The broken city swallowed them.
Ruins rose on either side, jagged silhouettes and leaning walls, some fused by old fire into glassy black, others crumbling at a touch. The wind howled between empty windows, carrying ash and the faint echo of long-dead voices.
Kairn walked at the front.
Lysa and Sia came behind, each with a hand on the improvised stretcher they'd made from a door and rope, Tam bundled in the middle. Mar walked near Kairn's shoulder, jaw clenched, eyes darting. Fen brought up the rear, head turning constantly, one hand on his hooked blade, the other occasionally steadying a leaning stone that looked ready to fall.
Kairn's new eye painted the world in layers.
Normal sight showed gray and red and black—the ash, the blood comet's light, the stone.
Ash-sight added heat and threads.
He saw pockets of warmth in the rubble—small animals, maybe human shapes, watching from hiding. He saw thicker, colder bands of old magic woven into some walls and streets, like scars in the ground. He saw faint, crawling lines of Court chains in the far distance, searching. None were close yet.
He also saw the infection ebbing in Tam's leg, the heat lines shorter now, not reaching toward the boy's hip.
That helped.
A little.
"How much farther?" Lysa asked, breath just slightly strained. Her ribs still hurt, but she carried her share without complaint.
Fen jerked his chin toward the deeper jumble of stone ahead.
"Big tower cluster's just beyond those arches," he said. "There's a place in there we might be able to use. If the stories are more scared than true."
"What stories?" Mar asked.
"The kind that keep the Choir away," Fen said. "So: the useful kind."
Kairn's ash eye caught a movement on a nearby wall.
He turned his head.
A pale, long-limbed thing clung to the stone, half-hidden in shadow. Its body was thin as a spider's, its head too round, eyes too big and black. It watched them without blinking.
When Kairn's new eye focused on it, it flinched and scuttled back into a crack.
"Friends?" Fen asked, following his gaze.
"Not enemies," Kairn said. "Yet. They don't like being seen."
"Good," Fen said. "We're doing stealth today. Murder is for tomorrow."
Sia swallowed.
"Are there… monsters?" she asked. "Here?"
"Yes," Fen said.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"Honesty," she muttered. "I forgot what that sounded like."
Kairn looked down at her.
Her small heart beat fast.
Her fear burned bright in ash-sight.
He could smell it.
He did not comment.
Most of his fear had burned out for now, replaced by a grim, quiet anger and a bone-deep tiredness.
They went under a shattered archway.
Beyond, the towers loomed fully.
At least a dozen rose in various states of ruin around a central plaza—stone fingers reaching, broken at different heights. The central tower was the tallest, broken off halfway up, its top jagged like teeth, giving it the name Fen had used: Tower of Teeth.
The plaza itself was a ring of cracked stone around a sunken center. In that hollow lay the skeleton of some ancient machine—wheels, chains, a broken disk—half-buried in ash.
Old magic pooled here.
Kairn felt it even without his eye.
With ash-sight, he saw it as a dim, swirling fog at ground level, tinged faint red, thickest near the Tower of Teeth's base.
Fen stopped at the edge of the plaza.
"This is as far as most people go," he said.
"Because?" Lysa asked.
Fen pointed to the nearest tower base, where a wide archway gaped.
In normal sight, it was just dark.
In ash-sight, the darkness was not empty.
Threads of something not-heat, not-cold, coiled there. A slickness in the air, like oil on water.
"Because things live in the tower," Fen said. "Things that don't like light or noise or lies."
"You've been here before," Kairn said.
"Once," Fen said. "With a group. We stayed at the edge." His mouth tightened. "Three went in deeper. One came back."
"What happened to the one?" Lysa asked.
"He didn't talk about it," Fen said. "He just didn't go near shadows anymore and flinched if anyone whispered near his ear."
"Comforting," Lysa muttered.
Tam whimpered faintly.
Mar set down his side of the stretcher with a soft grunt.
"He's hot," he said.
Kairn knelt and put his hand on the boy's forehead.
Tam's skin was warm but not burning.
His heart beat slow, not frantic.
The ash-sight showed only a faint glow at the wound now.
"He's fighting," Kairn said. "He needs time. Food."
"Where do we get that in a place like this?" Sia asked.
Fen pointed with his chin at a cluster of half-intact buildings off to the left.
"Old storehouses," he said. "Or they used to be. Might be rat nests now. But rats mean food."
"Rats mean disease," Lysa said.
"Not if you cook them enough," Fen replied.
Kairn stood.
"We need shelter first," he said. "Somewhere the Choir's chains don't reach easily. Then food."
He looked at the Tower of Teeth.
Its base was a dark arch.
His new eye saw threads of old magic there, thick and twisted, like roots in the stone. The Court's faint chain-lines that brushed this area slid off those roots, diverted.
Drawn away.
He squinted.
"There," he said. "Inside."
Fen grimaced.
"Of course you'd say that," he said.
Lysa followed his gaze.
"You said things live there," she reminded Fen.
"I did," Fen said. "And I stand by it. But he's not wrong about the chains. The towers pull magic. They're old. Older than the Court. Maybe older than the dragons." He sighed. "If we want a place where the King's song is quiet, that's it."
Sia's fingers tightened around her brother's wrapped leg.
"Will the monsters eat us?" she asked.
"Only if they get past me," Kairn said.
Her eyes flicked to his ash eye, then to his burned arm.
She nodded once.
"Okay," she said.
Mar sucked in a breath.
"I'll hit them too," he said quickly. "If they come."
Fen ruffled his hair.
"Good attitude," he said. "Try not to stab your own foot."
Kairn moved toward the tower.
The air grew cooler with each step.
The ash on the ground got thinner, as if something had licked it away.
At the threshold, he stopped.
His new eye flared.
The darkness inside was not just absence.
It had texture.
He saw faint, shifting shapes—like shadows thinking about moving.
He felt pressure, not like the Choir's song, but like being watched from many angles.
"Do you feel that?" Lysa whispered.
"Yes," Kairn said.
Fen swallowed audibly.
"Last chance to say "let's run,"" he said.
Kairn stepped inside.
The tower swallowed sound.
His footfall went from crunch to soft.
The air was thick, not with dust, but with something heavier.
He smelled old stone, old blood, and a faint trace of something metallic, like rusted chains lying in water.
Ash-sight cut through the dark.
He saw a circular chamber—walls curving up and out of sight, cracked and ribbed with old supports. The floor was uneven, chunks of stone fallen from above. In the center, a round depression held a pool of darkness that wasn't water.
Shadows hung from the upper walls in tatters, thicker in some places, thinner in others.
They responded to his presence, pulling back slightly, like animals sniffing.
Lysa, the children, and Fen came in behind him.
They looked blind.
Lysa's eyes were wide, trying to adjust.
Mar and Sia clung to the stretcher.
Tam shivered in his wrap.
"We need light," Lysa whispered.
"No," Fen whispered back. "Light angers them. Last time, we lit a torch and something hissed. And then—" He cut himself off.
Kairn's ash eye picked up motion.
Several tattered shadows stirred near the ceiling, dangling like strips of cloth.
They were not cloth.
They were attached to pale, bony shapes clinging to the stone—like the thing he'd seen outside, but larger. Their mouths were horizontal slits, their eyes dark holes. They shifted slowly, clicking.
They didn't drop.
Yet.
"They don't like songs," Fen whispered. "Or lies. Or bright fire."
Kairn's burned arm ached at that.
"Then we don't sing," he said. "We don't talk more than we have to. We don't use fire unless we must."
Lysa's breath brushed his shoulder.
"Can you see?" she murmured.
"Yes," he said.
"Then lead," she said.
He moved around the central depression.
His ash eye showed it as a cold hole, edged with faint, slow-moving tendrils of darkness.
He did not step into it.
On the far side of the chamber, a smaller arch opened into a side room. The air there was slightly warmer, and he saw no hanging shapes above it.
"There," he said softly. "A room. No things on the ceiling."
"Yet," Fen muttered.
They slipped through.
The side room was rectangular, with a low ceiling and walls lined with what had once been shelves. Now most were broken, but some still held old, crumbling boxes. The floor was mostly clear.
"This will do," Fen said with relief. "At least for now."
"We can't stay long," Kairn said. "But we can rest. Hide. Let Tam sleep and see if his fever breaks."
Lysa nodded.
"We'll take turns," she said. "Two awake, one asleep. Kids between us. No noise."
Mar and Sia set the stretcher down gently.
Tam's breathing was deeper now, not as ragged.
His leg, in Kairn's sight, was cooler.
The boy muttered something in his sleep and turned his face into the cloth.
Kairn's chest eased a fraction.
"Fen," he said. "You know this place better. You and Lysa rest first. I'll watch."
Fen opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"You'll wake us if anything moves?" he asked.
"Yes," Kairn said.
Lysa frowned.
"You need rest too," she said.
"In a bit," he said. "There's still enough blood in me to stand."
He meant it.
His Blood Gauge was not full, but it wasn't scraping empty either. He could afford to watch a while.
Fen and Lysa exchanged a glance.
Reluctantly, they lay down on either side of the children.
Fen used his pack as a pillow.
Lysa curled on her side, hand resting lightly on Tam's shoulder.
"Wake me in a couple of hours," she murmured.
Kairn didn't answer.
He stood near the archway, half in shadow, half in the dim gray of his own vision.
Time passed.
His ash eye watched the tower breathe.
The hanging things in the main chamber shifted occasionally, never dropping, never fully still.
They seemed to be listening.
He heard distant sounds from outside—the sigh of wind through broken streets, the fall of stone, a distant, faint cry that cut off quickly.
No Choir song reached this deep.
The old magic in the foundations absorbed it, turned it aside.
He felt the King's attention skim the area once like a cold wind…and pass on, diverted by older wards.
He exhaled slowly.
This had been a good choice.
It might still kill them.
But not with chains.
After a while, he felt his own focus fraying.
His new eye ached more.
His head throbbed.
The System pinged softly.
[ FATIGUE: MODERATE ]
[ ASH-SIGHT EYE STRAIN: INCREASING – RECOMMENDED REST ]
He grimaced.
Even monsters had limits.
He turned his head slightly.
Lysa slept, breathing slow.
The kids were curled into each other's warmth.
Fen was not asleep.
His eyes were half-open, watching Kairn.
"Go," Fen whispered. "Lie down. I can watch a bit. I know how to be quiet too."
"You need sleep," Kairn said.
"So do you," Fen said. "And you're the one with the eye that leaks smoke when you stare too long."
It did feel like that.
A faint heat trickled from the corner.
Kairn hesitated.
The hanging things outside rustled, then settled.
He nodded once.
"Wake me if anything breathes wrong," he said.
"I will," Fen said.
Kairn lay down near the wall, not far from the others, his back to stone.
He let his ash eye dim, narrowing his focus, not trying to see through walls right now.
Sleep came faster than he expected.
This time, there were no dragon-sky visions.
No mine whips.
Just a deep, black rest.
When he woke, it was not to screaming.
It was to whispering.
He didn't move at once.
His eyes—both of them—opened a crack.
The world was dim.
Fen crouched near the archway, tense.
A shape stood just outside the side-room, half in the main chamber's darkness, half in the faint glow of Kairn's perception.
It was tall and thin, wrapped in ragged cloth.
Its face was in shadow.
Its hands were not.
They were bone-pale and long-fingered, with too many joints.
The fingers traced slow patterns in the air.
The air responded, shadows twisting.
"Interesting," a voice whispered.
Not quite male or female.
Not quite human.
"Leech. Fire. Chain. Children. Rat."
Kairn sat up.
Fen glanced back quickly, then looked forward again.
He didn't reach for his blade.
Kairn tasted old power.
Not like the Court's ordered chains.
This was older, more like the tower itself, like stone that remembered.
He stood slowly.
The children slept still, breathing soft.
Lysa stirred, frowning, but did not wake fully.
"Who are you?" Kairn asked.
The figure's head turned toward him.
His ash eye flared.
He saw no heat in its body, only a dim, steady glow in its chest.
He saw old magic wrapped around it in layers.
He saw no chain lines.
"Many names," the figure whispered. "Most ash by now."
Long fingers tapped its chest.
"Once, ward-keeper," it said. "Once, tower-mind. Now… hungry thing."
"Hungry for what?" Fen asked quietly.
"Not flesh," the thing said. "Not blood. Stories. Change. Cracks in chains."
Its head tilted.
"You bring all three," it said. "You burn a Warden and a Seer in one day. You tear at the King's song. You carry dragon fire in leech veins. Interesting."
Kairn's muscles tensed.
"If you're hungry, find someone else," he said. "We have enough eating at us."
The figure chuckled softly.
"Teeth," it said. "Good."
It drifted a step closer.
Kairn's ash eye saw its more true shape now—faint lines of force where limbs should be, edges blurred, as if it were a sketch half-finished.
It was not fully here.
It was part of the tower.
"Why are you here?" Kairn asked.
"I live here," it said simply. "When people step into my bones, I look. Sometimes I bite. Sometimes I watch. You… smell like broken promises. I like that."
"Broken promises?" Lysa's voice came from behind Kairn.
She had woken without making a sound, sitting up, hand on Tam.
The tower-mind's head turned.
"Little ribs," it said softly. "You have lost much."
She flinched.
"Don't look at them," Kairn said.
"Protective," it murmured. "Good. You want to keep them out of chains. You want to bite the hand that holds the links. That amuses me."
Fen licked his lips.
"If we amuse you, will you let us stay?" he asked. "Just for a while. We won't light fires. We won't sing. We won't scratch your bones."
The figure's fingers traced another pattern.
Shadows shifted like a tide.
"The Choir's song does not reach here easily," it said. "Old wards turned aside. But the King listens wider now. I feel his gaze skim even me. He remembers this place."
"Can he break your wards?" Kairn asked.
"Not yet," it said. "He would need to come himself. He is lazy. He sends teeth instead. That is you, now. New teeth."
Kairn almost laughed.
"His teeth?" he said. "I bite him."
"Teeth can turn," the tower-mind said. "Interesting when they do."
It floated another step in.
Kairn didn't back away.
"What do you want?" he asked again.
"Pieces," it said. "You crack the chain. I catch fragments. I eat them. I grow stronger. I hide you better. We both win. Until one of us dies."
"Wonderful terms," Fen muttered.
Kairn's ash eye saw dark threads trailing from the tower-mind's fingers, reaching toward him.
They smelled like old magic, not the King's chains.
Not binding.
More like… hooks offered.
He didn't reach.
"What pieces?" he asked.
"Blood memories," it said. "When you bite the King's dogs, their songs cut. Fragments fall. I can drink what you don't want. It will not touch you. It will make me thick, harder to see through."
Kairn remembered the flashes he'd seen when he'd drunk Choir blood—the woman crying as her child was taken, the rituals, the glimpse of Veyrath's face.
He hadn't wanted some of those.
"Can you take them?" he asked slowly. "Without taking me?"
"Not all at once," it said. "You are small but bright. If I drink too fast, I crack you. Pieces fall in the wrong order. You break. That is wasteful."
Lysa shivered.
Mar had woken now, sitting up, eyes wide, hugging Sia and Tam close.
"You talk like the priest," Kairn said. "In Hollow Market."
The tower-mind's head cocked.
"Ah," it said. "The broken chain-carver. I felt him once. He cut and bled and screamed and made a small hole in the King's song. Useful. Then he hid under leather and cloth and waited to die. Less useful."
"He helped me," Kairn said.
"And here you are," it said. "Still leashed, but with teeth. He did some good, then."
"What happens if we say no?" Fen asked.
"Then you leave," the tower-mind said simply. "My wards will still tug at the King's song, but less. He will find you sooner. My bones will stay hungry longer."
Kairn considered.
He looked at Lysa, at the children, at Fen.
They were quiet, watching.
He remembered the King's cold awareness, the feeling of being tugged.
He remembered biting the Seer's song.
The shards that had cut his mind.
They were still in him, sharp memories he didn't want.
"What do you want first?" he asked.
The figure smiled.
It was not a human smile.
"Whatever hurts you worst to remember," it said. "Those pieces cut deepest."
Lysa's hand found his sleeve.
"You don't have to," she whispered.
He looked at her.
"Yes, I do," he said softly.
He turned back to the tower-mind.
"Can you take the Warden?" he asked. "The Seer?"
"Some," it said. "Not all. You used them to grow. Some of their song is you now. But the edges, the extra, the bits that make you see their faces when you close your eyes… those, I can chew."
"Do it," he said.
The tower-mind drifted closer until its bone-pale fingers were a breath from his chest.
He felt no touch.
He felt something else.
A pulling.
Not like the King's force.
This was sideways, like a thorn being drawn out of flesh.
Memories stirred.
The Warden's pale eyes.
The crunch of bone under his claws.
The Seer's song in his veins.
The moment he bit the chain.
The taste of their blood.
His missing eye.
His new one.
His ash-sight flared.
He saw the memories as threads of light, tangled around his Brand and the shard and his own nerves.
Thin, darker strands wrapped around them—bits that didn't belong.
Faces he'd never known.
Places he'd never stood.
Orders he'd never given.
The tower-mind's fingers plucked those.
They came free with a jolt.
Kairn gasped.
Pain flared behind his forehead, sharp and brief.
Then faded.
The weight in his head eased.
The faces blurred.
He still remembered the Warden.
The Seer.
Their deaths.
But the extra echoes—the woman crying, the rituals, the sight of Veyrath's throne from a Choir's eyes—dulled, like old dreams.
The tower-mind shivered.
"Good," it whispered. "Sharp. Bitter. Old songs. I like it."
Kairn swayed.
Lysa grabbed his arm.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
He nodded slowly.
"Lighter," he said.
Fen raised a brow.
"You gave part of your head to a talking ruin," he said. "Sure. That's normal."
The tower-mind's presence grew thicker.
Kairn's ash eye saw its outline sharpen a little, its glow brightening.
Beyond it, the old wards in the tower walls pulsed faintly.
Chains in the distance faded a little more.
"I will hide you," it said. "While you rest. While the children heal. While the King snarls at empty air."
"And then?" Kairn asked.
"And then you go back out and break more of his song," it said. "Bring me sharper pieces. Burn deeper. Bite higher."
Kairn smiled, small and crooked.
"That was my plan," he said.
"Good," the tower-mind said. "We are aligned… for now."
It withdrew, its shape thinning, sliding back into the main chamber's shadows.
The hanging things rustled once in acknowledgment and settled.
Silence returned.
Kairn let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd held.
Fen sagged.
"Well," he said. "We have a haunted tower ally. That's new."
Lysa sat back down, hand still on Kairn's arm.
"Are you sure?" she asked quietly.
"No," he said. "But we needed it."
He sat too.
His new eye pulsed in time with his heart.
Ash-sight showed the wards thicker now, like more stone had grown while he watched.
The King's cold void felt one step further.
Not gone.
Never gone.
But pushed.
Mar cleared his throat.
"Are we safe?" he asked.
"For a little while," Kairn said.
Tam stirred, eyes fluttering.
He blinked blearily up at the ceiling.
"It's dark," he whispered.
Sia smiled through dried tears.
"We're in a tower," she said. "With monsters that hate chains more than they hate us."
Tam squinted at Kairn.
"You're scary," he said.
Kairn almost laughed.
"Yes," he said. "Good."
Tam nodded, sleepy.
"Good," he echoed, and slipped back into rest.
Fen lay back, folding his hands behind his head.
"So," he said softly. "We rest. Then we find food. Then we figure out how to poke the Court again without dying."
Lysa looked at Kairn's new eye.
"At least now you can see the chains better," she said.
Kairn turned his head.
Through stone and ash and old magic, he saw faint, dark threads on the horizon—lines of the Court's power, stretching, probing, failing to reach here.
For now.
He closed his normal eye.
Left the ash-sight open.
He liked seeing the chains.
He liked knowing where to cut.
"We'll make them sing a different song," he said quietly. "One day."
No one argued.
Outside, the ash wind rose.
In Gloomspire, the King frowned, feeling a small, wrong silence where a Seer's note had been and where old wards had thickened.
Under the Tower of Teeth, among stone and shadows and sleeping children, Kairn let himself rest a little.
His scars itched.
His new eye burned.
His hunger waited.
His path was set.