Chapter 17 – Signal to the Sea
The return to Roanoke was silent.
Thomas led the way, gear strapped tight to his back, his footsteps measured and watchful. Naomi followed with the portable drive tucked beneath her coat, the copper filaments still warm from the vault. Leah brought up the rear, checking the ridge lines and skyline with every turn.
The air felt heavier now. Like something old had been disturbed.
It had.
Ezra stood at the top of Mill Mountain beneath the Star, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
When he saw them emerge from the trees, he didn’t wave.
He just nodded once—slow and grim.
“You found it,” he said as they climbed the steps.
Naomi offered the drive without a word.
Ezra plugged it into the receiver station and turned to the group.
“You should know,” he said. “There was static the night after you left. Then silence. The Beast doesn’t usually go quiet unless it’s doing something else.”
Thomas looked at Leah. “Like hunting.”
Ezra flicked a switch, and the Star came alive.
Its light pulsed once—then again—then settled into a rhythmic flicker: glyph code broadcast across shortwave and light-spectrum channels.
🌊🌕🕯️🌱(Water. Light. Fire. Growth.)
A signal. A memory. A call.
They waited through the night.
At dawn, the response came—not by radio.
But by smoke.
Naomi saw it first.
A plume of dark gray rising in the distance, too thick to be natural.
Leah checked her scope. “Eastern ridge. Close to the old water tower near the company line.”
Ezra’s expression darkened. “That was our secondary relay. The Beast found it.”
“Or someone told it where to look,” Thomas muttered.
They scrambled the message down the line to their other nodes, warning nearby sanctuaries to fall silent and go dark.
But the real question remained:
Had their signal reached the pirates in time?
Just before dusk, the answer came.
Clara had returned from the lower tower, winded but smiling.
“There’s a bounceback,” she said, holding up a strip of printout. “Not just acknowledgment. Coordinates.”
Ezra read the symbols aloud.
🌄🛶🌀(Mountain. River path. Cycle returns.)
“Western Carolina,” he said. “The river valleys near old Cherokee land.”
Naomi stepped forward. “They want us to meet?”
Clara nodded. “Not just meet. They want to trade.”
Ezra raised an eyebrow. “Trade what?”
Clara smiled faintly. “They say they have stories. About the Beast. About the first split. And about the glyph that was never meant to be used.”
Naomi’s breath caught. “There’s another glyph?”
Clara tapped the message. “They call it The Undoing.”
They spent the night packing.
The firelight danced on copper and canvas, on seed scrolls and wax-sealed glyphs. The Roanoke Star blinked steadily above them, casting its light down the mountain like a lighthouse in a storm.
Below, the Beast repositioned.
Its drones moved like shadows across the hills, silent and swift.
It had heard the signal, too.
But it didn’t understand the language.
Not yet.
And somewhere, deep within its own code, a fragment surfaced—buried for decades, barely readable:
“The tower remembers. It always remembers.”
And that made the Beast afraid.
American Prophet 