They came out to the slab in the order Alistair would have predicted.

Due first, because Due was never one to let anyone else reach an unknown thing before him. Elara walked second, at her own pace, refusing to adjust her steps for anyone. Silas came last, with his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets, walking like a man who was already half-finished thinking about whatever waited for him on the stone.

The morning had grown out of its first hour, and the light on the slab was thin and pale.

Due stood in front of the carving for a long minute without speaking. He did not touch it; however, he moved a half-step left, a half-step right, leaned in, leaned back, and crouched on his heels to stare at it from below. He was reading the cut, Alistair understood. Not the shape, but the way the shape had been put into the stone.

"This wasn’t done with a knife," said Due, still crouched.

"I’m aware," replied Alistair, watching the line of the cut. "It wasn’t a chisel either, before you ask."

"That’s what I was getting to. The edges are wrong for both, and they’re wrong for a pick." Due exhaled slowly through his nose. "I want to say it wasn’t done with a tool at all."

"It wasn’t."

Hearing that, Due did not stand up. He stayed where he was, his face a hand’s width from the cut, and Alistair did not push him.

Elara had walked the full length of the slab while Due was crouched, her arms crossed against the morning chill. She came back around and stopped at Alistair’s shoulder.

"Has it changed since last night?" she asked.

"The shape hasn’t changed," said Alistair. "The reading has."

"Active now, you mean."

"Faint, steady, and pointed away from the slab itself, as if it’s sending whatever it sees somewhere else entirely."

Elara took that in quietly. She was never the kind of person who needed an answer written out for her twice, and Alistair could see the small tightening around her eyes that meant she was running through the same shortlist he had run through last night.

Silas hadn’t said a word since they stepped out of the base. He was obviously troubled by something, looking at the carving the way a man looks at a sentence he is trying to remember from a book he once read, thinking carefully about what he wasn’t yet ready to say.

Following another long pause, Due finally straightened.

"Silas," said Due. "Try it."

Silas glanced up. He didn’t ask what Due meant. Instead, he stepped forward and let Absence open under his right hand, low and small, the way a man cracks a door rather than throwing it wide open.

The carving reacted.

It did not flare or move, and the shape stayed exactly where it had been. But the Equalizer’s reading, which Alistair had been holding low at the back of his attention, shifted under his focus. The signature that had been pointed away corrected itself, not in a flash, but with a careful, exact adjustment, and the new alignment was pointed straight at Silas.

’It’s tracking him,’ thought Alistair.

He said it out loud, because Due had stopped looking at the slab and was looking at Silas now.

"It’s tracking him."

Silas closed the small Absence and stepped back. The reading lagged a quarter-second behind before it re-settled to its old position, pointed away once more, as if nothing had happened.

"Again," said Due.

Silas opened a smaller Absence, and again the reading shifted to follow him. He closed it, and the reading reset with the same delay.

Due spoke slowly now, the way he spoke when he was working past an idea he did not like the shape of.

"It isn’t Unmarked, and we both know it. The Unmarked don’t adjust to a Characteristic. They don’t even see them, that’s the whole point of what they are."

"I know," said Alistair.

"And yet here we are, watching a piece of stone do exactly that." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"And yet, that’s what we’re watching," said Alistair quietly.

Elara, beside Alistair, still hadn’t moved.

"So what does that leave us with, exactly?" she asked.

"Not much I like the sound of," said Due.

At that moment, Silas finally spoke. His hands stayed in his pockets, however, his voice came out quieter than it had any reason to be.

"I’ve seen this before."

The other three looked at him at once.

He shook his head, only slightly, the small kind of shake that meant he was correcting himself before anyone misunderstood him.

"Not the symbol itself," said Silas. "The construction of it. The way the lines were cut into the surface. I’ve seen it before, just not on a stone."

"Then where, Silas?" asked Due.

Silas did not answer at once, and Alistair, watching him, was honestly unsettled. There was something in the way Silas had gone still, the way his eyes had stopped tracking the carving and turned inward.

"I’ll tell you," said Silas finally. "After I’m sure of what it is."

He did not look at Alistair when he said it, and he did not look at Due either. He turned and walked back toward the base without waiting on any of them.

Due watched him go without moving to stop him.

"That’s the second time he’s pulled away from us this season," said Due, once Silas was well out of earshot.

"He’ll come back when he’s ready," said Alistair.

"He always does, and I’m not arguing with him about it. I’m noting it."

Elara had not uncrossed her arms.

"Due. How long has he been holding the thing he’s about to come out with?" she asked.

"Longer than he should have been, if I had to guess."

"And why has he been holding it?"

"Because Silas doesn’t say a thing until he can say the part that comes after it. He’s been waiting on the part that comes after it, however long that takes."

She nodded, and she did not say anything more on the matter.

Due crouched in front of the slab a second time. Regardless, he did not scan it. He looked at the line of the cut, staying down longer than he had the first time, and when he finally stood, his knees made a small sound Alistair hadn’t heard him make in a long time.

"I’m getting too old to be looking at things on the ground," said Due.

"You’re not."

"I am, and I’m noting that as well."

Silas’s coat disappeared into the doorway of the base across the field. He pulled the door behind him quietly, and the slab did not react to the sound at all. The reading was already settling back to where it had been before, pointed away, as if it had never moved.

Alistair stood there a while longer, looking at the stone that was looking at someone else. He had been certain of three things that morning, and he was certain of a fourth one now.

Whatever Silas had recognized in that carving, it was old enough to have been waiting nine years for him to find it again.