The space behind the wall was a vertical shaft, with a ladder bolted to the stone that vanished into darkness above and below. The air was thick with the smell of stagnant water and rust.
My stomach twisted. I hadn't climbed a ladder since that one time in gym class, and I'd been on solid ground with a teacher spotting me. But this was different. This was a one-way trip down into a wet, echoing dark, with a frantic priestess and a four-armed mercenary as my only witnesses.
And I only had one free hand.
The narelith clung to my shirt like a terrified kitten, its claws hooked into the fabric. I couldn't put it down, nor could I shove it at Seraya without probably getting my face scratched off. So one arm was permanently occupied, holding the shivering creature against my chest.
"Down," "They'll expect us to go up, toward the palace."
"We'll go down," Torren grunted behind me, his voice too loud in the small space. "They'll expect us to go up, toward the palace."
Seraya didn't hesitate. She swung onto the ladder and climbed down with a quiet, practiced ease that made me feel even worse.
When it was my turn, I stared at the first rung, palms sweaty.
Okay, Erdan. Right hand holds the narelith. Left hand for the ladder. Make sure the feet don't slip. Definitely don't look down.
I grabbed the highest rung I could reach with my left hand, feeling the cold and gritty metal on my skin. I got one foot on, then the other. The ladder shuddered under our combined weight, and a small shower of rust flakes pattered down into the void.
I froze.
"Hero," Torren's voice came, lower now. "We don't have all day."
Give me a moment dammit!
Taking a deep breath, I started climbing down, my movements stiff and way too slow. Every shift of my weight made the ladder creak, and my heart race faster. The narelith whimpered, pressing closer. My right arm was already burning from holding it up, and my left hand gripped each rung like it was the only thing between me and death.
Don't slip. Don't slip. Don't—
My foot missed a rung.
S-Shit!
I dropped about six inches before my left hand locked in a death grip and my other foot found purchase. My heart hammered against my ribs, so loud I was sure they could hear it above and below. The narelith let out a sharp chitter of panic, and in my panic I even considered throwing It away to avoid the nuisance.
"You good?" Torren called from above, looking down.
All that came out was a shaky "Y-yeah". I didn't move for a solid ten seconds, just taking deep breaths, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
Finally, I kept going, slower than before. In the darkness below, the glint of stagnant water came into view, and the air grew colder and fouler.
We descended into the darkness, the only sounds being the scuff of our boots, the groan of the rungs, and the distant, fading shouts from the vault. The blue path I could see—the weird vision from the gas—glowed faintly below us, drawing a route down the shaft.
At least one thing was going right.
After what felt like a small eternity, my boot plunged into icy water with a splash, gasping at the sudden cold.
Finally, I had reached the bottom!
I stood on the last submerged rung, water soaking my legs to the thigh, and let go of the ladder with a relief so profound my knees almost buckled.
Seraya was already standing in the channel, waiting for us. Torren landed behind me with a splash that drenched my back. I yelped at the sudden cold but decided against reprimanding someone so big.
He immediately took charge, his voice a low echo in the tunnel. "My party's safehouse is in the merchant quarter, upriver." He pointed with a lower thumb to the right. "It's the smartest move we got. Get dry, get our bearings, regroup with Guthethya if she made it out."
He was right. It was the smart move. The safe, logical, not-getting-killed move.
Seraya trudged forward, and I followed, the narelith shivering in my arms. The water was numbingly cold, and every step stirred up unseen debris. The tunnel was narrow, the ceiling dripping with slime. The blue path cut a straight line through the murky water ahead.
I was too cold and too freaked out to properly process everything. Kuger's words replayed in my head.
He left it because it was broken. Just like he left the hornless tenebrim.
Mira. He was talking about Mira. Yosuke Minato, the previous hero, had left her, broken and caged, as a "gift." And he'd left this narelith, too—a "failed experiment." What kind of guy was he? And why did everyone seem to think it was normal for heroes to be like that?
The narelith chirped softly, its single eye peering up at me in the near-darkness. It didn't look like the weapon those mellets tried to turn it into, just lost. I adjusted my grip, trying to shield it from the worst of the water.
"It's bonding to your mana signature," Seraya said suddenly, her voice low. She was glancing back at me, her elven eyes catching the faint light from somewhere ahead. "That's why it stabilized. Narelith cores purely absorb mana from their surroundings in their First Phase. A regressed one is like a starving child. You gave it a taste of something it desperately needed."
"So it's stuck with me?" I asked, my teeth starting to chatter.
"It has imprinted itself on you, so for now, yes. It sees you as its source of stability." She hesitated. "The order… they wanted to study that process. To replicate it and create bindings between human mages and narelith cores, making living weapons."
'A 'living weapon'. I looked down at the shivering creature in my arms. If this could potentially become a weapon for them, then it might be more useful than I thought.
"We're clear of the sanctum's wards," Torren announced, his voice a welcome echo in the silence. "I can't sense those masked zealots anymore. But we're not out of the woods. This water leads to the public canals. We'll be exposed."
As if on cue, the tunnel opened up. We emerged into a wider, brick-lined canal under a low arch. Dim, hazy light filtered down from grates far above—the street level of the city. The air was still foul, but it felt less suffocating.
But the blue path in my vision—the ghostly trail left by the gas—shined bright to the left, downriver. And the narelith in my arms squirmed, turning its head to stare in the same direction and letting out a soft, chittering series of clicks.
Seraya looked from Torren to me, her expression tense. "The Hero seems… drawn elsewhere."
Torren's gaze landed on me, heavy and assessing. "Kid? Your 'intuition' kicking in?"
I swallowed. My "intuition" was a hallucinatory gas trail and the little bat-thing, but it had gotten us this far. And beneath the weirdness was a deep, cold pull, the same feeling I'd had in Elias's body. A sense of impending dread from downriver.
Something was wrong. The water was freezing, numbing my legs up to the knees, but the chill settling in my chest had nothing to do with the temperature.
Don't go that way.
The thought was loud, screaming in my head. The faint, glowing blue line in my vision pulsed like a warning flare downriver. The little narelith in my arms shivered, digging its small claws into my tunic.
"Well?" Torren's voice rumbled, echoing slightly off the wet brick. "You're the one who found the way out of the place. Got a plan?"
I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him that going downriver felt like walking straight into a trap. I wanted to say, 'Hey, whatever this glowing bullshit in my head is pointing that way, but my gut tells me we're going to die if we take another step.'
But the words stuck in my throat. Behind us, something metal scraped stone — very faint, very far, but real and pressing. I was still trying to force my mouth open when the narelith let out a single, terrified chirp directly against my throat.
Who was I to tell a veteran mercenary like Torren that he was wrong? What proof did I have? A hallucination and a shivering baby monster? If I said we needed to go back—upstream, against the current—and we hit a dead end, it would be my fault. They were looking at me like I was the Hero. Like I had a plan.
The "confidence" I'd borrowed from the gas was evaporating, leaving just plain old me. Same idiot who would rather drown in cold sewage than say 'I think you're wrong' out loud.
The water was getting shallower now, the canal floor tilting upward until it only reached my shins. Ahead, a rusted iron ladder bolted to the wall led up to a circular grate half-covered in moss and street grime. Faint sunlight leaked through the bars. Actual daylight, not the sickly glow of crystal lamps.
Finally, we were close to the surface.
Torren went first, climbing with the steady rhythm of someone who'd done this a hundred times. He braced both upper arms against the grate and pushed. Metal groaned, then gave way with a wet screech. Fresh, cold air rushed down, carrying the smell of wet stone, coal smoke, and something faintly metallic.
He disappeared through the opening, then lowered two lower arms. "Priestess next. Then you, Hero. Hand the narelith up to me before you climb."
Seraya went without a word, her robes dripping as she pulled herself up. I tried to sneak a discreet peek but failed due to the unfortunate way the robes were made (make this sound better), then lifted the narelith toward Torren. Or at least attempted to. It clung tighter, claws sinking into my shirt, letting out a soft, distressed chirp.
"Hey," I murmured, trying to sound calmer than I felt. "It's okay. Just for a second."
It stared at me with that one eye, then reluctantly let go and allowed Torren to lift it through the hole. The second it was out of my arms it started squirming again, tiny wings fluttering uselessly.
I climbed last, hands numb from the cold metal rungs. When my head cleared the lip of the opening I found myself in a narrow alley between two tall stone warehouses. Crates were stacked randomly against one wall; the other side opened onto a cobbled street where a few carts rolled past. No one seemed to notice the three soaked strangers crawling out of a sewer grate. In this part of the city, people probably minded their own business.
Torren put the grate back quietly, then offered me a hand up. The narelith immediately scrambled back onto my shoulder the moment my feet touched stone, pressing against my neck like it was trying to crawl inside my skin.
Torren was already scanning the rooftops, eyes vigilant. "We need to move. The nearest safehouse is three streets over, behind the old spice exchange. Guthethya might already be—"
A low whine cut through the air, followed by something hot and wet splashed across my cheek.
Torren staggered. One of his upper arms dropped limply; a neat hole the width of my thumb had punched clean through the meat of his bicep, exiting in a spray of red on the opposite wall. He looked down at it like he didn't quite understand what he was seeing.
Then the second shot came.
This one took him in the meat of the thigh. He buckled with a choked grunt, one lower hand slapping the wound while the others reached for weapons that weren't there—he'd never brought any due to his confidence in his strength.
"Down!" Seraya hissed, shoving me behind a stack of crates.
I hit the ground hard, the narelith tumbling off my shoulder with a startled squeak. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack them.
Torren dragged himself behind the same crates, breathing through his teeth. Blood was already pooling under his leg. "Sniper," he rasped. "High angle. Rooftop, probably two hundred paces. Bastard's using something with real punch."
Seraya knelt beside him, hands glowing faintly as she pressed them to the thigh wound. "Hold still. I can slow the bleeding, but we need cover. Real cover."
Another shot.
This one punched through the crate beside my head, showering us with splinters. The narelith shrieked and burrowed against my chest, trembling.
My hands shook so badly I could barely keep them on the creature. Who the hell shoots at people in broad daylight in their own city? Who has the kind of weapon that can do that from two streets away? Why do I have to deal with all of this!?
But beneath the fear, a small, traitorous part of me was excited by it all. The experience of being hunted by a sniper was one unlike anything else. I hated that I noticed it.
Seraya's eyes flicked upward, searching the rooftops. "I can't see him. Normally a weapon of that type would emit some sort of mana signature, but I can't sense anything. Almost as if he were a ghost."
"Doesn't matter," Torren growled, forcing himself to a crouch despite the leg injury. "If we stay pinned here, he'll just wait. We move, he picks us off. Hero, got any tricks left in that head of yours?"
I stared at him. Tricks? I had [Dismantle] on cooldown, [Reflex] that only worked if I saw the attack coming, and a baby narelith currently trying to crawl inside my ribcage. I had nothing.
Dust rained down as another shot cracked off the stone above us.
Seraya's voice dropped to a whisper. "We can't stay. If he's this accurate, he'll adjust. We need to break his line of sight by getting into the alleys, forcing him to reposition."
Torren nodded grimly. "On three, I'll draw fire. You two run for the spice exchange. Don't stop."
"No," I said, voice cracking. "You're bleeding out. You can't—"
"I've had worse." He met my eyes. "You're the one they want alive. Get moving or die. Your choice, hero."
Before I could argue, he jumped up, all four arms spread wide like he was daring the shooter to hit him again. He yelled something in a language I didn't know—probably an insult—and veered sideways toward the mouth of the alley.
Two more shots followed him instantly. One grazed his shoulder, and the other punched a hole through an empty barrel twenty paces away.
Seraya grabbed my wrist. "Now."
We ran.
The narelith clung to my shirt, wings flapping uselessly. My boots slipped on wet cobbles, nearly falling down twice. Seraya pulled me around corners, through narrow gaps between buildings, past startled merchants who swore and flattened themselves against walls.
Behind us, the shooting didn't stop. Every few seconds another clean crack echoed off stone, methodical and patient. Torren was buying us time. Time that was limited.
We burst into a small courtyard behind the spice exchange. Empty crates were scattered around, drying herbs hanging from lines, the sharp smell of cumin and dried peppers in the air. Seraya shoved open a side door that looked like it hadn't been used in years, and we stumbled into dim storage rooms that smelled of dust and old fabric.
She barred the door with a heavy beam, then slumped against the wall, breathing hard.
I slid down beside her, clutching the narelith to my chest. It was shaking so badly its whole body vibrated.
Am I going to die? For real this time? God…
Silence stretched, only broken by our breathing and the distant city noise filtering through cracks in the walls.
Seraya closed her eyes. "Torren…"
"He'll make it," I said automatically, but I didn't believe it.
She didn't answer. Minutes passed. Maybe ten. Maybe more.
Then the narelith lifted its head, single eye fixed on the far wall. It let out a single, low chirp. It was too late before I realized it was a warning.
A shadow moved across one of the high, narrow windows. Just the faintest click of a bolt being worked, and the window exploded inward in a shower of glass.
A tall figure dropped through, cloaked in streaked grey-green that blended with rooftops and stone. Long silver hair tied back, pointed ears, face half-hidden by a wrapped scarf. In his hands was a long, slender weapon of dark wood and dark steel, which I quickly recognized. The barrel was still smoking.
He landed lightly, already bringing the weapon to his shoulder. Seraya threw up a shield of silver light just as the next round cracked off, but the impact shattered the barrier like glass. She cried out as blood bloomed across her sleeve.
The elf—because that's what he was, unmistakably—didn't speak a word.
He simply worked the bolt again.
And aimed straight at me.