The last bridges before the palace ring were thicker, set with carved bands of script worn soft by rain. The water here ran closer to the roofs, as if the city were standing on its toes to keep from going under.
Kellan chose his path and kept low. The ledger under his shirt warmed against his ribs. It felt like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
He skirted a courtyard where the water lapped at the lip like a cat at a bowl. A drowned leaned against a door below, head tilted, mouth spilling its steady stream. Another stood beside it. A third climbed the steps and slipped back with a quiet splash. He didn't linger.
The bridge ahead ended at a wide platform ringed with plinths. Statues stood on each—robed figures with their hands over their faces. Up close, he could see the carving better: the fingers weren't pressed shut. They were parted. Every one of them peeking.
He stopped at the threshold. The platform was the cleanest stone he'd seen. No moss, no grit, no debris. Only shallow scratches that crossed and recrossed in arcs, like marks left by stone scraping stone.
He didn't like this.
He put the bench leg down, picked up a broken tile, and tossed it to the center.
Nothing.
He took a step. Another. The glow from the dome thickened the air, putting a faint sheen on the statues' faces. He kept his eyes moving, never staring long at any one of them.
A soft sound came from his left. Not stone. Cloth.
Kellan looked without meaning to.
The nearest statue's fingers had opened a hair wider.
He froze. The sound stopped. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. He pictured the path across the platform and took another step.
Something scraped behind him. He didn't look. He kept walking. Another scrape to the right, closer. He could feel a gaze sliding across his back like a cold hand.
Don't run. Don't stare.
He moved faster, eyes skimming over blank stone where faces should have been. The benches leg felt heavy in his hand. The pointed stone felt too light.
A statue stood directly ahead on a low plinth. Its fingers were parted wider than the others. Between them—darkness. Not just shadow. Depth.
The scrape came again. Close enough to feel.
He stepped to the side. The statue ahead seemed to lean to follow the movement. His skin crawled. He threw the tile shard past it.
Every statue on the ring turned toward the sound.
The motion was soft and wrong, like something waking underwater.
"Yeah," Kellan breathed. "Thought so."
He sprinted.
The platform erupted in whispers of stone. Fingers parted. Faces turned. One statue dropped from its plinth with a weighty thud and hit the ground running. It moved in little jerks, as if the world were skipping frames to help it.
Kellan cut toward the outer edge and vaulted a low coping. A narrow service ledge traced the wall above the water. He landed on it, boots skidding, shoulder slamming into wet stone. The ledge shivered. Behind him, marble feet struck the platform in a pattern that wasn't quite footsteps.
He edged along the ledge sideways, hands on the wall, trying not to look back. The watcher—he couldn't call it a statue anymore—stopped at the coping and tilted its head. Its fingers were spread farther now. Between them, something like an eye that wasn't an eye peered out, blank and hungry.
It stepped onto the ledge.
The stone dipped under its weight. Splinters skittered into the water below. Kellan eased farther along, measuring the distance to the next bridge. Too far to jump. Not with wet hands. Not with a fall like this waiting.
The watcher came on.
Another shifted behind it, climbing down from its plinth, head cocked as if listening to his breath. He didn't have time to be delicate. He braced, swung the bench leg two-handed, and smashed it into the first watcher's fingers.
Bone-hard marble cracked. Two fingers snapped off and dropped into the water with barely a splash.
The watcher jerked back. The others lifted their heads. The one on the ledge reached for him with its ruined hand, and he hit it again, aiming for wrists, for joints.
Crack.
The ledge groaned. Kellan's heel slid. He grabbed a gutter spout above his head with his off hand and hauled himself up a little. The watcher pressed close, crowding him against the wall. Its parted fingers hovered inches from his face. The darkness between them drank the light.
He turned his head away, jaw clenched, and drove the pointed stone into the watcher's wrist. The tip skated, then bit. A chunk came free. The watcher's hand dropped, still grasping, and fell past his leg into the water. The surface swallowed it without a ripple.
"Come on," he gasped, voice raw. "Fall."
The watcher stepped closer instead.
The ledge gave with a sound like a sigh. Stone sheared away under its weight. The watcher shifted to keep balance, one foot searching for purchase that wasn't there.
Kellan did the only stupid thing that might work. He shoved it with his shoulder.
The watcher tipped. Its free hand shot out, fingers opening at last. The darkness behind them fixed him in a way that hurt. It was like being noticed by a well.
He pushed harder.
The watcher fell. It hit the water and went under without a splash, as though the flood had opened to take it. For a heartbeat, the other statues froze. Then they turned toward him as one.
{You have slain a Dormant Monster, Stone Watcher}
Kellan didn't wait. He hauled himself up onto the coping and ran. The platform tiles rang under his feet. Statues angled to cut him off. The nearest dropped from its plinth with that same skipping motion and reached.
He didn't fight it. He ran straight for it and at the last instant slid low, shoulder-first, under its grasp. Wet stone burned his back through his shirt. He came up behind it, planted a foot on its plinth, and shoved.
The statue stumbled. Marble shins struck the coping. It toppled into the water, arms windmilling slow as prayer.
{You have slain a Dormant Monster, Stone Watcher}
Two more watchers closed. Kellan darted between plinths, using them like pillars. The watchers didn't like the gaps—something in their joints resisted the tight turns. He smashed a knee, cracked a wrist, and kept moving.
He reached the far side of the ring and jumped the last low gap to a narrow stair that climbed toward the palace wall. Behind him, the watchers regrouped but did not pursue up the stairs. They stood at the bottom, hands parted, staring through him at the place he'd been.
He didn't look back again until he reached a landing beneath the wall. Only then did he sag against the wet stone and let the tremble into his hands.
"Happy?" he asked the city, breath ragged. "You got your show."
A cold draft slipped through a crack in the wall. It carried the smell of old incense and wet metal. The landing held an iron-bound door swollen with damp and a low arch leading around the ring.
Something bright flickered at the edge of his vision. He flinched—then realized it wasn't light. It was inside his head, the way the runes had been.
{You have received a Memory: Drowned Silence.}
{Description: A corroded dagger that swallows sound when drawn. It remembers the weight of water on the tongue. Your footsteps ring less loudly in places that echo. The silence is not perfect. It is enough.}
Kellan exhaled. "Finally."
He felt the weight in his hand before he saw it—cold, rough metal settling into his palm like it had always belonged there. The dagger's edge wasn't pretty. The hilt was wrapped in something that might once have been leather. When he drew it, the scrape of metal on sheath vanished halfway through.
He dropped the bench leg on the ground. The dagger rode low in his off hand, a shadow of sound tucked close.
The iron-bound door didn't look like it wanted to move. He put his shoulder to it and pushed. The wood gave by an inch and stopped. He tried again. The third shove opened a gap wide enough for a person who was very tired of being outside.
He slipped through and pulled the door behind him until it stuck.
Inside, the sound dropped away. The city's breath became a memory. He stood in a low passage that curved with the wall. Water beaded on the stone. The glow from the dome was brighter here, leaking through hairline cracks like dawn that had forgotten how.
He started forward, dagger low, and let the new silence carry him.
The passage curved with the palace wall, narrow enough that Kellan's shoulder brushed stone if he didn't walk dead center. Water beaded on the blocks and ran in thin threads that found his collar. The air smelled of old incense drowned in rust.
He kept the dagger low. When he drew it, the sound of steel left the world in a small radius. Not silence—just less. His breath thinned. His footfalls softened. The scrape of cloth dulled to a whisper.
Good. Not magic worth bragging about. Just enough to live.
He moved slow. One step, pause, listen. The glow from the dome leaked through hairline seams in the mortar and turned the mist a weak blue. Somewhere behind the wall, something worked like a heart refusing to rest.
The corridor forked. Left descended, right climbed. He chose up. The ledger under his shirt tapped his ribs with each breath, a reminder he was carrying proof that the city had tried to warn itself.
Halfway up the stair, the light went strange. The blue brightened, then throbbed. Kellan stopped and crouched. A thin line cut across the wall like a healed wound. An old crack. The mortar there pulsed with light that didn't come from any flame.
He put his palm to it. The stone was colder than skin and too smooth. The pulse passed into his hand and through his bones.
He took his hand away.
At the top, the stair ended in a slit that overlooked an inner courtyard. Rain hung above it like threads. Below, a dozen drowned stood in neat rows, heads tilted back, mouths open toward the dome. Water spilled from them into a basin cut into the floor. The basin overflowed into drains that fed the moat.
They were feeding the flood.
He leaned the dagger's hilt against the sill and watched. The Memory's quiet wrapped him thin as a second skin. His heart still sounded loud to him. Maybe it didn't to them.
One drowned turned its head as if listening. Another followed the motion and then stilled. After a minute, the little flock returned to their worship, water pouring, a prayer with no words.
Kellan eased back from the slit and kept climbing.
The next landing held a door made of ribs. Not real bones, but carved to look like them—arches layered into a cage. Through the gaps: a chamber whose floor had fallen away. The remains of a balcony clung to the walls. In the void below, the black water lay so perfectly still that the broken pillars reflected without a ripple.
A narrow maintenance ledge circled the chamber where the balcony had been. He could take it, or go back. He slid through the ribbed door and edged along the wall, one hand flat on cold stone, the other on the dagger.
Halfway around, something shifted beneath the water.
He didn't look more than he had to. A pale head rose just below the surface, face up, eyes closed. Then another. Dozens. Not floating. Anchored. The skin moved in slow undulations, as if the water itself breathed through them. Mouths parted. Water flowed out.
His fingers dug into the mortar.
On the far side of the chamber, a lump of darkness clung to the underside of the ledge. It opened by slow degrees into a shape like a person folded wrong. Long arms. Too many joints. It turned its head toward him. White eyes met his and did not blink.
He stopped breathing.
The thing unfolded along the stone like a wet spider and began to crawl toward him upside down. It made no sound.
The dagger drank his breath and footfalls, but not his heartbeat. He felt it thrash against his ribs. He forced himself to move when every part of him wanted to freeze. Small steps. Weight over the balls of his feet. He kept his shoulders from touching the wall so his clothes wouldn't rasp.
The creature crawled closer, head tilted as if listening for a bell he couldn't hear.
Kellan slid the dagger back into its sheath and felt the world's sounds creep in again. The crawl, the slow lap of water, the tiny grits of mortar under his boots returned. He picked a shard of tile from the ledge by fingertip and let it fall, not down, but sideways—bouncing along the far curve where the ledge widened.
The sound was small. The chamber made it long.
The upside-down thing snapped toward it and froze, body arched, head cocked the other way. Kellan moved while it listened. Three steps. Four. He slid the dagger out again and let his breath go thin.
He reached the widest point of the ledge and had to cross a gap where the stone had broken away. It was not big. If he missed, he would fall without end into water that kept faces for hobbies.
He didn't jump. He lay flat, belly to cold stone, and inched across with his hands on the far lip. His boots swung into nothing and came back with the care of a thief.
On the other side, he stood into a crouch and didn't look down. The thing on the ceiling moved again, searching. It touched the place where the tile had landed and tapped. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound sank with a hollow kindness.
He reached the exit arch and slipped through.
The passage beyond was tighter. The silence of the dagger blurred the edges of his fear into something useable. The smell changed. Less rust, more old smoke and wax. He was close to a place people had once tended.
A stair spiraled up around a column. He climbed, pausing when the blue light strobed. At the top, a small door had been wedged shut with a bronze bar. The bar was etched with those same soft letters he couldn't read. He pressed his ear to the door. Nothing. He lifted the bar and set it down as quiet as the Memory would let him.
The door opened into a circular antechamber. Candlesticks had been nailed to the walls in a ring. They were full of cold wax and drowned wicks. A prayer mat lay half-rotted in the center. The far wall held a narrow opening that looked inward toward the dome's base.
Kellan stepped to the opening and peered in.
The dome's inner skin rose like the belly of a sleeping beast. The crack in it ran like lightning caught and stretched. Light leaked there, not from flame but from pressure. He could hear it now without touching stone—the beat. Slow. Hard. Not a heart. A wound refusing to heal.
A shape moved along the curve—small, hunched, quick. It paused at the crack and lifted something to it. A cup? A bowl? It pressed it to the light and drank.
The smell of salt slammed into him.
He pulled back into the antechamber and crouched behind the prayer mat. The dagger's quiet held. The little shape scuttled past the opening a moment later, humming under its breath a tune too slow for a human throat. It stopped. Sniffed. The head turned toward the room.
Kellan kept still. He looked at nothing. He let his eyes unfocus and counted. One. Two. Three.
The thing sniffed again and moved on.
He waited until the humming faded and then a little longer. His legs trembled from the crouch and the cold. He stood slowly and edged to the opening again.
The crack in the dome spilled light on a narrow catwalk that circled the chamber. He could take it clockwise toward a set of service doors… or counterclockwise to a narrow stair that climbed into shadow above the fracture.
The bell tolled. Close enough to rattle the candlesticks.
The little shape jerked and fled down a grate he hadn't seen before. The grate closed on a thin arm. It yanked free and vanished with a wet hiss.
Kellan swallowed and stepped onto the catwalk.
The dagger's quiet made the nails in the wood stop complaining. Even so, the catwalk wobbled as if remembering better days. He took it slow. The crack breathed salt and blue light over his face. He didn't look long. Eyes on the boards. Hand on the rail.
Halfway around, a ladder rose to a service hatch above the fracture. He touched the first rung. It flaked under his fingers.
The bell sounded again. The beat under the dome missed a stroke and then thudded hard to catch up.
He climbed.
At the hatch, he pressed his ear to the wood. Nothing. He lifted it an inch. A thin knife of cold air cut his cheek. He opened it the rest of the way and eased up into a crawlspace between the dome and an outer shell. The space was barely a body high and full of webs that weren't from spiders.
He slid forward on elbows, dagger held close. The Memory drank the scrape of cloth on wood and left the sound of his breath. He wished it would take that, too.
Ahead, the crawlspace narrowed to a slit that looked down through a vent into a room lit by the dome's wound-light. Rows of kneelers faced an empty altar. At the altar's edge, a thin figure knelt and rocked.
It wasn't a siren. It wasn't a drowned. It wore a robe that might once have been white. It whispered without words and pressed its hands to its chest.
The figure lifted its head. Where a face should have been, there was smooth skin. No features. Only the suggestion of a mouth pressed beneath the surface.
It turned toward the vent and tilted its blankness as if smelling.
Kellan held his breath until his chest ached.
The thing turned away and resumed its prayer.
He slid back from the slit and lay with his cheek to the dusty wood.
Ask her why, the message had said.
He did not know yet if he would find a her at all. But the city had kept enough of itself to haunt him. Bells that rang themselves. Worshippers who poured water. A wound that pretended to be a heart.
He crawled to the hatch again, lowered it, and climbed down into the blue.
The catwalk creaked once, softly, like a voice asking him to be careful.
He was careful.