The skull hovered at the edge of the light with the self-importance of a clerk behind a tall desk. It dipped once, as if bowing to a judge, then rotated slowly to take them in. Glyphs ringed its crown in tiny cuts, some fresh, some worn pale by time.
"I am Skiv," it said. "Temporary custodian of the Twelfth Annex of the Lesser Citadel of Forms, formerly located three ridgelines east of here, now kindly relocated by geological tantrum to this bowl. You are inside a ledger space. Please adjust your behavior."
Arin stared. "We are bleeding and tired."
"I can see that," Skiv said. "The stones can as well. They record payments, births, and trespass. You are currently one for three."
Seraphine's gaze slid over the skull like a blade. "A lesser citadel. Abandoned by its lord. That explains the smell of neglected wards."
"Abandoned," Skiv said, "is a rude word. Downsized is correct. Reorganized is acceptable. Dissolved is fashionable but inaccurate in this case, since my contracts remain in force. Which is why you should not sit on that fallen column. It is a witness pillar and very particular."
Arin had been about to sit. He shifted a step away instead. The pillar hummed faintly, as if pleased by his manners.
"Why are you a skull?" he asked.
Skiv's jaw clicked, affronted. "Because the body was a liability during evacuations. I filed the appropriate forms, but the stamp was melted by lava rain, so I improvised. Floating is efficient."
"You are a demon," Seraphine said. "You speak like a clerk from a temple."
Skiv tilted toward her. "Do not threaten me with good comparisons. Now then, trespassers, declare intent. If you do not, the stones will guess, and their guesses are often violent."
"Our intent is shelter," Arin said. He kept the shard at his side, point down, blade turned away from Skiv. He did not fully understand why he bothered with courtesy to a floating skull, but his nerves told him that rules mattered in this place, even strange ones.
"Shelter is billable," Skiv said. "Fortunately, I am authorized to extend credit to refugees in cases of apocalypse, when certified by a sworn party." The flames in his sockets brightened as he looked at Seraphine. "You count as sworn. Barely. Your light is frayed."
"I count as myself," Seraphine said. "We will repay with information."
Skiv bobbed once. "You are honest in an irritating way. Fine. Credit extended. Terms are simple. You do not bleed on the ledger stones. You do not sing inside the arch on the quarter hour. You do not cut the air with that shard unless you wish to erase the roof. Do we have accord?"
Arin looked up. The arch arced over them like a tired rib. The idea of erasing it with a careless swing created a quiet fear in his chest.
"Accord," he said.
"Accord," Seraphine said, a shade later.
Skiv turned slowly toward Arin and drifted closer, until the blue points in its sockets studied the marks beneath Arin's torn breastplate. "Curious. Two signatures. I have seen it many times. I have seen the other, obviously. I have not seen them argue inside a human chest."
Arin set his palm over the sigils. "They do more than argue."
"Hurts," Skiv said gently.
"Yes."
"Good," Skiv said. "Pain means you are not lying to yourself yet."
Seraphine folded her arms. "Enough theater. Tell us what you know about dual signatures in a mortal."
"Dual what?" Arin asked.
"Dual-Tether," Seraphine said. "The term you want is ugly, but accurate. Two tethers, sky and abyss, bound to one mortal host."
Skiv clicked its teeth. "The last time such a phrase was spoken in this annex, the speaker was fined for rumor mongering and then promoted for vision. The records disagree with themselves. It was an exciting day."
Arin kept his voice even. "You know of it."
"I know of many things," Skiv said. "I know of a minor cult of Stitch wrights who believed mortals could stitch law to appetite without explosion. I know of a vault in Aetheria where the words dual and tether sit too close for comfort on a page. I know of a pit in Nethermere where a failed experiment burned a hole that no one has filled. I know that the moment you opened the shard on the Bridge, four surveillance scripts woke up in four separate jurisdictions, and three of them have already lost the argument with the fourth. Which means the fourth is winning. Which means someone important is coming."
"Who?" Seraphine said.
"Not Maelkrath, not yet," Skiv said. "He is fast when hungry and slow when he believes his prey cannot run far. Which you cannot. Faster than Maelkrath, quieter, and infinitely better dressed."
Seraphine's jaw tightened. "Nyx."
Skiv dipped in approval. "Princess Nyx Voryn. Contracts in three colors, conscience in one, appetite in several. She collects new things. You are new."
Arin gripped the shard. It hummed against his skin, low and steady. "If she is coming, we should leave."
Skiv looked toward the arch. "You can leave. I will file the appropriate forms after you die. Or you can accept guidance. I am expensive, but punctual."
Arin glanced at Seraphine. She spoke before he could. "Guide us. What payment do you require?"
Skiv rotated, considering them from a new angle, which was the same as the old angle but felt like a negotiation tactic. "I require three items. First, a signed acknowledgment that you will not ask me to fight. Second, access to your map."
"We do not have a map," Arin said.
"You do," Skiv said, pointing his chin at Arin's chest. "It is written on your skin in a language that is not words. You will not read it. I will not read it. But the shard can hum it if asked politely."
Arin swallowed. The marks under his palm felt suddenly colder.
"And the third," Seraphine said.
Skiv's teeth clicked twice. "When you meet Nyx, you will listen, and you will not kill her before she finishes her first sentence. I have a personal fondness for negotiated beginnings."
Seraphine's eyes sharpened. "You presume a meeting."
"I am saving you time," Skiv said. "Hunters are already in the wastes. Maelkrath sends loud ones first to make you run. Nyx sends quiet ones to measure the distance to your fear. I heard them catalog your footfalls while you fought the scavengers."
Arin felt the ruin tilt around him, though he knew it did not move. "You heard them through stone."
Skiv bobbed. "The stones gossip. They carry your weight and your heat and your anger in fine lines. They also like jokes. Which is how I survive here."
Seraphine eased a breath, the kind one takes before a decision that will draw blood later. "Guide us."
"Excellent," Skiv said. "Then we begin with a simple act. Put the shard in its sheath."
Arin looked at his hands. "It has no sheath."
"It does," Skiv said. "It is called not using it. That is the only sheath that does not leak."
Arin slid the blade behind him and held it against his lower back with his off hand, edge out of line with his legs, point down. It felt wrong to holster power. It also felt like relief. The marks under his skin cooled by a breath.
"You see," Skiv said brightly. "Progress. Now we walk through the annex, you keep your shoulders inside your body, and the lady refrains from swearing at the walls. The walls enjoy that too much."
Seraphine raised a brow. "I do not swear."
"That is what the walls said you would say," Skiv replied.
He drifted forward, candles in his sockets brightening. The faint band of light Seraphine had set in the arch had thinned to a hair and was flickering. They passed under it, careful not to brush the curve. The corridor beyond smelled like dust after rain, the scent of stone that has decided, for today, not to fall.
Glyphs lined the walls in neat rows. Some glowed faintly. Others watched.
Arin kept his voice low. "What is a ledger space?"
"A room that remembers," Skiv said. "It remembers debts, promises, names, shapes, and sometimes footsteps. If you are cruel inside, it will invoice you in a currency you do not enjoy. If you are kind, you will not forget."
Seraphine's gaze tracked the glowing cuts. "You make the place sound like a temple."
"Close enough," Skiv said. "All systems that keep lists eventually call themselves holy."
They reached a chamber where the ceiling had split and then been held in place by a lattice of fused ribs. A table of black glass stood in the center. When Skiv hovered above it, the surface rippled like dark water.
"Place your hand here, dual one," Skiv said to Arin. "Not the hand with the shard. The other. Do not bleed. The table hates dramatic gestures."
Arin laid his palm on the cool glass. The surface warmed under his skin. A faint image rose, like frost forming in reverse. Lines traced outward, then inward, then downward, settling into a pattern that looked like a city seen from far away. It was not a city. It was a net of paths.
"What am I seeing?" Arin asked.
"Routes," Skiv said. "Not roads. Paths are a thing, like you can survive. There are only a few. Fewer if you insist on living."
Seraphine leaned in. "Show me Maelkrath's territory."
The lines at the far edge burned the color of old blood. Skiv clicked once. "That. A hive of appetite and boasting. He keeps a pit where people who owe him scream the contracts they broke. It is noisy."
"And Nyx," Seraphine said.
The lines to the south cooled to a deep blue, nearly black. The glass fogged, then cleared. "That," Skiv said softly. "Quiet halls. Rooms with curtains. Laws written on walls where everyone can see them, then rewritten in the night when everyone sleeps. She smiles when she means it. She smiles when she does not mean it. You will not be able to tell the difference."
Arin's hand trembled on the glass. "Which way keeps us alive?"
Skiv drifted lower as if peering into a ledger line. "There is no safe way. There are only expensive ways. The least expensive is through a dead canal and a field of glass teeth. If we reach the teeth by the second low black, we can cross before they close. If we do not, you will be filed under interesting losses."
Seraphine studied Arin's hand. "Can he hold the shard through the teeth?"
"He must not," Skiv said. "The shard will sing. The teeth will answer. You will become a parable."
"What about the hunters?" Arin asked.
Skiv angled toward the corridor. The candles in his sockets dimmed. "Close. They smell of oath fire and iron sweat. They are patient because they are proud. Pride delays the bite."
Arin lifted his hand from the table. The image held for a breath, then faded like breath on glass. He flexed his fingers to shake the tremor out and looked at Seraphine. She met his eyes and nodded once. It was the kind of nod people give each other before stepping into a storm.
"Lead," she said to Skiv.
"With pleasure," Skiv said. "Please avoid stepping on the dotted lines. They are a diagram of a past argument, and they hold grudges."
They moved. The annex opened into a stair cut into the rock, each tread shallow and slightly crooked, as if carved by someone who measured more with the hand than the eye. The air beyond the doorway was darker and colder. The ridge outside carried a new sound, a distant rhythm like a drum, slow and careful, as if a hand were testing the skin.
Arin paused. "Do you hear that?"
Seraphine listened. "Yes."
Skiv's voice lowered. "That is not Maelkrath's beat. That is a different hand. She uses a slower count when she wants frightened things to remember they can breathe."
"Nyx," Seraphine said.
Arin felt the marks under his skin answer the sound in tiny pulses, as if someone were knocking inside his chest. He set his shoulders, shifted the shard so it would not catch on the stairs, and started down.
Behind them, the ledger stones flickered once, like eyes closing.
Outside, the drumbeat paused, then began again, closer than before.
They took the stairs in silence at first, Skiv bobbing ahead like a lantern that had learned to gossip. The stone treads were shallow and crooked, gritty under Arin's boots. The slow drumbeat outside paused and resumed, closer, as if a hand tested the skin and liked the sound it made.
"Keep to the right," Skiv said softly. "The left edge remembers a quarrel. If you step on it, it will repeat its point loudly."
Seraphine brushed the wall with her fingers. "These cuts are not random."
"Nothing here is random," Skiv said. "Random is a luxury of safe places."
They reached a low doorway where broken ribs of stone framed a narrow landing. Wind slid in with the smell of old iron and wet ash. The horizon beyond was a bowl of black dunes under a sky like cooled glass. Arin could not find the sun. Light came from everywhere and nowhere, pale and sour.
"Two minutes," Skiv said. "You asked for answers, mortal. Ask them now, while the polite hunters let you catch your breath."
Arin looked at Seraphine. "Why were you chained. Not captured by demons. Chained by your own."
Her jaw worked once, then stilled. She stood with her back to the wind, face turned to the view as if it were something she could fix by looking long enough.
"There was a village," she said. "Not far from the Aetherian border. Its people had made a private vow to keep a Bridge stone clean with song. It is a small rite. Harmless, to us. Binding, to them."
Arin listened. The shard rested against his spine. The marks beneath his ribs warmed and cooled with each breath.
"A demon raiding band crossed near there," Seraphine went on. "We were sent to clear them. Solivar's directive arrived with the same order we always receive. Contain. Purge. Do not speak with mortals except to command evacuation."
She closed her eyes for a moment. "The raiders fled. We had done enough. But the directive required cleansing fire on the village to cauterize residue. I refused. I argued the song would hold the stone if the people held the song."
"And your commander," Arin said.
"Returned me to our court for correction," she said. "Solivar listened. He asked me to recite the Treaty of Veils. I did. He asked me to explain why mortals matter. I did. He answered that mortals matter as a resource, not a counsel."
Her voice thinned. She was not crying. She was cutting words into proper shapes so they would not cut her back.
"I told him that without consent, our laws die," she said. "He told me my light would serve better if I learned to obey. He placed me under a witness vow to observe mortal behavior without interference, as punishment. When I intervened anyway at the Fallen Bridge, he tightened the vow into chains."
Skiv nodded once. "Clause One. Disobedience assessed. Clause Two. Observation converted to restraint."
Seraphine's mouth tilted. "Thank you, Skiv, your poetry is as delicate as a tax."
"Thank you," Skiv said, pleased.
Arin felt the slow anger he recognized from barracks nights when lads told stories of commanders who made rules from warm rooms and called them valor. "You saved a village."
"I saved a song," she said. "They saved each other."
"And the chains," he asked, "they were meant to drag you back."
"Yes," she said. "Or leave me where I stood long enough to learn obedience."
Arin looked down at his hands. "I freed you because you asked. Not because of a strategy."
"I know," she said. "That is why it worked."
They let the wind fill the next breath. The drumbeat outside shifted to a slower count, then fell silent. Arin could not tell if that meant mercy or teeth.
Skiv drifted to the threshold and peered over it. "The quiet ones have circled the ridge," he said. "They prefer a flank. They will test your stride with little sounds that sound like home."
Seraphine straightened. "We move."
They left the landing and entered a corridor cut by hands that loved straight lines more than straight stone. The walls were shaved clean. On one side, neat columns of glyphs marched from waist height to the ceiling. On the other hand, shallow niches held dull plates of glass. Arin caught his reflection in one. He looked older by a year than he had that morning. The shard made a dark line against his back.
"We go east by north," Skiv said. "Then we leave the annex and cut along a dead canal. The glass teeth field waits beyond. If we cross before the second low black, we will be interesting enough to live."
"What is a low black?" Arin asked.
"Sky darkening," Skiv said. "The light here does not set. It pauses to think. Each pause sharpens some edges and softens others. The teeth prefer the second pause for closing."
Arin touched the marks through his torn tunic. "Can I carry the shard through?"
"You can carry it," Skiv said. "You cannot sing it. If you do, the teeth will answer your note with their own."
He nodded. "Understood."
They came to a room where the floor slanted down into a shallow basin. Lines scored the stone in tidy arcs, each labeled with a symbol that looked like a cup turned on its side.
"Water," Seraphine said.
"Once," Skiv said. "The canal fed from this catch. Now it feeds dust. But dust can drown you if you are careless."
Arin crouched and brushed the scoring with his fingers. The stone gave off a coolness that did not match the air. He lifted his hand quickly. He did not like it when Stone remembered him.
"Your captain," Seraphine said quietly, as they climbed the short stair out. "Dreskin. You would have chosen him if I had not pulled you back."
"Yes," Arin said.
She nodded as if that answer corrected a balance she cared about. "Carry him with you then. Not as punishment. As weight. Weight can keep you honest."
He swallowed. "He taught me to get children out of fires first. Not exactly a strategy. Enough to get me yelled at."
"Good," she said. "Hold that."
Skiv cleared his throat, which was a remarkable sound for a skull. "Your shared sincerity warms the accounts, but we must walk faster now. The quiet ones are humming."
They quickened their pace. The corridor narrowed and then ended in a slit of daylight that was not light. Outside, the ground dropped into a long trench that ran like a scar through the wastes. Its bottom was covered in a sheet of dark glass that glittered like scales. The far bank rose in a low ridge dotted with tooth shapes that reflected nothing.
"Dead canal," Skiv said. "Do not run. Walk as if you respect the dead. If you run, the glass hears the rhythm and tries to match it with its own. It enjoys the game and presses up through your feet."
"What happens if you do not respect it?" Arin asked.
"It keeps a piece of you," Skiv said. "Usually a foot. Sometimes a name."
Seraphine flicked him a look. "He is not in the mood for stories."
"These are invoices, not stories," Skiv said. "Follow me."
They descended into the trench. The glass looked solid until Arin put weight on it. Then it felt like the top of a frozen lake with water moving beneath. He adjusted his step to a slow, even cadence. The shard hummed faintly. He told it no without words.
Halfway across, the drumbeat returned. Slow. Patient. The glass under Arin's boots shivered, then stilled, as if something larger than him had told it to wait.
Seraphine glanced at the sky. "That is not Maelkrath."
"No," Skiv said. "He claps with both hands and calls it a ceremony. This is a single hand on a single drum. It is the rhythm of permission."
Arin kept his eyes trained on the far bank. "Permission for what?"
"For you to arrive," Skiv said. "Or for you to die on schedule, depending on your attitude."
They reached the far side. The bank was steep and layered with crumbly plates of rock like fish scales. Seraphine climbed first, finding holds like an old habit. Arin followed. He kept the shard behind him and used his left hand for balance. The marks under his skin warmed in measured pulses to match the drum.
"Do not match it," Seraphine said. "It will take your pace and own it."
Arin forced his breath into a new count. The marks resisted, then relented.
They crested the ridge and froze. The field beyond was full of teeth. Some as tall as a man, some as small as a finger. Each was made of the same dark glass as the canal, but etched with faint lines that caught the light and sent it sideways. The teeth faced different directions, like a crowd that could not agree on what to watch.
"Why teeth?" Arin asked.
"To remind you," Skiv said, "that everything here eats."
They started in, stepping with care. The shard's hum drew down to a soft line, the way a blade seems quiet when you know where it is. The teeth did not move. They listened. Arin took each step as if he were on the edge of a crib where a child slept, and making noise would be a crime.
There were three rows when a sound lifted across the field. It was not the drum. It was a chime no larger than a spoon against a cup.
Seraphine went still. "Hunters," she whispered.
"Two flanks," Skiv said. "They taste our path."
Arin scanned the edges of the field. Movement rippled through the teeth, a shadow sliding where there should have been no shadow. He felt the shard lean in his hand as if it wished to sing.
"Not here," Skiv said sharply. "If you cut, the teeth will answer. Then everyone eats you, including the law."
Seraphine looked at Arin. "We can make a vow barrier. Thin, but enough to foul their first rush."
"Cost," he said.
"My strength," she said. "Which I do not have. Your breath, which you do."
He nodded. "Do it."
She lifted her hand and spoke a line that wrapped around his chest like a ribbon pulled tight. It did not choke. It guided. He spoke it back, simple and clear. The air in front of them thickened by a hair, enough to warp the view. The teeth seemed farther apart on the other side, even though he knew they were not.
"Walk," Seraphine said.
They moved again, faster now, each step a decision. The chime sounded a second time, closer. A shape darted between two tall teeth, then vanished. Arin caught a glint of eyes that were not eyes, only polished pits.
"Left," Skiv said.
They shifted left. The field adjusted. The teeth turned in the smallest way. The vow ribbon flexed and held.
A shape lunged. It struck the thin air of the vow and skidded, claws scraping glass, momentum stolen. Seraphine did not break stride. "Keep walking."
Arin kept his eyes forward and his hands low. He heard claws again, this time from the right. The ribbon resisted once more, weak but honest. It would not hold long. The second low black was coming. The light changed temperature in the way it does before storms.
They reached the last row of teeth and stepped into a shallow saddle of bare stone. The drumbeat stopped. The hunters did not follow them out. They waited at the edge like wolves at a fence they did not trust.
Arin let out a breath he had not realized he was holding. "Why did they stop?"
"Because the next space is not theirs," Skiv said.
A figure stood in the saddle, at ease, as if she had been there long before they arrived. She wore a dress the color of smoked wine. Her hair was braided with thin chains that did not jingle when the wind touched them. Her eyes were not a color Arin knew. They were the idea of a color that had not yet decided itself.
"Welcome," she said, voice warm enough to be believed and careful enough to be doubted. "You brought your own law. That is polite."
Seraphine's shoulders squared. "Nyx."
The woman smiled, as if the name were a compliment. "Seraphine Auriel, still proud, still curious. And you must be the mortal who cut a god from her chains. How inconvenient and interesting you are."
Arin felt the marks in his chest answer in uneven beats. The Veilshard thrummed like a plucked wire.
Nyx's gaze dipped to the shard and back to his face. "Do not sing it here. This is a listening place."
Skiv hovered between them at a respectful height, chin lifted like a court usher. "Introductions duly made."
Nyx's smile widened a fraction. "Walk with me, Arin Vale. Or do you prefer to be chased today?"
The hunters shifted restlessly at the edge of the teeth. The light cooled toward the second pause.
Arin glanced at Seraphine. She did not nod. She did not need to. The choice had already arrived.
He stepped forward once, just enough to show he could.