American Prophet — Book Two — Chapter 13: The Northern Vault
Teaser: The northern gate opens to a chamber of ice-lit stone. The message written there is not an order but an invitation.
The seam widened into a stair that spiraled through rock as cold as glass. Naomi’s breath hung like threads. Thomas counted the steps out of habit and then stopped; numbers felt too small for the room at the bottom.
It was round and very old. Plates like the ones in the plains vault sat in a ring at shoulder height. Between them ran thin channels where air moved in a slow circle. Above, ice hung like a sky made from salt. The floor held three rings carved into the stone, just deep enough to catch light.
Naomi placed her hands on two plates. The hum rose to meet her. Thomas tuned the radio to the faintest part of the band. A line appeared on the wall—not drawn, but formed by tiny crystals that turned in unison. The line stepped 3:2, 5:3, 8:5, and then paused.
“What do you want us to do?” Thomas asked, forgetting for a moment that he was asking a room of rock.
The crystals turned again, this time forming a simple shape: a ladder with three rungs. On the top rung they set three dots. Naomi spoke the words she had learned for a moment like this. “Del en ravel,” she said. Path in the network.
The room answered with warmth through the plates, not hot but sure. The radio line thickened as if the signal had aged into something stronger. The three rings on the floor lit like shallow pools, and on the far wall a narrow door unstitched itself from shadow.
They walked through into air that smelled faintly of cedar and copper.
American Prophet 