The black sand swirled around my ankles like liquid shadow, responding to the horror clawing through my chest with malevolent sentience. Each grain seemed to pulse with my racing heartbeat, darkening from golden motes to obsidian fragments that cut at my boots. Father's accusations rang in my ears—each word a hammer blow against whatever remained of my shattered world, echoing through the estate's corridors with the force of industrial machinery grinding bone. Mother's mutilated face burned behind my eyelids like a brand seared into my soul—that impossible violence that mirrored Oliver's death with surgical precision, as though some twisted puppeteer had orchestrated both tragedies with meticulous care.
"I loved her," I whispered, but the words vanished beneath Father's continued roars of grief and rage that shook the very foundations of our ancestral home. His voice cracked like breaking steel, raw with the kind of anguish that transforms men into beasts. The sound haunted my every thought with so much pain that I feared my own heart might shatter from bearing witness to his destruction. "But… I loved her!"
"Rhylorin!" Professor Deyric's voice cut through the chaos with commanding authority that brooked no argument. His presence filled the shadowed alcove where we'd taken refuge, robes billowing with an energy that made the air itself seem to crackle. "We leave. Now."
"I didn't kill her," I gasped, desperate for someone—anyone—to believe me. The words tore from my throat like prayers to deaf gods, each syllable weighted with the crushing certainty that no amount of protestation would wash the blood from my name. "Professor, I swear by the gods themselves, I didn't—"
"I know." His piercing blue eyes swept over me with clinical assessment, taking in the tremor in my hands, the sand that danced around my feet like living smoke, the golden dust that clung to my eyelashes even as it darkened to obsidian glass. Those eyes had seen centuries of magic and madness, and they settled on the black sand pooling at my feet with the grim recognition of one who understood the weight of supernatural accusation. "But they'll never believe that. The Mortal Instruments have been feeding this city poison for weeks—pamphlets, speeches, mock trials in the streets—and your mother's death is exactly the match they needed to light their pyre."
Father's anguished howls echoed from the estate's garden, punctuated by the sound of splintering trees as his grief turned destructive in his desperate search for us. Ancient oaks that had stood for generations crashed to earth with thunderous impacts that shook the ground beneath our feet. We'd taken shelter in a refuse-strewn alley near the old canal that wound closest to the factory district, where the stench of industrial waste mingled with the copper tang of blood that seemed to follow me now like a curse. The irony wasn't lost on me—the heir to Kuznetsov Industries hiding among the very filth his family's empire had created. I wanted to return so badly, to mourn with Father, to hold him as his world collapsed, but feared my mentor was right—getting away from here was the only way either of us would see another dawn.
"They will see you hanged if you remain," Deyric continued, his voice carrying the weight of absolute certainty. There was no comfort in his tone, no gentle cushioning of harsh reality. This was the voice of a man who had witnessed executions, who knew the precise mechanics of mob justice and political convenience.
Deyric's expression hardened with grim certainty, his weathered features settling into lines carved by decades of navigating the treacherous currents of magical politics. "By morning, the whole city will be demanding a public execution. The Mortal Instruments have been waiting for this moment—they'll have their speeches prepared, their pamphlets printed, their crowds assembled in Brass Square before the sun fully rises."
"What do we do—" I attempted to ask, but he cut me off with a gesture that made the air shimmer with barely contained power.
"Leave Braxmond," Deyric said with a smile that held no warmth, only the bitter satisfaction of a chess master recognizing an inevitable checkmate. "Because if we are caught, then death awaits us both. Your mother's death is just the catalyst needed for the House of Lords to side with the Mortal Instruments once and for all. They've been waiting for an excuse to purge the city of supernatural influence, and you've just handed them their martyr's cause."
The reality struck me like a physical blow, driving the breath from my lungs with the force of revelation. Mother hadn't died because of some random tragedy or cosmic inevitability—some cruel twist of fate that claimed the innocent. She'd been murdered with calculated precision to frame me, to give the Mortal Instruments their excuse for whatever systematic purge they'd been planning in their secret meetings and shadowed councils. That golem, with its brass fangs and mechanical precision, had been sent by that sinister figure I'd glimpsed at the airship ceremony—the one whose very presence had made my skin crawl with premonition of disaster.
"Come." Deyric's hand closed around my wrist with surprising strength, fingers that felt more like iron than flesh. The touch sent a shock of elemental energy through my arm—not painful, but alien, reminding me that my mentor was something far beyond mortal ken. "We go through the sewers. That path shall lead us to relative safety—given our current circumstances and the urgency of our flight."
"The tunnels," I whispered, the words carrying the weight of finality. I finally understood that whatever life I'd known as Rhylorin Kuznetsov—heir to industrial empire, Academy student, dutiful son—had died with Mother in that blood-soaked chamber. The boy who had worried about inheritance and airship ceremonies and proper etiquette had perished in the screams that still echoed through my memory.
Deyric led me through the servant's corridors with practiced efficiency, past empty quarters where loyal staff had served my family for generations. Cook's kitchen stood abandoned, still warm from the evening meal that would never be finished. The chambermaid's cleaning supplies lay scattered across the floor where she'd dropped them in her haste to flee. Their absence felt like another death—rats abandoning a sinking ship, leaving only the echo of lives that had once filled these halls with purpose and warmth.
"Where will we go?" I asked as we descended toward the tunnel system that honeycombed beneath the city like the burrows of some vast, sleeping creature. My voice sounded strange in the enclosed space, hollow and unfamiliar. "They will have already sealed every escape route from the city, Professor. The Runners will be watching the gates, the docks, even the old mining roads."
"Mount Ceru." His answer came without hesitation, as though he'd been planning this moment long before Mother's murder had forced our hand. There was something in his tone—anticipation, perhaps, or the satisfaction of a plan finally set in motion. "The Mystics maintain sanctuaries in the volcanic peaks—places where this evil brewing in Braxmond cannot reach, where the old laws still hold sway."
The name stirred something deep in my memory, fragments of ancient stories that seemed to whisper from the corners of my mind like half-remembered dreams. Perhaps they were memories of past lives, echoes of souls who had walked these paths before—the mountain had featured in my visions, wreathed in smoke and flame, calling to something primal in my nature. "The mountain of flames?"
"The Shepherd of Flame dwells there, yes..." Deyric pushed open a concealed panel behind a stack of moldering crates that rested in the vast tunnel system, revealing a narrow passage that breathed cool, damp air tinged with the scent of deep earth and forgotten places. The opening yawned before us like a mouth, its edges worn smooth by centuries of secret passage. "Your abilities require proper guidance, and until we can unmask the puppet master who's really causing shadows to grow in this city—a sanctuary is required."
Above us, the shrill cacophony of bells and whistles screamed across the twilight city, their metallic voices cutting through the smoky air like the brass fangs from my nightmare visions. The hunt was beginning in earnest—I could feel it in my bones as the golden dust around my eyes darkened with black glass fragments that reflected my growing fear. My heart pounded with terror, sending tremors through my hands as the passage ahead yawned like a great maw. Its crumbling brick walls and rusting iron fixtures were too reminiscent of the brass pipes that had gleamed like predatory teeth in my vision of Oliver's death.
As we plunged into the tunnel's depths, darkness swallowed us whole with the hungry embrace of something that had been waiting. Our footsteps echoed against weeping stone walls, each sound multiplying into phantom pursuers that seemed to follow just beyond the reach of sight. The air hung thick with rust and something older—the exhalation of sleeping giants beneath the earth, the breath of mechanisms that had not stirred since the Calamity but might yet wake at the wrong word or gesture.
As we descended beneath Braxmond's industrial heart, the earth pressed inward with crushing weight, as though the foundation stones themselves sought to embrace us in their mineral tomb. Behind us, the sounds of pursuit grew muffled—angry voices fading from shouted commands to distant murmurs to blessed silence. But that silence carried its own menace, the quiet of predators who had learned patience in their hunting.
Complete darkness reigned, broken only by the faint luminescence from the pocket watch pressed against my chest—a gift from Mother that now seemed to pulse with her dying heartbeat. Its gentle glow painted strange geometries on the tunnel walls, casting shadows that danced with malevolent life, reaching toward us with grasping fingers before retreating into the depths like creatures that feared the light.
"How far do these passages extend?" I whispered, the oppressive darkness making normal speech feel like sacrilege. My voice seemed to wake things in the walls—skitterings and scrapings that might have been rats, or might have been something far worse.
"Miles upon miles," Deyric's voice carried the weight of hard-won experience, the tone of a man who had navigated these forgotten arteries before. "Built during the first age after the Calamity, when the surface world still bled and burned. Most have been forgotten for decades—abandoned when surface roads became safer than these haunted depths, when the city above grew prosperous enough to forget the necessity of hidden ways."
Water dripped somewhere ahead in the darkness, each drop striking stone like notes in a funeral dirge that echoed through chambers we couldn't see. The air tasted of rust and blood spilled in darkness, of promises broken in shadow and oaths sworn to things that should not be named. With each breath, I felt the accumulated grief of all who had walked these passages before us—refugees, criminals, lovers fleeing disapproving families, revolutionaries carrying messages that could start wars or end kingdoms.
"Will I ever see him again? My father?" The question escaped before I could stop it, carrying all the desperate hope of a child who still believed in happy endings despite the evidence of his own eyes.
Deyric's pause stretched too long, filled with the weight of experience and the bitter wisdom of one who had watched empires rise and fall. "Suffering changes men, Rhylorin. Sometimes beyond recognition. Sometimes beyond redemption. Your father was a hard man before this tragedy—what he might become in his grief..." The sentence hung unfinished, heavy with implications I wasn't ready to face.
The formal name felt foreign now, like clothing sewn for a boy who had died in that garden beside Mother's mutilated corpse. Rhylorin Kuznetsov—heir to industrial fortune, Academy student, dutiful son who worried about proper etiquette and family expectations. That boy had perished in screams as I awoke to find my mother carved in half like a grotesque sculpture, her blood painting the walls of our sanctuary in patterns that spoke of ritualistic precision.
"I don't think it's wise to call myself that anymore," I said, stopping in the tunnel's embrace as tears welled in my eyes unbidden. My chest felt crushed beneath the weight of trauma, as though Mother's lifeless body still pressed against my ribs with accusatory weight. "I'm not Rhylorin anymore... that boy died with her."
"Most likely best to travel incognito for the time being," Deyric reassured me, turning to study my face in the watch's pale glow. His blue eyes were crackling faintly with elemental energy, tiny sparks that danced like fireflies in the depths of ancient pools. "Pick a name that feels right for this new existence, my boy. Names have power—choose wisely."
I didn't answer immediately, and he placed his hand on my shoulder with the gentle pressure of understanding. The gesture reached out across the chasm of my isolation, a bridge of human contact when I felt like I might drown in solitude and grief. Professor Deyric offered no platitudes, made no attempt to rationalize what had happened or promise that everything would be well again. Some tragedies were too vast for words, too profound for comfort. We resumed our journey in silence that felt sacred, a communion of shared understanding that transcended speech.
Eventually we emerged into the forgotten undercity, where broken steam pipes hissed among the ruins of abandoned workshops like serpents guarding treasure. Machinery lay scattered like the bones of metal giants—brass fittings tarnished black with age, gears frozen in rust, pistons that would never drive again. This was where Braxmond's industrial dreams came to die, where the city's ambitions rotted in perpetual twilight. Above us, distant voices still called my name with desperate urgency, but they belonged to another world entirely—another life that had ended in blood and revelation.
"This will be our path to freedom," Deyric announced, moving with renewed urgency as though he could sense our pursuers drawing closer despite the maze of tunnels between us. "Come... our window for escape is closing with each passing moment."
We climbed through gaps in rusted factory walls, emerging into Braxmond's outskirts where the industrial glow gradually gave way to open fields that stretched toward distant mountains. Night air washed over us like benediction, clean and sweet after our hours underground, though the taste of smoke still tainted every breath—a reminder that we could never truly escape the city's reach. Behind us, Braxmond burned with angry light, windows glowing like the eyes of some furious beast awakened from slumber. Torches moved through the streets like fireflies, searching parties that would tear the city apart stone by stone in their hunt for the heir they believed had murdered his own mother.
The Mortal Instruments would spare no effort, no expense, no violence in their quest for what they saw as justice. But they would find only shadows and sand—the ephemeral remains of a boy who had been marked as cursed with supernatural reason, who had become the scapegoat for fears and hatreds that had been brewing in the city's heart for generations.
"Professor," I said, looking back one last time at the city of brass and smoke that had been my entire world until this night of transformation. The lights seemed to pulse with malevolent life, as though the buildings themselves had developed a hunger for my blood. "I'd like to be called Nott from now on. Just... Nott will be fine."
"Intriguing choice, my boy," Professor Deyric said, and I caught a glimmer of mischief in his voice despite our dire circumstances. "A fine selection for a new beginning. I feared you might choose something graver and melodramatic—in which case I would have had to strangle you myself here and now, if only to preserve what remains of my dignity as your mentor."