "Preliminary scans show terrain anomalies matching lost tectonic fractures. Whoever erased that city didn't want it found through normal means."
Benedict paced, hands behind his back. "That's why we'll take the long way. Hidden sensors. Quiet relays. No broadcasts. We go as ghosts."
"You mean," Alec muttered, "we go without support."
Benedict stopped. "Only if support would slow us down."
A tense silence fell.
Yara stepped forward. "We're with you. But we plan for contingencies. I want rotating evac points. Real-time logging. We don't just follow it blind."
"Agreed," Marin said. "And we need someone to stay behind to monitor and extract us if it goes wrong."
Alec sighed. "Fine. I'll build a shadow rig. But if something eats you all, I'm going to be very smug."
Marin added, more quietly, "And I want to see the data before it's erased again."
Yara looked at her. "You think that'll happen?"
Marin's fingers paused on her tablet. "If it's been erased once, who's to say it won't be erased again? Someone's watching. Or worse, someone's waiting."
Alec leaned forward, eyes thoughtful now. "Or it's automated. A recursive deletion protocol. Some relic of the past cleaning up after itself. We might trigger a purge just by looking."
"Or a welcome mat," Marin added, her voice edged with unease.
"If it's a welcome mat," Yara said, "it hasn't had visitors in a very long time."
---
The team stayed late. They debated fuel storage, contingency routes, the use of passive drones, and signal dampening fields. At some point, Alec brought out a crate of stim drinks, and the intensity faded just enough for conversation to drift into old stories—projects gone wrong, pulsefield mishaps, the time Marin blew out a lab vent and framed it on a system error.
Yara kept watching Benedict. He was alert but distant, always returning to the orb, like its pulse set his rhythm.
She thought about the last time she saw that look in his eyes—when he first invented pulse layering, and everyone thought it was theoretical.
It hadn't been.
It had worked, and it had changed everything.
And this time, she wasn't sure that was a good thing.
---
That night, Yara stood beside Benedict at the balcony overlooking the southern industrial rings. Lights flickered across Vehrmath like pulse veins.
"You sure about this?" she asked.
"No," he admitted.
"Then why go?"
He turned the compass in his hands, watching the faint pulse of light from within.
"Because it remembers something we forgot. And I want to know what else we lost along the way."
Yara didn't answer. She just stayed beside him, watching the stars realign themselves behind the veil of progress.
After a moment, she spoke again, her voice barely above a whisper. "If we find something... alive... what do we do then?"
Benedict didn't respond immediately. He looked out toward the dark horizon, where the stars shimmered with ancient light.
"Then we decide whether to wake it... or let it sleep."
And the compass pulsed once, as if it heard him.