Falling didn't feel like flying. It felt like being erased.
Gravity was a law, and Kaelen Vance was currently breaking it with stolen tools. As she and Valerius plummeted from the shattered dome of the Spire of Sighs, the air roared past them, stripping the breath from her lungs. The black water of the estuary rushed up to meet them, a slab of obsidian waiting to shatter their bones.
Pull the string, the Voice whispered, urgent and sharp. Don't just fall, little thief. Re-negotiate the terms of impact.
Kae squeezed her eyes shut. She dug into the mental archive, past the screaming face of her dead mother, past the static of the Dreg-ghosts, and found the jagged, metallic taste of the Silencer's memory she had inhaled on the rooftops.
She found the feeling of weightlessness.
She screamed, not with her voice, but with her blood. The raw Arcane Dreg in her veins flared, turning her vision violet. She grabbed Valerius's coat collar and pulled—not up, but against the earth.
For a heartbeat, the world twisted. Her stomach lurched into her throat. The screaming wind vanished, replaced by a terrifying, vacuum-like silence. They didn't stop falling, but the velocity bled away, siphoned off into the void.
Then, the magic snapped.
They hit the water.
It wasn't concrete, but it was close. The impact knocked the wind out of Kae, driving her deep into the freezing, oily embrace of the Iron River. The cold was instantaneous and paralyzing. It invaded her clothes, her boots, her skin, seeking the warmth of her blood like a living thing.
Bubbles of silver air erupted from her lips. She tumbled in the dark, disoriented. Which way was up?
Down here, the Voice murmured, sounding strangely comfortable in the crushing dark. It's quiet down here. No bells. No burning. Why not stay?
Kae kicked, her heavy boots acting like anchors dragging her toward the silt. Her lungs burned. The Dreg she had inhaled earlier was now reacting with the Dreg in the polluted water, creating a fizzing sensation on her skin, like she was bathing in acid.
A hand grabbed her collar.
Valerius.
He hauled her upward, his grip like iron. They broke the surface together, gasping, coughing up brackish water that tasted of copper and dead fish.
"Swim!" Valerius choked out, thrashing against the current. "To the pylons!"
They struggled toward the massive stone legs of the bridge they had just jumped from. The current was strong, fed by the heavy rains, but Valerius swam with a grim, mechanical determination. He dragged Kae onto a narrow strip of mud and garbage that had accumulated around the base of the pylon.
Kae collapsed into the muck, retching. Her velvet illusion-gown—or the rags beneath it—was heavy and sodden, smelling of the Sump.
"Vance," Valerius crawled over to her, grabbing her face with cold, wet hands. "Look at me. Pupils check."
Kae blinked, shivering violently. "I'm... I'm here."
"You used the gravity magic," Valerius said, wiping slime from his cheek. "You dampened the fall. That was a high-level kinetic manipulation. That should have burned your nervous system out."
"I'm durable," Kae wheezed. She rolled onto her back, staring up at the underbelly of the bridge. Above them, the Spire of Sighs loomed, its broken window a jagged tooth against the smoky sky. "Or maybe I'm just... already burnt."
Valerius sat back, leaning against the wet stone. He looked at his shotgun. The barrel was bent, ruined by the impact. He tossed it into the river with a splash.
"We are unarmed," he said, his voice flat. "We are wet. We are freezing. And the city is overrun."
"We have the ticket," Kae said, tapping her chest. The gold leaf felt warm against her freezing skin. "And we know what he wants."
"He wants you to eat the seal," Valerius said. "The Barrier. The metaphysical wall that keeps the Void out of Obolus."
"Where is it?" Kae asked. "He showed me a door in the sky, but that was a vision. The real seal... it has to be somewhere physical. The Architects were builders. They dealt in stone and steel."
Valerius looked at the river, watching the dead fish float by. "The Foundation," he murmured. "The legend of the First Stone. It is said that Obolus was built on top of a breach. They capped it."
"Where?"
"The Deep cisterns," Valerius said. "Beneath the Pneumatic Exchange. Beneath the sewers. The absolute lowest point of the city."
Kae sat up, hugging her knees to stop the shaking. "The Pneumatic Exchange is a crater. We blew it up."
"Which means the way down is open," Valerius said grimly. "And if the Killer is done with his party at the Spire... that is where he will go next. To prepare the table for your final meal."
A splash in the water nearby made them both freeze.
It wasn't the rhythmic thump-thump of the Killer, or the chaotic humming of the Sleepers. It was a skittering sound.
Valerius reached for his cane-sword, but it was gone—lost in the river. He pulled a knife from his boot.
"Who's there?" he barked into the shadows under the bridge.
Two yellow eyes blinked in the darkness. Then two more. Then a dozen.
Figures emerged from the gloom. They were small, hunched, their skin pale and slick with river-slime. Children. Or things that had once been children. Their limbs were too long, their fingers webbed with scar tissue and mutations from years of exposure to the raw Dreg runoff.
Mud-Larks. Scavengers of the estuary.
"Pretty coat," one of them hissed. The voice was wet, like bubbling tar. "Shiny buttons."
"Dead meat," another giggled. "Floaters."
"Back away," Valerius warned, standing up. He looked imposing, even soaking wet, but the Mud-Larks didn't flinch. There were twenty of them, encircling the small mud bank.
"Hungry," the lead Mud-Lark said. He held a sharpened piece of rusted rebar. "Inquisitor meat is tough. But chewable."
Kae looked at them. She didn't feel fear. She felt a terrible, twisted kinship. These were the children of the pollution, just like her. They were what happened when the city poisoned its own blood.
They want to eat you, the Voice whispered, bored. How derivative. Show them the food chain, darling.
"We don't have time for this," Kae said. She stood up. The mud sucked at her boots.
She didn't raise her hands. She didn't summon the Dreg. She simply let her barriers drop.
She projected the hunger.
Not the physical hunger for food, but the Mindsink's hunger. The singing void in her skull. The terrifying, endless vacuum that had swallowed a mother's love and a killer's gravity.
She looked at the lead Mud-Lark and let him feel the hole in her head.
The effect was immediate. The creatures recoiled, hissing. They dropped their rusted weapons, clutching their heads, whining like kicked dogs. Animals knew when they were in the presence of a predator that ate souls.
"Go," Kae commanded. Her voice vibrated with a sub-vocal resonance, a leftover tremor from the Laughing Note.
The Mud-Larks scrambled backward, splashing into the water, disappearing into the shadows of the pylons.
Valerius stared at her. He didn't look relieved. He looked like he was standing next to a bomb that had stopped ticking and started humming.
"You didn't use magic," he said quietly.
"No," Kae said, turning to face the river. "I just showed them the teeth."
"Vance," Valerius stepped closer. "Your eyes. They aren't going back to normal. The violet... it's staining the sclera."
"Does it matter?" Kae asked. "We have a job to do, Inquisitor. You said the Pneumatic Exchange is the way down. How do we get there without being spotted by the Sleepers?"
Valerius hesitated, then sheathed his knife. "The Service Tunnels. The Mud-Larks use them to move contraband. If we follow their tracks, we can bypass the streets entirely."
He pointed to a rusted grate set into the brickwork of the bridge abutment. "Inside. It will be tight. And it will smell worse than this."
They waded through the muck to the grate. Valerius wrenched it open with a groan of metal, revealing a dark, dripping tunnel that breathed warm, fetid air into the night.
"Ladies first," Valerius muttered.
Kae crawled inside. The tunnel was claustrophobic, the walls slick with algae. As she moved, her mind began to wander, drifting dangerously close to the memories she had suppressed.
She saw Lector Halloway turning to stone. She saw the White Queen's sewn-shut eyes. She saw the mirror mask reflecting a room that wasn't there.
He is building you, the Voice whispered in the echo of the tunnel. Layer by layer. Trauma by trauma. He isn't just making you strong, Kaelen. He is hollowing you out.
"Why?" Kae whispered back to the darkness. "Why me?"
Because to open the door to the Laughing God, the Voice replied, you need a vessel that is completely empty. And you, my dear, are the hungriest thing in Obolus.
"Vance?" Valerius's voice echoed from behind her. "Who are you talking to?"
Kae paused. She could feel the "Cipher" inside her—the complex geometric madness the Killer had implanted—shifting, clicking into a new configuration. It wasn't just a passenger anymore. It was a navigation system.
"I'm talking to the map," Kae said. "And I think I know the way."
She crawled faster, deeper into the bowels of the city. Down here, beneath the fires and the panic bells, the silence was heavy. But it wasn't empty.
Ahead of them, in the dark, something was ticking.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It wasn't a clock. It was the sound of claws on stone, waiting for them at the end of the line.
"Valerius," Kae called back, her voice steady. "Do you still have that canister of acid?"
"One left. Why?"
"Because," Kae said, staring into the gloom where two red eyes had just opened. "I think the doorman is awake."