Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

The pull from Marek’s gray scale grew stronger as he approached the painted line.

Whatever fragment he had taken from the dead Aries Astrant, an Errant¹, remained contained, but its movement had changed. Earlier, it had repeatedly pressed against the inside of the scale as though searching for another step. Now, it seemed to be pulling him toward something farther along the road.

Marek stopped before crossing the line.

The shadow beneath the corpse moved again.

It stretched away from the dead man, passed over the same painted boundary and continued several meters before returning. Nothing about the body followed it. The Aries Astrant remained exactly where Rhovan had killed him, yet the shadow continued repeating the route as though his death had failed to matter.

Seven footsteps echoed across the road, followed by the same pause Marek had already heard twice. Then came the eighth.

’So the man really wasn’t the source. That confirms it.’

Rhovan stopped beside him. His attention remained on the pavement rather than the corpse. "Whatever you’re carrying is responding to it, isn’t it?"

Marek placed a hand over the gray scale beneath his clothes. "It’s pulling toward this place. The fragment I contained came through that man, but whatever it’s connected to is still here."

Rhovan’s expression became more serious. "Then don’t open your Case again until we know what you’re looking at. It might become dangerous."

Marek glanced at him. "I wasn’t planning to."

"As expected of the Thirteenth, the Ophiarch that—"

Marek ignored him and followed the shadow with his eyes.

It crossed the line again, but this time it did not immediately return beneath the Aries Astrant. The shape continued toward a section of pavement near the damaged barricade before bending strangely against the ground. One part of it stretched forward, almost like an arm reaching toward the sealed part of the earlier collapse.

There was nothing there.

The sight made Marek remember Rhovan’s shadow from earlier. Rhovan had already stopped walking when his shadow continued for one more step. At the time, Marek had assumed something had happened specifically to him.

Apparently, Rhovan had simply walked over the wrong place.

’So it wasn’t his shadow.’

Then came the metallic smell once more.

He turned toward the volunteers who had begun gathering near the damaged barricade. Some were attending to the injured father, while others were trying to calm the civilians who had started returning now that Rhovan’s fight with the stranger was over.

"Did something happen on this road before we arrived?"

One of the older volunteers looked toward him. The question alone seemed to disturb her. "What do you mean?"

Marek pointed toward the section of pavement where the shadow continued reaching. "There."

The woman followed his finger, and the moment she realized which part of the road he meant, the color in her face changed.

"There was a collapse there," she said. "It happened before we finished setting up this evacuation point."

According to her, several families had still been crossing when part of the road gave way. Volunteers and rescue officers pulled everyone they could find away from the damaged section, and one officer stayed behind until the final family reached the other side. He was badly injured during the collapse and died before they could bring proper medical help to the area.

That alone would not have explained the shadow.

The volunteer hesitated before adding, "He kept saying somebody was still trapped beneath the collapsed section."

Marek looked toward the reaching shape again.

"We searched," she continued. "Everyone did. We checked the names, searched through the damaged area and asked every family that crossed. Nobody was missing, but he wouldn’t believe us. Even when he could barely speak, he kept saying we had left someone there."

The gray scale pulsed beneath Marek’s hand.

’A rescue that already ended...’

Something inside the fragment responded to the story with the same restless movement he had felt earlier.

Rhovan noticed the change in Marek’s expression. "There it is."

"What?"

"The beginning."

Marek looked at him.

Rhovan gestured toward the pavement. "Not the beginning of the collapse. The beginning of the Errancy. Where it all began."

The volunteer glanced nervously between them.

Marek remembered something else. "Was the Aries Astrant here when that officer died?"

"He was." The woman looked toward the corpse before continuing. "He was helping clear debris. He took the officer’s hand before he died, but after that..." She paused, apparently remembering something she had not considered important until now. "He went back to the collapsed section and started searching again."

"Using his Mark?" Rhovan asked.

The volunteer nodded. "He kept breaking pieces of pavement and moving debris. We told him everyone had already been accounted for, but he said the officer wouldn’t have insisted otherwise unless somebody was still there."

That made the sequence much clearer.

Touching the dying officer had not been enough. The Aries Astrant had encountered something left behind by the man’s final conviction and then used his awakened Authority to act upon it.

Aries had recognized a necessary action. Someone still needed to be rescued.

The problem was that the rescue had already been completed before he ever started.

Marek stared at the shadow as the meaning slowly settled in his mind. "This is the False Answer that you talked about, Rhovan. A wrong conclusion created by Black Errancy that an Astrant’s Authority begins treating as absolutely correct."

Rhovan nodded.

The Aries Astrant’s Authority had not suddenly become some unrelated power. It had continued doing exactly what Aries allowed it to do—recognize something that demanded action and begin that action. What changed was the ending. Once the rescue began, nothing seemed capable of proving that it was complete.

The older woman had been brought across safely, yet the Aries Astrant returned for another person. When the father stopped him from taking the child, the refusal became another obstacle preventing the rescue. Every completed action created another reason to begin again.

There had been no point where his Authority could accept that enough had already been done.

Marek finally understood why the man had remained so calm while hurting people. ’He really thought he was saving them.’

That did not make what he had done any less horrifying.

The shadow reached toward the sealed part of the collapse again.

"What exactly is that?" Marek asked.

Rhovan watched it for several seconds before answering. "An Unclaimed Trace¹. Something happened that the event itself ended, but one of its consequences was left without a proper destination or release. Most people could stand beside one and never know what they’re looking at."