Page 74 of Legacy Elite

We keep going, slower now. The third one is farther down the same slope. Nobody says much when we find it. We don't need to.

Three stones. Three empty circles. Three centers deliberately hacked away. Freya stands between the last two and looks back along the line.

"Yeah," Freya says. "These were marking something."

I look around us properly for the first time. Old forest. No path. Nothing except trees and stones nobody has cared about in a very long time.

Except somebody cared enough to take a tool to every one we've found. And I already know whose land we're standing on.

Luftis was built on land that belonged to the Fourth House. That doesn't mean these stones belonged to them. But it sure as hell makes me wonder what used to be in those empty circles.

"Jessica," Declan says.

"Yeah."

"We've got an injured person."

"I know."

"We'll come back."

He's right, and I hate it, and Freya clearly hates it more than I do, but he's right.

Renzo takes the coordinates while Freya tears a page out of her notebook, lays it over the damaged circle, and rubs the side of her pencil across it. The raised border appears first, dark and clean. The middle is just a mess of broken lines.

"Why have we stopped?"

Brann's voice comes from behind us.

We all turn.

She's coming down through the trees, breathing harder than she was the last time I saw her. Apparently getting five people and a stretcher straight up the bank gave us more of a lead than I thought. Brann had to go around.

"We found something," Freya says.

"You also have a casualty and a clock."

"I know. Look."

Brann comes over.

Freya shows her the first stone, then points through the trees toward the others. "Three so far. Same size, same circular panel, all in a line. I think they're boundary markers."

"And somebody cut the centers out," I say.

Brann crouches.

For a few seconds she doesn't say anything.

Then she reaches toward the stone, stops before touching it, and looks at the cuts in the center.

Her face freezes. Almost in shock.

"Coordinates."

Renzo gives them to her.

She writes them in her notebook, then tears a separate sheet from the back and writes them again.