Relay City announced itself before it appeared.
You felt it first. A pressure behind the eyes, like standing too close to a bell that never rang. Then the air changed. Sharper. Drier. Charged in a way that made my teeth feel wrong. Even the road knew it was close. The stones were cut cleaner here, laid with purpose instead of convenience.
"This place smells expensive," Virex said from inside my coat.
"You don't smell," I replied.
"Exactly. That's how you know something's off."
The gates were massive, but not decorative. No heroic carvings. No gods watching from stone. Just iron, reinforced with layered sigils that hummed softly when the guards waved us through. Relay City didn't try to impress. It tried to endure.
Inside, everything moved.
Messengers ran with tablets clutched to their chests. Mages walked in pairs, murmuring under their breath, fingers twitching like they were counting invisible threads. Towers rose everywhere, some tall and needle-thin, others squat and reinforced, each crowned with crystal arrays that glowed faintly even under daylight.
This was not a city built for living.
It was built for listening.
"So," I muttered, "this is where the empire whispers to itself."
"Yells," Virex corrected. "Panics. Pretends it's calm."
He peeked out from my coat, ears flicking. His eyes tracked everything. Towers. People. Runes carved so deeply into the streets they'd outlast the buildings themselves.
"Do not," he added, "touch anything that looks important."
"That's most of the city."
"Exactly."
We were escorted toward the inner watch sector, where the main relay towers clustered like a nervous system exposed to air. The closer we got, the louder the hum became. Not sound exactly. More like vibration. Information moving whether anyone was ready for it or not.
I didn't like how familiar it felt.
Inside Watchtower Seven, the air was warm and stale, heavy with layered spells stacked on top of each other like bad decisions. Signal tables filled the central chamber, each etched with glowing maps of the continent. Thin lines of light pulsed across them, some steady, some irregular.
People argued. Quietly, but urgently.
"Delay's within margin."
"It wasn't yesterday."
"That's because traffic increased."
"Traffic doesn't stutter like that."
No one noticed me at first. Which was good. Institutions had a way of swallowing people until they needed someone to blame.
Virex shifted in my coat. "You're staring again."
"I'm observing."
"You're staring."
I stepped closer to one of the tables. The map wasn't ink or illusion. It was something else. Memory, maybe. Anchored magic tracing paths that messages followed across the empire and beyond.
Most lines glowed steady.
One didn't.
It flickered near the northern edge, close to the mountain range everyone pretended was just geography.
I frowned.
"That line shouldn't be dimming," I said without thinking.
A nearby mage snapped his head toward me. "What?"
Too late.
I straightened, suddenly very aware of how many eyes were now on me. "The delay pattern. It's not distance-based."
A senior officer approached, robes immaculate, expression tired in a way only long-term responsibility could produce. "Explain."
I exhaled slowly. "If it were distance or load, the signal would degrade gradually. This doesn't. It fails right after relay transfer. Every time."
"That suggests a flaw in the towers," someone said.
"No," I replied. "A flaw repeats. This adapts."
Silence fell. The uncomfortable kind.
Virex chose that moment to poke his head out. "He's right."
Every single person froze.
The officer stared. Then blinked. "Did… the animal just speak?"
"I'm a guide," Virex said. "And yes. Focus."
The officer pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Continue."
I traced the flickering line with my finger, careful not to touch the magic directly. "Something interferes during anchor transfer. Not blocking magic. Confusing it."
"That's not possible," the officer said.
"It is," Virex replied calmly, "if the interference isn't magical."
That landed badly.
Someone whispered, "The mountains."
No one corrected them.
Before the officer could respond, a rune flared red.
No sound. Just light.
One of the junior mages went pale. "Tower Twelve just went dark."
"How dark?" the officer snapped.
"No echo. No feedback."
No echo meant the system didn't even know it failed.
The officer turned to me. "You're coming."
That wasn't optional.
We moved fast. Through stairwells carved straight into the tower's spine, down corridors reinforced with layers of old fixes stacked over older mistakes. Outside, the wind cut cold. The city glowed behind us. Ahead, the foothills faded into shadow.
They didn't send soldiers.
They sent observers.
That scared me more than anything else.
Tower Twelve stood alone on the perimeter, a squat structure built for endurance rather than elegance. Its beacon should've been visible from miles away.
It wasn't.
The door was open.
Inside, everything was intact.
No blood. No broken runes. No signs of struggle.
The signal array hummed quietly, active and useless.
"It should be screaming," a mage whispered.
I stepped forward before anyone could stop me.
The air felt thin. Not empty. Aware. Like something had just left the room and hadn't decided whether to come back.
Virex hopped down, fur bristling. "I don't like this."
"When do you ever," I muttered.
"When silence answers back."
The array flickered.
For half a second, fractured light formed symbols that almost made sense. Then it collapsed. One mage staggered, clutching his head.
"Something touched the channel," he gasped.
Touched.
Not destroyed.
Touched.
I felt it then. A pressure, distant but attentive. Like a mind brushing against a door and deciding whether it was worth opening.
I pulled back.
"We're leaving," the officer said sharply.
Outside, the wind howled down from the mountains.
As we retreated, I glanced back once.
For just a moment, I thought I saw a shadow where the beacon should've been. Not moving. Just present.
Watching.
On the walk back, Virex climbed into my coat, unusually quiet.
"You knew," I said finally.
"I suspected," he replied. "I didn't expect confirmation."
"What is it," I asked. "Not the empire's version."
He paused. "Old paths. Places where magic remembers things it was never meant to."
I laughed softly. Not because it was funny. Because it fit too well.
"So they want me to fix a system that assumes the world stays still."
"Yes," Virex said. "And the world disagrees."
Relay City loomed ahead, humming louder than before.
I understood then.
This wasn't about missing expeditions anymore.
This was about a machine that believed it was in control.
And something out there had started answering back.