Since that night, Elara had not slept. Her grandmother's attic study had now become her bedroom as well. Or rather, she simply couldn't bring herself to stand up from in front of the parchment spread across the floor. Multiple candle stubs had accumulated on a plate, their wax long since burned away. When morning light began filtering through the skylight, Elara finally lifted her fingertips from the parchment. A mild headache. The symptoms were close to hypothermia, according to her grandmother's notes. Prolonged use of geomancy drained body heat. (Three days straight of this.) She sat hugging her knees for a while. The stack of her grandmother's notebooks beside her—she had now finished reading two of the three. A collection of memos that Evelyn Custa had been writing for forty-five years about Arathun—the Great Disappearance, the legendary city that vanished from the map overnight in Vanari Kors. Records she continued writing even after her papers were rejected by the Measurement Institute, even after the ruin sealing ordinance blocked her path. The parchment inscribed with the route to Arathun gradually disclosed information through geomantic resonance. But reading it was reaching the limits of what Elara could do alone. Geomancy was read through sensation. Like the warmth of the earth, like the breath of some vast creature. Elara understood that much. But the arrangement of the patterns carved into the parchment—what they meant, which era's geomantic system they corresponded to—that remained blank. (Pre-Arathun geomancy, then.) Her grandmother's notes contained only fragmentary records. The Solenia Measurement Institute—the premier academy of geomancy boasted by the scholarly city of central-eastern Eldria—might have detailed materials in its archives. But Elara was an unqualified cartographer without a credential seal. She couldn't access them through official channels. (A situation where I have no choice but to rely on someone.) When that thought occurred to her, a single face naturally came to mind. Elara smiled wryly. She thought it was too convenient. Yet she couldn't stop that face from appearing. ＊ It was before noon. When Elara came downstairs and put a spoonful of cold barley porridge in her mouth, she heard footsteps on the village's stone pavement. Multiple footsteps. And the sound of somewhat heavy baggage. Peering from the window, a figure was approaching from the direction of the village entrance. A light brown coat—the emblem of the Solenia Measurement Institute's archaeology division was sewn onto the chest, visible even from a distance—worn by a young man. Dull golden hair that fell across his forehead with each step. A large fieldwork pack on his back. Two cylindrical measuring instruments in both hands. There was no mistake. Elara set down her bowl of porridge. A bit quickly. Near the village entrance, a passing farm woman had stopped to speak with him. Elara watched from a distance. The farm woman asked something. The young man answered. That was the moment. His spine straightened. More than necessary, perfectly straight. His hand unconsciously brushed the emblem on his coat. A gesture as if confirming the Measurement Institute's mark. (—Ah.) Elara saw that movement, and something small ached in her chest. When the farm woman left, the young man resumed walking. The pack looked heavy. But more than that, his shoulders were hunched forward as if exhausted. Elara thought he seemed shorter than before. No, his actual height probably hadn't changed, but overall something seemed worn away. The young man suddenly looked up. Their eyes met. For a moment, both froze. Then the young man—Orion—smiled. A tired face, but with a familiar way of smiling. "Elara" His voice was slightly lower than before. ＊ As Orion approached the Custa house, his changes became more pronounced. His cheeks were hollow. Thin shadows under his eyes. He looked like a different person from a year ago. "I was in the area for field research," Orion said, lowering his pack from his shoulder. His tone was deliberately light, but there was a pause between his words. "A survey of a small-scale ruin near Melvina. A task assigned by my professor." "How close is 'nearby'?" "About a night's journey from Solenia to here. A week's schedule." "Alone?" "For second-year archaeology students, the task is to complete a survey independently." While answering matter-of-factly, Orion lightly adjusted the front of his coat. The same gesture as before. Elara watched it in silence this time. Between them was a conversation that seemed animated on the surface. Had Melvina changed, how was Solenia, was the Whisper Forest's geomantic fluctuation strong again this year. But behind that conversation, something unspoken drifted. Not quite a void, but something they both avoided touching. (I wonder how his brothers are doing now,) Elara thought, but didn't say it aloud. Orion's two older brothers—the eldest and second son of an academic family—had both made achievements at the Measurement Institute, or so she'd heard through rumor. Elara chose not to mention that now. "How is your grandmother?" "—Stable. But the doctor said we don't know if she'll wake up." Orion's expression clouded slightly. His hand went to the frame of his glasses and adjusted them even though they weren't crooked. "I see." He said only that, then looked up at the stone walls of Elara's house. The Custa house on the hill was one of the oldest buildings in the village. Moss grew in the gaps of the weathered stone, and the second-floor window frame had tilted slightly since last year. "You have an attic, don't you. The room Evelyn told us not to go into when we were kids." Elara's feet stopped for a moment. "...You remembered?" "The one that was locked. I was always curious about it." Orion said it casually. But Elara could tell where his gaze was directed. His eyes seemed to be looking at the wall, yet seeing something else entirely. Elara thought for a moment. Logic moved before intuition. The Arathun-style geomantic system. The arrangement rules of patterns before the Disappearance. The person who might know this was standing right in front of her. An archaeology student at the Solenia Measurement Institute with access to materials related to Arathun research. Whether it was a matter of trust or not—this was necessary. "Want to see?" She said it short and clear. Orion turned around. The blue-gray eyes behind his glasses widened slightly. ＊ When they climbed the ladder to the attic, Orion stood in the doorway for a long time without moving. Bookshelves. Bundles of papers. Mountains of notebooks. Bottles of dried geomantic ink. And in the center of the room, a large parchment spread across the floor. Elara descended first and turned back. Orion was still halfway up the ladder. His glasses had slipped slightly. He forgot to push them back up, just staring. "Did Evelyn do all this?" "Yes." Orion slowly set his feet on the floor. He approached the bookshelves and looked at the cover of a bundle of papers. "Solenia Measurement Institute, Archaeology Division, Peer Review Results." A red ink stamp: "Rejected." "Research from forty-five years ago." "Submitted to the Measurement Institute and not accepted." Orion's brows furrowed slightly. Then his gaze shifted to the parchment. One step closer. Another step. Then he crouched at the edge of the parchment and leaned in close. His glasses slipped again, coming down to his nose. He pushed them back up once, then leaned forward again. "...The manufacturing method..." His voice was low, almost to himself. "The adhesive processing method is fundamentally different from the current geomantic ink formulation. The component ratio of collimation stone—the mineral from the Servatura Mountains that serves as a medium for geomancy—is more than three times that of current formulations. This kind of composition is from before Arathun, from the pre-Disappearance era..." His words trailed off. Orion touched the edge of the parchment with a single fingertip, very carefully. He only touched it, made no other movements. A researcher's touch. "...It's glowing." The murmur trembled slightly this time. Not excitement, but something like being overwhelmed—a purely awestruck voice. Elara heard that voice and thought: the propriety he'd learned at the Measurement Institute had vanished. The rivalry with his brothers, the anxiety about achievements—none of it was here now. Orion was simply kneeling before the parchment. (Is this what Orion really looks like?) Elara quietly filed that thought away. ＊ They sat facing each other on the floor, spreading out the parchment. Afternoon passed, and the angle of light coming through the skylight changed. Orion began explaining the Arathun-era geomantic system, using academic terminology. Partway through, he said "Oh, sorry" and rephrased. Elara listened silently. She could tell he was consciously simplifying his language. That subtle consideration was a bit amusing. "The pre-Disappearance geomantic system had a different basic unit of arrangement than the current one. The current system reads direction on four axes, but in the Arathun era it was six axes, according to the papers. But since there's almost no surviving record of actual examples..." "Six axes. So the geomancy lights up in multiple directions at once." "Huh?" "When I touch the parchment, sometimes multiple routes appear instead of just one. I didn't understand what that was until now, but with six axes it makes sense." Orion pulled out his notebook and started writing something. Quick movements. The two approached the parchment each in their own way. Orion traced the pattern arrangement against the papers' descriptions, reading the geomantic positions and directions arithmetically, trying to grasp them as coordinates. Elara kept her fingertips at the edge of the parchment. She felt the pulse of the earth, slowly tracing the sensation of the routes. But no matter how many times they repeated it, they hit a dead end at a certain point. "I can't read the pattern here." Orion pointed his pencil at a single point on the parchment. The area corresponded to the southeast of the Whisper Forest—the primordial woodland that spread from east of Melvina to west of Solenia, where geomancy was dense and unstable. "Logically speaking, there should be something here. But the pattern arrangement is broken, and I can't see the pattern." Elara placed her fingertip on that spot. In the darkness behind her closed eyes, something glowed faintly. Stone. A square shape. Thin pattern lines extending in four directions. "...A marker stone." "Huh?" "I think a waystone stands there. Four arm-like pattern lines extend from it. Since the geomancy is closer to the sensation of the earth than to letters, I can't explain it well, but..." Orion was silent for a moment. His hand went to the frame of his glasses and stopped. He looked back at the numbers he'd written in his notebook and ran his pencil across it. He was calculating. Elara waited silently to see what he was doing. Then thirty seconds, or a minute passed. Orion looked up. "Mathematically, there's a point of topographical anomaly at this coordinate." "A point of anomaly?" "A location where geomancy concentrates abnormally. If you were to place an ancient waystone, you'd choose a location with high geomantic density. That matches exactly here." Both looked at the parchment simultaneously. The southeast of the Whisper Forest. The coordinate Orion had calculated and the position of the stone marker Elara had sensed—they overlapped at a single point. Orion made a small "ah" sound. Just that. But Elara understood what was in it. Something beyond calculation or sensation alone. In that instant, something melted from Orion's face. Not