Morning arrived over the Balance Branch to find the wooden staff exactly where it had appeared the night before, standing upright at the midpoint of the unfinished bridge, balanced against nothing visible, untouched by whatever wind moved across the valley beyond it.
No footprints surrounded it in either direction. The operations team had replayed every second of the previous night's footage more times than any of them cared to admit, and the staff simply existed in the frame — absent in one moment, present in the next, with nothing in between to explain the transition. It did not arrive so much as it was suddenly, quietly, already there. Like dawn. Like memory. Like something reality had accepted without needing anyone's permission first.
Nobody rushed toward it.
