The veins led me to it.
They grew thicker as I followed them, crawling up the cavern walls like luminous arteries until they merged at the span ahead—a bridge of black stone suspended over a pit so deep it seemed to drink the light.
The Hollow Bridge was wide enough for four carts to pass side by side, but no carts moved here. Instead, stalls clung to its edges, their owners lit by guttering braziers. The air was thick with smoke, spiced meat, and the metallic tang of coins changing hands.
People.
Some wore masks—beast-faced, bone-lipped, or veiled in strips of stitched leather. Others kept their faces bare, though their eyes darted too quickly, their hands never straying far from blades.
No one looked surprised to see me. That was worse than if they had.
The Nameless God whispered. Every one of them is dangerous.
A man with a vulture mask squatted by a brazier, turning something that still had feathers. A woman with a scaled hood poured black liquid into tiny bone cups. Across from them, a group of masked children played with a carved wooden idol, their laughter brittle and hollow.
I stepped onto the bridge. The stone was warm beneath my boots, as if something below was breathing heat upward.
"You're early."
The voice came from a figure leaning against the bridge's railing. It was the hooded stranger from before—bone fragments still rattling at their movements.
"You said there were people here who'd talk," I said.
"There are. But they won't talk to you unless you pay the toll."
I glanced at the stalls. "Coin?"
They smiled faintly. "Information. Names. Secrets. They feed on them like the roots feed on the veins."
A sudden stillness fell over the bridge. Conversations dulled. Somewhere, a knife tapped rhythmically against wood.
The hooded stranger's gaze shifted past me. "And here comes someone who will be very interested in you."
From the far side of the bridge, a figure approached—tall, draped in a robe of black thread shot through with strands of glowing green. Their mask was neither beast nor bone but smooth and featureless, save for a single vertical slit that pulsed faintly with light.
The crowd shifted to make way.
The stranger murmured under their breath, "That's a Speaker. They hear the city itself. If they think you're worth keeping alive… Maybe you'll see tomorrow."
The Speaker stopped two paces from me. The slit in their mask flared brighter, and when they spoke, their voice was neither male nor female—but something that felt like stone grinding against stone.
"You carry the mark of the hollow-teeth," they said. "And something older still rides in your shadow."
The Nameless God's voice curled in my mind. They know me.
The speaker tilted their head, almost curious. "If you wish to walk our streets without being eaten, you will do something for us."
"What?" I asked.
A faint, almost amused sound came from behind the mask. "Kill what the city fears most."
The Nameless God chuckled. This will be fun.