They weren't running—they were sliding inside the seam.
In the corridor of the Wall of Names, the air was dry, dust mixed with the smell of wax, and every few steps small letters were carved into the stone. Leo didn't want to let his gaze rest on them. The more he looked, the more it felt like every name was a thin thread, and every thread could recognize him and pull.
Kerin was ahead, holding the black box with both hands. His fingers had gone white. The box was still "reduced"—because of Yara's name-circle and Maera's quiet-hem—but its weight kept changing, as if it were sometimes stone and sometimes water. The knocking inside the box now moved to a new rhythm, the same rhythm that had arrived with the whisper of that third thread.
Tap… tap-tap… tap…
Yara was in the middle. Tear tracks had dried on her face, but her eyes were still red. Again and again she pressed her lips together, as if trying to remember a word—and then stopping herself. There was a strange contradiction in her gait: something inside her had broken, but training held her body straight.
Maera wasn't behind; she was right beside Leo—close enough to catch him if he stumbled. Her needle wasn't resting in her palm but held between her fingers, the way someone might hold a prayer along with their breath. Her eyes stayed on the seams in the stone and the tensions in the air, as if she were speaking with the walls.
And Leo… On Leo's wrist, that new, fine stitch-mark was burning. Not pain—**someone's signature**. As if someone had written beneath his skin: *I touched you.*
Behind them, where they had been, the pressure of the Oath still lingered through the stone. Dominion's command was still trying to make the room obedient. And the Hushed's absence—something that doesn't knock, that only "reduces" things—was seeping out of the stone.
Without turning, Maera said as she walked, "If you hear a sound behind you—don't give it a name."
Kerin panted, "And if… if the sound says our name?"
Maera's voice was flat. "Don't name that either. Just count your breaths."
Very softly Yara said, "The habit of answering when you hear your name…" She stopped, like the second half of the thought snapped. Then she steadied herself and added, "It's the first thing they teach you. And it's the first thing that traps you."
In his mind Leo repeated *Leo Ravel*. A rope. The only rope. But that rope didn't feel like something his fingers could grip anymore; it felt like something memory was gripping. And memories were becoming his weakest place.
The corridor opened into something like a crossroads—four directions, four stone paths. The walls bore candle marks, but between them here and there that same thin, straight line was raised—wrong, rigid—as if the sickness of maps had reached even here.
Maera paused and "smelled" the air. Then she pointed left. "Dock air."
Kerin moved at once. The box grew a little heavier in his hands, as if it resisted the change in direction.
Leo whispered, "It… doesn't want us to go there."
Maera's gaze flicked to the box for a second. "A knot doesn't like or dislike," she said. "A knot only pulls."
As she walked, she swung her needle through the air—two small stitches—and the air tension at the turn they'd taken tightened for a few moments. As if she blurred their shadow behind them, just for a while.
Yara saw it and let out the faintest breath. "Hem."
"Yes," Maera said. "And this isn't as civilized as your candle-traps. It just works."
Farther on, the ceiling of the passage dipped. Moisture increased in the stone. The air carried that sea-smell again—rotting wood, damp rope, and the echo of running water somewhere below.
Then, suddenly, from far behind—**knocking**.
Not the box's knocking.
Knocking on stone, as if a notch-stick were lightly tapping at a joint in the rock.
Tap… tap-tap…
Kerin's spine went rigid. "They—"
"Yes," Maera cut in. "They're reading inside Candle's belly now."
For an instant, something like old disgust floated across Yara's face—toward Dominion or toward herself, Leo couldn't tell. She said quietly, "If they know how to read this far… someone taught them. Or someone allowed it."
"Candle doesn't allow," Maera said sharply.
Yara looked at her for a moment. "Candle are *people*," she said evenly. "And people… sometimes sell rules in exchange for fear."
There was a weariness in that sentence that didn't come from age, but from work.
The passage ended at a rusted iron gate—no, not a door, a thick grille. Beyond it ran a wide channel of water. The water was black, but moving fast. A pale line of moonlight fell from somewhere above—meaning this route was close to the surface, somewhere.
But the grille was closed. And its latch didn't have a metal lock.
Its latch had an **Oath**—Leo could tell the difference now. A metal lock is just metal. An oath-lock is a tightness in the air. Rust made of words.
Kerin trembled. "How does this open?"
Maera lowered her needle. "It doesn't take words. It takes… method."
Yara stepped forward. She drew out a candle—her fingers steadier now than before, as if danger could turn her back into *work*. She let hot wax drip near the latch and made a small candle-sign.
The wax touched the latch—and the latch seemed to **breathe** for a heartbeat. The oath-tightness loosened. Tiny, but unmistakable.
"This gate isn't Candle's," Yara said. "It's… old hem. But Candle recognizes it."
Maera looked at Yara for a moment—respect that didn't make it into words. Then she placed not her finger, but the blunt back of her needle to the latch—and made a very subtle motion, like loosening a thread, not cutting it.
There was a **click**—a real metal sound—and the grille opened an inch.
Leo held his breath. It wasn't relief. It was a *way through*. And a way through often becomes a noose.
Kerin pushed the grille. "Come on—"
At that exact moment, the notch-stick knocking came again—closer this time.
Tap… tap-tap…
And with it, very softly, someone tried to speak a sentence—haltingly, as if writing through stone:
"From… here… you can—"
An oath-sentence.
Yara snapped up, smeared candle wax onto her finger, and drew a long, thin line along the edge of the grille—like a **name-smoke**. Then she released her breath not onto the wax, but onto her own hand—breath pattern, candle-language.
A faint smoke rose from the wax-line—not real smoke, only a trick of the air—as if the path were changing its name.
"Now," Yara said. "Right now."
Kerin crawled through first. He pressed the box to his chest—he understood now that holding it loosely wasn't safe. His face was hard, but fear had made a home behind his eyes.
Leo went after him. The edge of the grille scraped his shoulder. Cold spray from the channel splashed his hand. And with that splash—inside him—someone whispered:
Don't take it here.
That voice didn't come from the box. It came from inside him—near that new stitch. As if the third thread had made space in his mind.
Leo clenched his teeth. He didn't answer. Answering would be naming.
Maera crossed last. As soon as she did, the grille began to slide back on its own—a habit of oath-locks, a habit of tightening again. Yara turned and ran her finger over the wax line, and the grille held still for a moment—long enough for all three of them to step down into the water.
The channel water reached their knees. The current tugged at their legs. The walls were slick—patches of moss, and places where torn scraps of old rope hung, as if this route had once belonged to smugglers too, not only ascetics.
With every step, Leo felt threads—but down here the threads were wilder. Far from the "written" world above, in the lower world threads weren't rules, but **survival**.
Behind them—toward the grille—the Hushed's absence reduced the air again. It didn't cross the grille, but its presence left a faint tremor on the water's surface. Leo didn't look, but he felt Kerin's breath hitch, as if something inside him had been tugged.
Inside Leo rose that immediate, dangerous urge: **Open. Cut. Save.**
He started to lift his hands—then stopped himself.
Maera's voice came by his ear, very low: "If you open it here, the current will catch your thread. And then you won't get to choose what breaks."
Leo clenched his fist—and with it realized he couldn't even say a simple sentence. He wanted to tell Kerin: *I didn't steal this.*
The words formed inside him, then died there. A dry knot in his throat.
He managed only, "I… I—"
And the word broke.
Kerin looked at him. For the first time, his face held none of that old superiority. Only exhaustion and fear. "Don't say anything," Kerin said quietly. "Just… walk."
Leo nodded. That small support felt strange—because he wasn't used to taking support from Kerin. And that frightened him even more: things were changing. Too fast.
The channel began to slope upward. The water grew shallower. Sea-salt thickened in the air. Somewhere above: the clatter of dockwood, the creak of ropes.
Then they reached an iron ladder fixed into the wall, leading up to a round manhole-like hatch—wood and metal together.
Maera raised a hand to stop them. She listened upward—not just with her ear, but as if she were listening to the threads of the air.
No sound came from above. But the lack of sound can be a sign, too.
Yara whispered, "Hushfall could be up there."
"Or someone could be sitting there," Maera said, "stealing words."
Kerin held the box tighter. The knocking inside it was very faint, but Leo felt its rhythm shifting—as if matching the tempo of the world above.
*Tap… tap…*
Maera put her foot on the first rung. She didn't touch the hatch—she only traced the needle along its rim. Then a gentle pressure. The hatch didn't lift; it first **gave permission**, and only then moved.
That, too, was a kind of stitching—doors.
The hatch opened halfway, and a gust of cold air fell in. Night air. The smell of the sea. And… that impossible smell of rain that comes before rain, though there was no rain here.
Leo's stomach sank. *Sky-wound.*
Maera lifted the hatch a little more and looked up. Her eyes fixed for a moment. Then she turned back and said only, "Fast. And quiet."
They climbed up one by one. Leo last. As soon as his head rose above the hatch, he saw—
This wasn't a path out onto an open dock. It was the inside of a **warehouse**. Old wooden walls, a damp floor, ropes hanging from above, and thin blades of moonlight through the windows. Somewhere outside the sea was audible, but even that felt slightly "pressed down"—a light shadow of Hushfall, maybe.
Maera closed the hatch. As she did, she made a tiny stitch in the air. The hatch didn't shut with a click; it settled into **silence**, as if pretending to forget itself.
Kerin let out a breath of relief—then stopped mid-breath, as if angry at himself.
Yara moved to a broken crate in the corner and leaned against the wall. Fatigue showed on her face, but her eyes were still working. She whispered, "This place… someone's used it."
Then Leo saw what Maera had seen first.
In the middle of the warehouse floor, someone had drawn a **thin chalk pattern**—like a net. And at the center, a symbol: that stitched circle, and above it… Dominion's eye.
And right beside the net—on a small wooden box—lay a bone/ivory **notch-stick**.
As if an Inspector had only just stood up from here.
Or as if an Inspector was still here.
Leo's wrist-mark flared hot. The knocking inside the box surged—this time even quiet-hem couldn't fully smother it.
*Tap… tap-tap… tap-tap-tap…*
Maera's fingers tightened on the needle. Yara drew out her candle—but didn't dare light it. Kerin backed away, pressing the box to his chest as if it were a shield.
And in that moment, above them—between the warehouse beams—out of the dark came a **rasping breath**. Not the Hushed's. Not the Inspector's.
A third kind of breath—as if something had already been here, simply watching for them to arrive.
Then a voice came, very near, very calm—like the speaker was standing among them:
"There was no need to bring the needle with you, Leo Ravel. I was already here."
And in the thin strip of moonlight, on the floor between their shadows, a new shadow joined them—one that couldn't be cast by any single body.