Chapter 293: What Changed
The change was not immediate.
He noticed it at the second hour. They were moving through broken terrain — the highland section between the gorge and the open plains, where the rock lifted in low steps that required attention to cross efficiently.
He stepped over a low shelf of stone and put his foot down on the other side. Through the boot sole, through his foot, through the carrier function at its default passive setting — something that was not stone.
He stopped.
Three heartbeats. He read it again. Still there.
Under the stone shelf — in the thin layer of packed earth between rock and surface — something was moving. Not large. Not fast. The carrier function was not reading movement or root systems. It was reading a pattern. A structure.
He knelt and put his hand flat on the ground.
