The bronze-banded doors eased open on his shoulder, and blue light rolled over him like cold breath. Salt hung in the air with the faint smell of old wax.
Kellan stepped inside and stopped. The chamber was round, a low ring of water around a small dais, the cracked dome above pushing light down in slow pulses that pressed against his ribs and let go again. He was shivering without meaning to. The stitches in his shoulder tugged when he breathed, and his calf throbbed with every step he'd taken to get here.
She stood on the dais.
No crown, no mask. Hair wet against her cheeks, gown heavy with water, hands bare. She looked like someone who had stood too long and slept too little.
"Why?" he asked, voice rough. "Why drown them?"
She answered, but the words didn't land right. Syllables slid past each other, as if glass had been set between them. He caught pieces—"…kept… sleep… not mercy… measure…"—and lost the rest. He frowned and took a breath that hurt his ribs.
"I don't understand," he said. "Say it again."
She looked him over, eyes moving from the blood on his shirt to the way he kept weight off his leg. When she spoke the second time, more of it reached him.
"Not mercy," she said. "Measure. It sleeps while I stand." She touched her chest where a pendant might have been. "I am… hinge."
Hinge was clear enough. Keeper, anchor, whatever word fit. He hated all of them.
"You could ring for help," he tried, thinking of tallies and burned palms. "People tried."
"I know," she said, and that came through clean. "I hear the ring. No answer."
He let out a breath and tasted salt. "There has to be another way."
"Always said," she murmured, and the Spell ate the rest so it arrived in broken pieces. He watched her mouth form a sentence he could not have, and anger stirred in him—at the city, at this place, at the fact that even here the answers were behind a pane he couldn't break.
He stepped to the edge of the water and stopped there, close enough to see the cracked light trembling in the shallows. "The dome looks like a wound," he said. "If we move pressure or slow it, maybe—"
Somewhere in the corridor behind him, the drowned choir missed its rhythm for a beat. A watcher at the threshold angled its head, then went still again. He told himself it was the dome's pulse playing tricks, because he didn't have room for anything else.
She watched his face the way a tired medic watches a stranger's chances. Her eyes narrowed a little, as if he smelled wrong.
"You carry a scent," she said. "Daemon." She tilted her head as if searching letters in air. "Which… I cannot know." The word she wanted wouldn't come, and frustration tightened her mouth.
He didn't move. His hands felt colder. He had nothing to say that would make that better, and no idea if the lie would even cross the glass between them.
"This," she said, and her hand swept the room, then the crack above, "is wrong. It feels like a story," Her gaze steadied on him. "Told twice."
His mouth went dry.
"You know what this is," he said.
"I know I have stood here," she replied, "and said the same words until they taste of salt." A thin smile touched her lips and faded. "If you are a knife, be one."
He stared at her. "You want me to kill you."
"I want not to say it again."
The light under the dome slipped out of rhythm and snapped back. Water on the dais shivered. Mortar on the far wall crept and stilled. The watchers in the hall turned their heads together, then became statues again.
The Spell was pressing on the moment, trying to hurry it along. He felt it the way you feel a storm through a door.
He didn't want a test or a quest or a speech. He wanted out. He had been a normal guy two days ago, broke and bone-tired, reading a book on his phone to get through nights that wouldn't let him sleep. Now he was cold and bleeding in a drowned palace, arguing with someone who's just a memory.
"If you keep standing," he said, not quite trusting his voice, "they keep dying slow. Maybe the thing sleeps forever. Maybe it doesn't. If you fall, it wakes now. That's worse for them… and maybe for me.."
She listened without looking away, and for a moment the beat from the dome matched the pace of his breath. The drowned outside quieted as if a hand had passed over them. The watcher nearest the door shifted a half step back, like he had moved the floor.
He didn't notice the pattern. He only felt the room lean and thought it was in his head.
Her voice softened. "You are not here to save," she said. The words came clear, simple. "You want to leave."
"Yes." He didn't dress it up. "I want to live."
"That is an honest reason."
Something loosened in his chest, not comfort so much as relief at not pretending. He had used the word maybe too many times already. He was tired of bargaining with himself.
"So," he said, "what happens if I do it? If I end this?"
She looked at the crack and then down at her hands. "It wakes," she said, and the rest broke apart again, but enough made it through: "rise… quick… no time." She lifted her chin. "Do it, and do not wait."
He thought of the culverts and the choir and the way the city sighed when the bell tolled, and he tried to picture surviving the first minute after she fell. He tried to see the path that led out, and saw only black water and a lot of panic. Fear pulled at him, and with it the light in the chamber dimmed a fraction. The watcher in the door leaned forward as if encouraged.
No.
He pulled himself back to a smaller want. One step. One breath. One door. He could make one choice and then run like hell, and maybe that was enough to change the ending. The light steadied. The drowned murmurs flattened into the old cadence again.
She saw the shift in his face and nodded once, as if something had been decided even if he hadn't said it out loud.
"I will stand," she said. "If you come, I will not move."
He didn't step closer, and he didn't back away. He kept his eyes on hers so he wouldn't have to look at her hands.
"Before I do anything," he said quietly, "tell me one thing I'm allowed to hear."
She thought for a moment, then spoke a single word that crossed the glass clean.
"Why." She tipped her head at the crack, then at him. "Ask it now."
The room twitched harder, as if the Spell had tightened a knot. The light climbed, fell, and climbed again out of time. Water crawled a finger's breadth up the dais and held there. The drowned outside took a half-step and froze mid-motion, like someone had cut the string.
Kellan swallowed. He felt the edge of the moment give under his feet. He wanted to leave more than he wanted anything else, but he also wanted not to hear her say the prayer again, not to watch this place drown for weeks because he was afraid of an hour.
He opened his mouth and the dome hissed, the pulse stuttering in his bones. The distortion made the chamber wobble, and a crack ran through the far wall that hadn't been there a second ago.
He slowy made his way towards her and stopped at the edge of the water.
"Tell me your name," he said before he could talk himself out of it.
Her mouth moved. The sound that reached him was wrong. Letters folded and broke, as if the Spell had pinched the word in its fist. He heard the first shape of it and nothing else.
"Of course," he said, and the bitterness came out before he could hide it. "It won't let me keep it."
She didn't argue. "You do not need it," she said. That made it through. "Only your hand."
His fingers tightened on the dagger. The quiet of the Memory pooled around his wrist. If he stepped in, one clean motion would end it. Then the hard part would start, but at least the choice would be over.
He didn't step in.
Something about her made his chest pull the other way. Not beauty. Not pity. It was the way she stood there without flinching. The way she had looked past him to listen for bells no one would answer. The way she had said hinge and meant it.
He tried to call it survival instinct, like she wanted to live and his head was catching the signal. But she hadn't asked to live. She'd asked him to be a knife.
So why won't my feet move.
The drowned outside had gone quiet again. He could feel them waiting. The watcher at the threshold had taken a half step back, like it had lost the thread. His thoughts tugged toward the door and away from it, and the room leaned with him.
He looked at her hands. They were steady. No jewelry. Nails short. The skin at the base of her thumb was rougher than the rest, a worker's callus in a place that didn't belong on a princess. The detail landed where arguments had bounced off.
She noticed where he was looking and folded her fingers once, then let them rest open again. "You do not want to kill me," she said. It wasn't a reproach. It sounded like a line from a ledger.
"I want to leave," he said. "I want to live."
"Both can be true." She tilted her head toward the crack. "Do not make mercy from fear."
He flinched. The word mercy had been the first thing Mara stopped using. He didn't want to be the reason it came back.
"Why did you stay?" he asked. "If you knew this would be the end of it."
"Because I said yes once." The words came through clear enough to sting. "Then I kept saying it, and the city believed me."
He felt something shift under his ribs. Not pity. Recognition. He'd said yes to smaller things and been trapped for years by less.
A tremor ran through the chamber. The light strobed too fast. The water on the dais climbed the stone and bled back down. The watcher at the door moved forward, then stopped with one foot in the chamber like it had hit an invisible line.
He moved to the very edge of the ring. The water lapped at his toes. It was cold. Under the surface, the cracked light made a vein that moved when he breathed. The dagger's weight felt wrong.
He stepped into the water. It came up to his ankles. Cold climbed his shins. He took another step. The dagger lifted in his hand because there was nothing else left to lift.
The room warped. The crack flared, then dimmed, then flared again. The drowned outside jerked in the hall, heads turning in a wrong, puppet way. The watcher hissed without a mouth. The Spell wanted the choice now and would break the set to get it.
He hesitated again anyway.
Not because he was brave. Because something about her kept catching in his teeth. The way she had looked at the door when he mentioned bells. The callus. The fact that she had called him honest and hadn't smiled when she said it.
Maybe it was his own Desire leaking back at him, making her gravity heavier. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was both.
"Say something I can keep," he said. "Anything."
She seemed to think, then said a short line the Spell allowed through.
"Do not lie to yourself after."
He nodded once. It wasn't permission. It was a weight he could hold.
The chamber twitched hard enough to make the water jump. A crack ran across the floor at the base of the dais and stopped under his feet like a drawn line. The bell tolled somewhere in the stone. The beat in his chest tried to follow and couldn't.
He took another step and raised the blade.
The watcher at the threshold shifted back a pace and lowered its head, as if the floor had moved again. The drowned in the hall made a small sound and stilled. The air changed—thin, expectant.
His hands didn't shake. That felt wrong. He wanted them to. He wanted to be worse at this.
"Thank you," she said, and the Spell let the two words through without breaking them.
He drew in breath through his teeth, and the dagger came down.
The light slammed. The chamber lurched sideways like a ship. He lost the line of the cut and stumbled, hit by the world moving under him. The blade scored fabric and skin but not deep enough. Blue poured across his vision and went white at the edges.
"Fuck—"
He tried again.
The crack above blew light and the dais split along the new seam. Water leapt. The watcher stepped into the room and then recoiled like it had touched fire. The drowned voices rose and died in the same breath.
Kellan caught his balance on the lip of the dais. The floor went soft beneath his heel and then stiffened again as the loop fought to hold its shape.
He brought the dagger up for a third strike.
Her eyes were steady. The quiet wrapped his hand. The beat hammered at his ribs and the ceiling and the water all at once.
He chose.
The blade fell as the room tore.
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{Wake up, Kellan! Your nightmare is over.}
{Prepare for Appraisal...}