Chapter 333: The Ninth
The work took four days.
Thirty-one anchors in broken stone, each one read from nothing. Kai built a rhythm that was not really a rhythm — find the gap, read its single character, match it, hold until the entity answered. Then surface, note the cost, go back down to a gap that taught him nothing about the next.
By the second day he had stopped expecting it to get faster. That was the change that let it work. He no longer reached into the stone looking for the note he had used a meter back. He went in empty every time and let the new gap tell him what it was.
The cost stayed high. Nine percent, ten, sometimes eleven for a gap that fought him. By the old math it was the most expensive zone he had ever built. He did not mind. The number was honest, and an honest number was easier to carry than a cheap one he did not trust.
