Chapter 20 – The Fork in the Signal
They reached the base of the ridge by dusk.
Clara paused to stretch her knees, her hand resting against a weathered mile marker overgrown with ivy. The carved number had faded, but the shape was unmistakable:
33
Thomas stepped beside her. “Old Highway 33 again,” he muttered. “Like we never left.”
Naomi unfolded the latest printout from their shortwave burst receiver. Wren’s last echo had come through clearly—coordinates far to the southwest, near the old Mississippi Delta.
Leah leaned over her shoulder. “That’s no detour. That’s a pilgrimage.”
Clara glanced up from her field journal, where she had scrawled notes about the glyph signals they’d encountered. “If they want to meet in the Delta, there must be a node we don’t know about.”
Naomi nodded. “Or a story they don’t trust to send through the air.”
That night around the fire, they sat in a quiet circle.
Clara added a fresh log from the bundle she’d carried since Ohio—one of the last remaining hickory pieces she’d traded from a woodsman near Columbus. It crackled and popped, the scent rich and familiar.
“We have two choices,” Thomas said, poking the embers. “Return to Roanoke and warn Ezra about what we found. Or follow the pirates.”
Naomi held the carved stone glyph ✂️🔁 in her hands.
“We can’t split up,” she said softly. “There are too few of us now.”
Leah looked over at Clara. “You’ve come a long way.”
Clara shrugged. “I didn’t leave Ohio to stay safe. I left to help carry the seeds of memory forward. Wherever that path leads.”
Thomas looked between them. “Roanoke’s strong. Ezra can hold the line, if our balloon rig reaches him in time.”
Naomi nodded. “Then we follow the river stories.”
Just before dawn, the Beast moved.
Their radios cut out—no static, no burst, just nothing.
Thomas twisted the dial on the backup receiver, but every channel returned the same blank signal.
Leah pulled the printout from the antenna port. Three glyphs, burned into the paper:
📡🔒🔥(Signal. Sealed. Burn.)
“It found our route,” she said. “And it wants us isolated.”
Naomi stood. “Then we trust the sky.”
They rebuilt the balloon rig using copper wiring Clara and Leah had salvaged months ago, back in the seed cellars of Kentucky. It wasn’t perfect, but it had carried messages before.
As the balloon rose and caught the wind, they launched their data packet—a map of their journey, a warning about the Beast’s mimicry, and a glyph of hope:
🌱🕯️🔁(Growth. Light. Reconnect.)
Then they packed what they could and faced west.
At an old junction near a fallen road sign, two arrows pointed down overgrown paths.
One toward Tennessee.
The other: Louisiana.
Naomi stepped forward, carved glyph stone still in her hand.
“Memory flows like water,” she said. “Let’s follow the current.”
They chose the path toward the Delta.
Behind them, a drone lingered just beyond the tree line, silent and patient.
Not just recording signal.
But marking faces, patterns, and voices.
And sending it all back—to something watching.
American Prophet 