SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 733: Beyond the Broken Gate

Five elemental currents ran up the stair without disturbing one another. Leon stopped with one foot over the broken lintel.

The gateway’s posts still stood, each wider than his outstretched arms. Its fallen lintel lay in three mossy pieces across the approach. Above it, the steam was withdrawing from five narrow channels carved into the steps.

On the lower terraces, changes in supply had repeatedly displaced the productive ground. Here, heat, wind, frost, earth, and lightning traveled side by side. The gap between channels was barely a finger’s width.

He had sensed several flows from below. This close, their separation was even cleaner than he had expected.

How are they keeping that stable?

He went down on one knee and held his hand over the gap between fire and wind. He felt both currents press against his palm, and the narrow strip of stone between them stayed perfectly quiet.

”Young Master.” Seraphine’s voice came from just behind him, low. ”We have company.”

Tobin Arle was climbing toward them with three green-coated Hall disciples. He held a sheet of old paper against his open satchel to keep the wind from taking it.

”You didn’t wait,” Tobin said, a little out of breath.

”You didn’t ask me to,” Leon said.

”Fair.” Tobin showed him the drawing: this stair, its gateway, and a level court beside a long wall. ”My teacher’s teacher copied a description. Nobody from our expedition has stood here.” His gaze returned to the channels. ”The drawing doesn’t show these running.”

”Where does that wall go?” Leon asked.

Tobin traced the drawing upward with one ink-stained finger. ”The court. Then a second door. After that the drawing just says below.”

The court at the top was smaller than Leon had expected, perhaps forty paces across, and the five channels ended in five shallow basins along the foot of the long wall. The wall itself was covered in writing.

Rows of script ran across it, cut deep, with diagrams between them: a figure seated with lines running through its body, a basin drawn in cross-section, a stair winding down into a wide, round space. Some panels had crumbled. Most were whole.

Vyra had her paper out before anyone told her to. Loriel walked along the basins and crouched beside the one that smelled of clay, watching how the water in it turned slowly without overflowing. Ira went straight to the basin with the heat and held her hand above it and grinned.

Leon looked at the pillars.

Ten pillars stood along the wall. Seven bore emblems, though only four remained clear: a tree with hand-shaped roots, three nested rings, a wave over a tower, and an open eye. The other three pillars were blank.

”Tobin,” he said. ”What are these?”

Tobin came over and stood in front of the tree pillar for a long moment.

”Route marks,” he said finally. ”The Hall has a few of them on old pottery. We always thought they were workshop signs.” He touched the line of script under the tree. ”The road from Aelmar. And this one — the road from the Ringed Kingdom. They’re doors. Each of these was a door to somewhere else.”

”Other worlds,” said Vyra, without looking up from her copying.

”Other worlds,” Tobin repeated. ”We knew outsiders had come before. I didn’t realize this place had been built to receive them.”

Leon studied the blank pillars. Perhaps they had been left for roads that never opened. Their own entrance was new, yet the place receiving it was old enough to have forgotten its visitors.

”Read the long panel,” he said. ”The one with the stair.”

Tobin read slowly, and he admitted it when he wasn’t sure.

The court had been an instruction annex. Visitors arriving through the outer doors learned to cultivate in its currents before descending to the sanctuary, the Hall of Many Streams, where the source rose and divided.

”And this part.” Tobin’s finger stopped at a smaller block of text set inside a carved frame. ”This is a calendar. Steps’ reckoning. We still use it. Days are counted from first steam.” He read it twice under his breath before he said it aloud. ”On the thirteenth day from first steam, the outer doors wake. They stand open until the twenty-fifth. Those who came by them should be ready.”

Leon did the count in his head. The Steps had first steamed the morning they arrived at Asterbank.

”Today’s the fourth day from first steam,” he said.

”Yes,” Tobin said.

”Then the doors should reopen in nine days,” Leon said. ”And remain open for twelve.”

Tobin hesitated. ”If this is right. It’s a forecast. It was right for people a thousand years ago.”

”We’ll check the signs as we go,” Leon said. For the first time since Tian reported the missing gateway, he had something better than hoping it would return.

First steam had appeared on the morning they left the spring. This was their fourth day away. With twelve days allowed for the outing, they had time to investigate here and return with the calendar before the predicted reopening. ℴ𝒗ⅇ𝑙.

He couldn’t tell Bai Heng from here. The plaque wouldn’t reach. He could only copy the wall, carry it back, and say it in person.

”Vyra, make a second copy,” Leon said.

”Already doing it, Young Master.” She shifted the first sheet out of the damp. ”I’ll copy the diagrams around it too.”

The last panel was set apart from the others, on the face of the stone beside the second door, and the script was newer and rougher. Someone had cut it with a poorer tool.

”This one’s from after,” said Tobin. ”After the doors stopped.” He frowned at it. ”I know this. Everyone in the south knows some version of it. I didn’t know it was written down here.”

”What does it say?” Leon asked.

”When the many streams answer one hand,” Tobin said, ”a new dawn may reach the land beneath the veiled sky.”

Ira’s head turned, very slightly, toward Leon. Seraphine didn’t move at all.

”The streams are supposed to be the elements,” Tobin went on, more comfortable now that he was explaining something. ”That part everyone agrees on. Some say it means the doors will open again. Some say it means a cultivator will come who can hold every path. My teacher says dawn just meant better harvests to the people who wrote it.” He shrugged. ”Nobody knows who cut it. Nobody knows who it’s for. Every few years some boy in Asterbank decides it’s him.”

Leon looked at the rough letters and didn’t like them.

One hand. Every stream. That’s uncomfortably close.

He had come looking for useful materials and a better understanding of his circulation. He had four women beside him and forty-three Palace members waiting elsewhere. A stranger’s prophecy could find somebody else to owe this land a sunrise.

”It’s a nice saying,” he said.

”An old saying,” Tobin replied, and moved toward the second door. Beyond his shoulder, pale light climbed from a stair descending into the hill.

Leon felt the supply before he saw the first pool. Fire and ice were rising from the same depth without either weakening. He glanced at the diagrams he had spent the afternoon copying, then put his paper away.

Someone had already built what he was still trying to understand. Whatever he thought of their prophecy, he was going down there.