Chapter 31 — The Last Seed Keeper

Four days after leaving Salt Dome, the terrain of Dong Tro began to change — no longer the flat, cracked ground they were used to, giving way to rocky low hills, remnants of a mountain range that had been mostly eroded by decades of wind and sand.

“We are passing through the edge of an area that was densely populated before the Great Transformation,” Bach Lam explained, as the group stopped for a mid-morning break, pointing to the irregularly shaped mounds scattered around them. "Not a small settlement like the ruins we encountered before. This may have once been a city, or at least part of it."

Khe Mien looked around, trying to imagine the original shape of those mounds - perhaps they used to be tall buildings, roads, green parks, but now they are all mounds covered with ash, no different from folds on the surface of something that died a long time ago.

Near noon, as the group sought shelter from the most intense heat of the day, Kien, wandering a bit around the rest area to stretch his legs after many hours of walking, called out from a short distance.

"Sister Khe Mien! Everyone! Look!"

The group quickly approached, and Khe Mien saw Kien standing in front of a concrete wall jutting out of the sand, most of the surface eroded but one corner still retained the coating, revealing a strange shape — a circle within a stylized triangle, with lines radiating from the center like rays of light, all painted in a faded but still recognizable blue.

"What is this?" Kien asked, reaching out to gently touch the surface, as if afraid it would disappear if touched too hard.

Bach Lam bent down to observe more closely, his face took on an unusually pensive look. “I saw the same symbol once before,” he said slowly, “on a piece of rusted metal in another ruin, many years ago. I didn't think much of it at the time—the Ashes were full of inexplicable vestiges of the old world.”

Ngan The Binh also approached, his eyes narrowed as he looked closely at the drawing. “I've seen it too,” he said, his voice carrying an unusual seriousness. "On the entrance gate of an abandoned facility, further north, many years ago when I was leading a resource survey team. We didn't dare go inside — the structure was too dangerous, could collapse at any moment — but I remember the shape clearly, because it appeared repeatedly on nearly every intact surface of the place."

Khe Mien stood looking at the symbol, a strange feeling rising in her, a vague familiarity that she couldn't immediately explain. Then, like a flash of lightning, a memory rushed back — not a specific image, but a name, whispered in a dark corner of the Grain Warehouse, many years ago, by the faint voice of an old woman convalescing.

"Thien Ho," she said softly, barely able to control her own words.

Both Bach Lam and Ngan The Binh turned to look at her immediately.

"What did you say?" Bach Lam asked.

"Thien Ho," Khe Mien repeated, her voice trembling as the pieces of memory began to connect with each other. "Miss Diem Ninh — the teacher who taught me the job of Grain Keeper — once told me, just once, about a name she heard from her own teacher, many years ago when she was young. A corporation called Thien Ho, said to have built the Original Grain Warehouse before the Great Transformation. She knew nothing more about it — only remembered the name, and the way the storyteller said it with unusual care, as if it were something heavier than a company name. normal."

"Do you think this symbol is related to that name?" Diem Quynh asked, her voice full of curiosity.

"I don't know," Khe Mien admitted, but in her heart, a strong premonition was slowly forming, a premonition she had learned to trust through years of observing the smallest signs on leaves and seeds. "But I think we should find out more, if possible, without risking the safety of the crew."

Bach Lam looked around the area, assessing the terrain with the eyes of someone who has spent his career distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable risk. "It seems like this is just a remnant wall, not a large structure that can be explored further," he said. "But if this symbol appears repeatedly in many different places on Dong Tro, as Ngan The Binh just said, perhaps it is not simply the symbol of a company that has long disappeared."

"What do you mean?" Khe Mien asked.

“I used to think that what was left of the world before the Great Change were just random fragments — anyone rich or powerful enough left traces everywhere,” Bach Lam said, his voice thoughtful. "But if a single symbol appears on many different structures, hundreds of kilometers apart, it suggests an organization large enough, ubiquitous enough, to leave its mark on a significant part of the old world before it collapsed."

Khe Mien felt a shiver run down her spine, not because of the cold — it was still scorchingly hot here at noon — but because of the weight of what had just been said. She thought of Co Diem Ninh's words, how she described the Original Grain Warehouse as a giant archive, diverse enough to recreate almost the entire agricultural ecosystem of the old world — a project on a scale that only a truly large organization could undertake.

"If the Guardians were big enough to build something like the Root Store," she said slowly, the thoughts slowly taking shape in her mind as she spoke them, "then perhaps they were also big enough to be involved in many other things in the world before the Great Cataclysm. Not just the seeds."

No one answered immediately, and in that silence, Khe Mien clearly felt, for the first time since leaving Green Dome, that her trip was not simply about finding spare parts and new varieties for the Seed Warehouse. It's gradually becoming something much bigger — a search for the pieces of a truth that was buried with these collapsed buildings, a truth that no Chronicle of the Great Change has ever mentioned.

"We should take a picture of this, if possible," Diem Quynh said matter-of-factly, already taking out a small sketchbook she always carries with her to take technical notes. "Can you redraw it exactly, so we can compare if we find a similar symbol elsewhere?"

While Diem Quynh carefully sketched the drawing on the wall, Khe Mien stood back, looking at the vast area of ruins stretching around them, trying to imagine the true scale of what once existed here, and what might still be hidden beneath the layer of ash that had covered it for decades.

“We need to get to Sand Dome,” she said finally, her voice carrying a new determination. "It's not just about the seeds. The Sand Arches have been around longer than most of us know, and they've traded with various Arches for generations. Perhaps they know something about this symbol, or at least, know who might know."

Bach Lam nodded, his eyes still glued to the faded drawing on the ancient wall. “Then we should get going as soon as we can,” he said. "The sooner we get to Sand Dome, the sooner we'll have answers — or at least, the sooner we'll know whether any answers exist."

That evening, when the group set up camp a safe distance from the ruins, Khe Mien took out her notebook, placed next to it the sketch of the symbol that Diem Quynh had drawn, and sat looking at it under the small light for a long time before writing anything.

"What do you think it means?" Kien asked, sitting down next to her, looking intently at the drawing — circle, triangle, rays of light radiating from the center.

"I'm not sure," Khe Mien said, turning the paper in her hand. "But this shape makes us think of something that wants to cover, want to protect — like a dome, or a controlled sky. Maybe that's why their name has the word Ho, which means shelter, protection."

"Cover who?" Kien continued to ask, the question was innocent but so sharp that it made Khe Mien stop and think.

“That,” she said slowly, “is the question I think we need to answer.”

She carefully folded the sketch paper, placing it between the pages of the notebook, next to the notes about the Root Store that she had written many years ago, as if rearranging two pieces of the same puzzle that were gradually emerging after years of lying dormant, waiting for someone persistent enough to put them together.

The group left the ruins shortly after noon, but Khe Mien, before turning to leave, looked back at the wall one last time, imagining that symbol as an eye that had watched the world for decades in silence, waiting for someone patient enough to recognize it as not just a random trace of the past, but could be the key to opening a completely different chapter of the story she was living.