Orphaned Seed
Copyright© 2026 by Fantasylover11
Chapter 4: Beacon
Noah waited until his street went quiet.
Not silent—Marrowick never went silent—but quiet enough that the small sounds could be counted. A truck downshifting on the main road. A dog barking twice, then giving up. His mother’s bedroom light going dark.
Kara hadn’t let the track morning stay simple. Two texts, a missed call, and then silence for days like she was making a point. Noah had drafted replies and deleted them, because any real explanation would have required words he didn’t have.
He watched from his window, the overlay’s objective hovering like a sticky note he couldn’t peel off.
OBJECTIVE: GO TO THE OLD TEXTILE MILL DISTRICT
He told himself it was curiosity.
It was grief with a timer.
He slipped out the back door and cut through yards and side streets, avoiding the route that would put him under the brightest lamps. The air had that late-June softness that made everything smell alive—grass, damp earth, the river’s low brine.
As he got closer to the mills, the pressure returned.
Not pain. More like a hand set lightly against the side of his head, steering.
The brick hulks rose out of the dark, their windows black, their metal frames rusted into lace. The town had posted “NO TRESPASSING” signs years ago and then stopped checking.
Noah stopped at the edge of a cracked lot and scanned the place the way he’d learned to scan hallways in school: quick, practiced, pretending he wasn’t afraid.
No one.
The overlay pulsed.
PROXIMITY BONUS: ACTIVE AETHER SENSE (R1): HEIGHTENED
He frowned.
The air near the mills felt ... textured. As if the space had a grain to it that his skin could read. He took one step, then another, following the sensation the way you’d follow the smell of smoke.
At the nearest building, a section of chain-link sagged where someone had cut it and never bothered to fix the gap. Noah slid through, keeping his hoodie low.
The door on the side had been forced at some point, the frame splintered and half-repaired with a sheet of plywood that didn’t quite cover the opening.
Noah hesitated.
Going inside was a bad idea.
Staying outside was also a bad idea, because he already knew the Interface punished refusal.
He pushed the plywood aside and stepped in.
The smell hit him first: wet wood, old dust, oil that had seeped into the floorboards decades ago. The space was a cavern of broken machines and shadow. Moonlight cut in through high windows, laying pale bars across the concrete.
The pressure sharpened.
Noah’s pulse picked up.
The overlay snapped a new pane open.
QUEST UPDATE: DON’T GET CAUGHT CONDITION: DO NOT BE OBSERVED
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I know.”
He moved carefully, placing each step like the floor might argue back. A rat—or a bird—scratched somewhere in the rafters. The sound made him flinch hard enough that his shoulder grazed a hanging strip of plastic.
It crinkled loudly.
Noah froze.
Nothing else moved.
He exhaled through his nose, forced his breathing into the count he’d practiced, and kept going.
In the center of the building, a collapsed section of ceiling had left a mound of plaster and rotted beams. The pressure drew him toward it like the Interface was tugging on a leash.
He climbed over the debris, careful of nails and jagged edges.
The overlay flickered.
For a moment, he thought he saw a faint marker in the air above the rubble—an invisible point with a faint outline, like a cursor.
He stepped closer.
The floor beneath his foot gave way.
Wood snapped with a sickening sound and Noah dropped up to his thigh, his weight pitching forward. His hands shot out, grabbing at air and broken boards.
Panic clamped his throat.
The pressure in his ears spiked.
Something inside him reacted before his brain could.
It wasn’t a shove. It wasn’t a blast.
It was a small, precise refusal of gravity.
The broken board under his palm held when it should have splintered. The angle of his fall shifted just enough that his knee found purchase on a beam instead of dropping straight down.
Noah hauled himself up, chest heaving.
His hands shook.
The overlay stayed calm.
AETHER SENSE (R1): TRIGGER NOTE: REFLEXIVE USE DETECTED
Noah held his gaze on the words until his vision blurred.
He hadn’t decided to do that.
He’d just ... done it.
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