Page 180 of The Last Remaining Light

The tremor faded, leaving only the echoes of their breathing.

“It’s time to go,” Korvel said.

Chapter Forty

“The Great Vigil didn't save the world. It bought the world more time.”

— Fragment from a damaged pre-Vigil manuscript

The group continued their trek downward through the tunnels.

Everyone was speaking in hushed voices, frustration threading through the conversation. They had descended into the bowels of a crumbling city, crossed forgotten chambers, and followed clues buried for centuries.

Finding Vaelor had felt like reaching the edge of an answer, only to discover there was another question waiting beneath it.

Vaelor seemed to recognize their frustration.

"I don’t know what’s beneath us," he clarified. "But I know what these structures were designed to do."

That had earned everyone's attention.

Vaelor glanced toward the darkness stretching below them as they continued onward. One of the survivors kept an arm around his waist, bearing much of his weight with each uneven step. Earlier, he had described the Starless attack that killed the councilmen accompanying him. Now they knew those men had never been the target. They had simply stood between the Starless and wherever they were trying to go.

"The observatories were never independent institutions. You’ve discovered that. The network chamber confirmed what the Conclave has already suspected for generations,” said Vaelor.

Elowynn frowned at that. "Suspected?"

A faint grimace crossed his face. "The records are incomplete."

"Everything is incomplete," she sighed.

A tired hint of amusement crossed Vaelor's face.

"Yes," Vaelor admitted. "That has become increasingly obvious, hasn’t it?" He looked toward the channels running alongside the corridor walls. "The oldest surviving records describe the observatories as stewardship sites."

It was the engineer who spoke up first. "What does that mean?"

"We don't exactly know,” said Vaelor.

The answer earned several more frustrated expressions, but he continued before anyone could object.

"We know what the phrase translates to. We know where it appears. We know it predates the Great Vigil. What we don’t know is what those scholars were stewarding."

The word hung unpleasantly in the air. Stewarding. Maintaining. Watching over.

"You mean it was meant to hold something," she breathed.

Vaelor looked over at her, nodding once. "Yes."

Elowynn's thoughts returned to the map chamber and everything else they had found. None of it had been built as isolated monuments or centers of learning. It all connected together as part of a vast network.

The observatories, starways, and resonance systems. They were all components of something larger. But what?

"If the Great Vigil didn't build any of this, then what did it do?" Elowynn asked.

Vaelor looked toward the darkness again, his expression turning inward.

"The Great Vigil repaired it."