[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 70: In Which We Find Something Useful (For Once)

The gray grew lighter again as we walked.

Not brighter, just less oppressive, like whatever had been pulling at the void was behind us now.

"Fifty-seven minutes," Azryth said.

My legs felt like I’d been hiking for a week.

The compass needle shifted slightly, adjusting our heading, we followed it through the thinning gray, both of us tense and watching for another predator.

Then I saw something ahead.

Not debris this time, something deliberate and structured.

A tower.

No..not a tower, an obelisk, tall and narrow, rising from nothing, made of dark stone that seemed to absorb what little light existed in limbo.

"What is that?" I asked, pointing.

Azryth held my hand tighter. "It’s a warden construction, old warden construction."

As we got closer, I could see the markings carved into the stone, symbols I didn’t recognize, but that made the seal on my wrist pulse with recognition.

The obelisk was cracked, a massive fissure ran from top to bottom, like something had tried to split it in half. Mist curled around its base, gray-white and thick.

"How did a warden obelisk get into limbo?" I asked.

"The same way everything else did, it probably fell from a collapsed realm." Azryth circled the structure carefully. "But this is ancient, pre-Covenant, from when wardens had different methods."

The compass needle was pointing directly at it.

I approached slowly, the spectral blade still in my hand. The obelisk stood maybe thirty feet tall, its surface covered in those strange symbols that seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking directly at them.

"Should I touch it?" I asked.

"Probably not." Azryth studied the crack. "It’s damaged, it could be unstable."

"But the compass led us here for a reason."

"The compass led us toward the arbiters, this might just be in the way."

I looked at the needle, it was pointing at the obelisk, not past it, directly at it.

"I think we’re supposed to interact with this," I said.

Azryth didn’t look happy. "If it backfires..."

"Then you pull me away." I dismissed the blade and reached toward the stone.

The moment my fingers touched the surface, the world exploded with light.

Not painful, just overwhelming, white-gold brilliance that erased the gray entirely.

And then I was somewhere else.

Not physically, my body was still in limbo, still touching the obelisk. But my mind, my consciousness, was witnessing something.

A memory.

Two figures stood in a place that looked like limbo but wasn’t quite the same, the gray was lighter, less oppressive, they wore robes marked with warden symbols, both holding staffs that glowed with contained power.

"The anchors must remain synchronized," one of them said, a woman’s voice, calm and instructional. "If the connection breaks, you’ll be lost."

"I understand, Master." The second figure was younger, nervous. "But how do we navigate when direction means nothing?"

"The anchors provide direction, they create a tether between paired wardens, as long as the tether holds, you can find each other and find your way back."

The younger warden raised their staff, light erupted from it, stretching across the void toward the master’s staff, a visible thread of energy connecting them.

"Like this?"

"Exactly like that. The tether stabilizes you against limbo’s drain and gives you reference points in the nothing." The master smiled. "Ancient rift guardians used this technique to patrol the boundaries. Paired anchors, perfect synchronization."

The memory shifted, it showed the two wardens navigating through debris, through predators, through impossible geography. The glowing tether between them always held steady, always pointing them toward each other.

Then the memory fragmented and broke apart.

I was back in limbo, gasping, my hand still on the obelisk.

"Riven!" Azryth had my shoulders. "What happened? You’ve been standing there for..."

"I saw something." I pulled my hand away from the stone. "A memory, wardens using paired anchors to navigate limbo. They created a visible tether between themselves, it stabilized them and gave them direction."

"A tether." Azryth looked at the binding between us, invisible most of the time, just energy and connection. "Like what we already have, but manifested physically."

"Exactly." I touched the pendant around my neck. "These are anchors, Henrik said they’d pull us back to each other if we got separated, but the memory showed something more. The wardens made the connection visible and used it as a guide."

"Can we do that?"

"I think so." The seal on my wrist was pulsing rhythmically now, knowledge surfacing. "The technique is in the inheritance, I just need to..."

I reached for the binding, not to strengthen it like during the predator fight, just to make it visible and manifest the connection that already existed.

The pendant grew warm.

Power flowed down from me toward Azryth, then back from him to me, the circuit we’d created before, but gentler now and controlled.

And between us, light began to form.

A thread, golden-white, like the spectral blade, stretching from my pendant to his, visible against the gray void.

"There," I said. "Do you see it?"

"I see it." Azryth stared at the glowing tether. "It’s beautiful."

The thread pulsed in time with our heartbeats, steady and solid, real in a way that nothing else in limbo was real.

"The memory said it stabilizes against limbo’s drain," I said. "And makes navigation easier."

"And gives us a constant reference point." Azryth tested the tether, moving a few steps away, the thread stretched but didn’t weaken. "If another predator tries to separate us..."

"We’ll be able to find each other instantly." I smiled.

The tether between us glowed steady and bright.

Azryth moved back to me, his hand finding mine. "Your mother really did prepare for everything."

"Seems like it." I looked at the cracked obelisk. "Though I don’t think she knew I’d end up in limbo, this was just ancient warden knowledge preserved in the seal."

"Knowledge that’s saving our lives." He touched the tether carefully, it felt warm, solid, like touching sunlight. "How long can you maintain this?"

"I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it’s draining me, more like..." I searched for the right words. "Like it’s just making visible what was already there, the binding’s doing the work, I’m just showing it."

"Then we keep it active." Azryth checked the compass. "How much further to the arbiters?"

I looked at the needle, it was still pointing forward, but the pull felt different now. Less like following a trail, more like approaching a destination.

"Close," I said. "I think we’re close."

The obelisk behind us pulsed once, then went dark, its purpose fulfilled.

We started walking again, the golden tether stretching between us, a visible proof of our connection.

The gray ahead was changing again, getting darker and heavier, the same sensation from before the predator attack, but stronger now.

"Something big is ahead again," Azryth said quietly.