Chapter 14 | Part 2

“There’s something you need to understand.”

Xandor gathered himself, looking around the room at the faces watching him. Dulint, patient and weathered. Balin, eager despite trying to hide it. Eldric, suspicious of everything. And Maris, pale and drawn, the Beacon’s constant presence clearly wearing on her.

“The Beacon doesn’t just search. It broadcasts.”

“Broadcasts?” Eldric’s voice sharpened. “Like a signal?”

“Exactly like a signal. The Sense phase isn’t subtle—it can’t be. To find something, it has to reach out, has to send part of itself looking. And anything it can find…” Xandor paused, letting the implication settle. “Anything it can find can find it.”

The room went quiet.

“We’re being tracked,” Eldric said. Not a question.

“We’re being announced. Everything attuned to the Nexus system—every piece, every remnant, every entity connected to it—knows this Beacon exists. Knows roughly where it is. And that knowledge spreads further every moment it’s active.”

“Can we turn it off?” Balin asked.

“No. The Beacon is incomplete—damaged, perhaps, or deliberately fragmented. The Sense function is always active. It can’t be deactivated without the other pieces.”

Maris laughed, and the sound was sharp-edged and bitter. “So it will never stop screaming.”

“Not unless we find a way to complete it. Or destroy it.” Xandor shook his head. “And I don’t know if it can be destroyed.”

“What’s listening?” Dulint’s question was quiet, practical. “What knows we’re here?”

“I don’t know everything. But the texts mention other artifact pieces. Hunters who seek them. Entities attuned to the Nexus system who can sense its activation.” Xandor’s voice grew heavy. “And there are references—fragmented, unclear—to something beyond the barrier. Something that the Nexus was designed to… interact with.”

“Wyrmreach.” Maris’s voice was distant. “The drowning hand. The black water.”

“Possibly. The barrier between our world and Wyrmreach has always been connected to systems like this. If the Beacon is broadcasting…” He trailed off.

“Then whatever is on the other side can hear it,” Eldric finished grimly.

Xandor nodded. “We’re not just holding an artifact. We’re holding a beacon that’s already been lit. The only question is what’s coming.”

The Beacon pulsed on the table, its soft light somehow more ominous now. Searching. Broadcasting. Announcing their presence to everything and everyone capable of hearing.

“We can’t stay here,” Dulint said finally. “If something’s tracking us—”

“Staying won’t help. The Beacon broadcasts regardless of location. But moving—investigating, learning more—might give us a chance to understand what we’re dealing with before it reaches us.”

“So we run,” Balin said.

“We move with purpose.” Xandor looked at the young dwarf. “There’s a difference.”

The Beacon pulsed again. Somewhere out there, something was listening. Something was moving. And they were sitting in a tavern’s back room, trying to understand a system that scholars had failed to comprehend for centuries.

Xandor had never felt so small.

End of Chapter 14.2 —> 14.3: Naming Without Explaining: The Fragments