The ladder descended into a throat of brick and shadow. Leona's lantern made a trembling sun in her hands, its flame bending with every breath of underground air. The scent down here was thick with damp metal — the perfume of forgotten machines.
Nia's boots splashed softly as she led the way. "They built the town on the promise of purity," she said, voice echoing against stone. "And then used the River to wash their hands."
Leona followed, the ledger pressed to her chest like a beating heart. The tunnel opened into a low chamber where the walls gleamed faintly green with algae. Iron pipes lined the ceiling, each humming like an old hymn.
On the far wall stood a door rimmed in soot, its handle shaped into the pattern of three ripples and a crescent. Leona froze. Her mother's mark.
"She signed her designs that way," Nia said. "Every blueprint she drew carried it."
Leona traced the pattern. "So this was hers?"
"This was hers," Nia confirmed. "Before they took it and made it their altar."
The door opened reluctantly. Inside was a wide room filled with shelves of tin boxes and brittle ledgers wrapped in oilcloth. Some were labeled Flood Relief, others Founders' Trust.
But below the neat facades lay ashes — literal ashes — sprinkled across the floor like dark snow.
Nia knelt, brushing her fingers through them. "They burned the real records the day after the flood," she said. "But your mother made copies. She hid them here, beneath what the town called ruin."
Leona picked up one of the tin boxes and opened it. Inside were blueprints drawn in her mother's meticulous hand — cross-sections of the River's channeling system, detailed maps of pipes, sluices, and hidden valves.
At the bottom of the page, a line written in red pencil:
Blueprint for Redemption Project — conceal beneath ashes.
Leona's throat tightened. "She knew they'd come for her work."
"She knew they'd come for you," Nia said. "And she made sure the water would remember even when men forgot."
The ash shifted under their feet as if exhaling. Nia spread the drawings across a table, each corner weighted with a tin lid. Together they revealed an impossible design — the entire town built around a circular grid, its center marked by the Vale River itself.
"She turned the town into a compass," Leona whispered. "Every road, every drain, every waterline points back to this place."
"And buried in the middle," Nia added, "is the proof of what they did — the true blueprint. The one she wrote with fire."
They uncovered a final box, smaller than the rest, sealed with wax and soot. Inside lay a book, half-charred. The Daughter's Testament.
Leona opened it. The first page was her mother's voice in ink:
If you find this, my daughter, know that the River lies only to those who betray her. Beneath the ashes is the design that will damn the righteous and free the forgotten. Follow it. The water will open when the truth is ready.
Leona's vision blurred. "She knew. All these years she knew."
Nia placed a hand on her shoulder. "Your mother built two cities — one above the water for men, one below it for memory."
Then came the cough from above — Ellison's warning. One cough. Two. Too late.
Boots scraped against the floorboards. Voices filtered through the hatch — Mayor Harrow, calm and deliberate, accompanied by two councilmen.
"The Reverend's faith has always been inconvenient," Harrow's voice echoed. "Let's see what he was hiding."
The hatch slammed. Locks slid into place.
Leona and Nia exchanged a look. "We're sealed in," Leona said.
"Then we find the third way," Nia replied.
They gathered the blueprints, wrapped the Testament in oilcloth, and waded into the narrow side passage. The water rose to their waists, then to their ribs. Somewhere ahead, the tunnel widened, glowing faintly — algae, luminous and breathing.
Leona brushed a wall. Symbols gleamed beneath her touch — flames, ripples, crescents — repeating in sequence. The last one pulsed faintly red.
She pressed it.
The wall shifted, stones sliding like vertebrae. A current surged past them, pulling silt and light into motion.
A hidden passage opened — narrower, but dry. They crawled through and emerged into a round basin capped by a grated skylight. Above, the faint noise of traffic — the world unaware of what had just been reborn beneath it.
Nia climbed first, forcing the grate aside. Night air flooded in, cold and metallic. They emerged behind the mill tavern, the moon fractured on the wet cobblestones.
From the square came the echo of sirens. The pump house had given up its ghost — the second lie undone.
And there, standing by the alley mouth, was Mara. Her copper hair caught the moonlight, her locket blazing faintly like an ember carried from a different fire.
She spoke as though repeating a prophecy long memorized.
"The River lied twice so you would listen once."
Leona stepped forward, soaked, breathless. "And now?"
Mara smiled — small, knowing. "Now it's your turn to tell the truth."
Leona looked down at the ledger in her arms, the Testament against her heart. "Then we start where my mother stopped."
Nia's voice was steady. "And finish what the ashes couldn't hide."
Together, they turned toward the clinic, where lamps still burned like watchful eyes. Behind them, the Vale River's current changed pitch — no longer whispering, but speaking.
It had lied twice.
Now it was ready to confess.