The darkness in the catacombs was a living thing. It was absolute, a heavy, velvet blanket that smothered all light and sound. The air was cold and stagnant, thick with the stench of decay and damp stone. My boots crunched softly on a floor littered with gravel and something that felt disturbingly like bone fragments.
I paused after descending the first twenty steps, allowing my eyes to adjust. It was pointless. There was nothing to adjust to. This was a darkness that no human eyes could pierce. But I wasn't entirely human anymore.
I closed my eyes and focused, reaching for the strange, intuitive sense my Aethel blood gave me. It was a subtle shift in perception, not sight, but an awareness. The world resolved itself in my mind not as images, but as a map of vibrations, temperatures, and faint energy signatures. I could feel the cold, inert stone of the walls, the slight, steady drip of water from the ceiling about thirty feet ahead, and the faint, scurrying warmth of rats in the walls.
And I could feel something else.
Further down the main tunnel, perhaps a hundred yards away, was a knot of nervous, twitchy energy. It felt like a frightened rabbit's heartbeat, erratic and fast. That had to be Twitch. But there was another energy signature, too. Sluggish, cold, and corrupt. A ghoul. Twitch wasn't alone.
My hand tightened on the pouch of silver dust. This changed things. A lone, terrified informant was one thing. A terrified informant with a hulking, undead bodyguard was another.
I moved forward, my steps silent. I didn't need light. My new senses guided me through the oppressive dark, my feet instinctively avoiding the larger piles of debris. In my ear, I heard nothing but the faintest hiss of the open comm link. I could only imagine the black screen Rhyian and Joric were staring at. They were blind. I was their eyes.
As I drew closer, I began to hear sounds. A low, constant muttering and the wet, scraping sound of something heavy being dragged across the stone floor.
I flattened myself into a shallow alcove carved into the wall, peering around the edge. Up ahead, the tunnel opened into a small, circular chamber where several passages converged. A single, battery-powered lantern sat on the floor, casting a weak, flickering yellow light.
In the center of the light sat Twitch. He was a small, weaselly man with thin, greasy hair and eyes that darted nervously into the shadows. He was rocking back and forth, whispering to himself. Chained to a thick iron ring in the wall behind him was his "bodyguard." It was a massive ghoul, its skin grey and mottled, its jaw hanging slack. It was listlessly dragging a finger through a puddle of grime on the floor, making the scraping sound I'd heard. It looked more like a half-dead pet than a guard.
"They're all gonna kill me," Twitch was muttering. "Coven's gonna kill me for talkin' to the contact. Sovereign's gonna kill me 'cause the contact's dead. Dead. All dead."
He was spiraling. A direct approach would make him bolt. I needed to control the situation before I even entered it.
I stayed in the shadows of the tunnel. "Twitch," I called out, my voice a low, calm whisper.
He yelped and scrambled backward, his eyes wide with terror, searching the darkness. The ghoul behind him lifted its head, its milky eyes turning toward the sound of my voice.
"Who's there?" Twitch shrieked. "I ain't talkin' to no one! Go away!"
"My name is not important," I said, keeping my voice soft. "I'm here about your meeting. The man who was supposed to meet you... my friend... he sent me." It was a lie, but it was a plausible one.
"Your friend's dead!" he squeaked. "The Ash-Scythes got him! They'll get you, too!"
"They might," I agreed calmly. "But right now, the only thing standing between you and me is that half-starved creature you have on a leash. And I have to tell you, he doesn't look very well."
Twitch glanced back at his ghoul.
"He's strong enough! He'll rip you apart!"
I decided to take a calculated risk. A power play.
"He's starving, Twitch. A ghoul needs a regular supply of vampiric blood to maintain its strength. Yours looks like it hasn't fed in a week. Its motor functions are degrading. In another day, its tissues will begin to liquefy. You're a ghoul-runner. You should know this."
The silence from his end was telling. I had hit a nerve. My knowledge, gleaned from Silas's books, had just established me as someone who understood his world.
"How... how do you know that?" he stammered.
"I know a lot of things," I said, finally stepping out of the tunnel and into the edge of the lantern's light. I kept my hands visible and empty. "I know the Coven is cleaning houses. I know you're caught in the middle. And I know you're holding a piece of information they were willing to kill for."
He stared at me, his beady eyes taking in my appearance. I didn't look like one of the Sovereign's armored enforcers. I didn't look like a Coven fanatic. I looked like a woman. A human woman. He visibly relaxed a fraction. My gamble had paid off. He saw me as less of a threat.
"What do you want?" he asked, his voice still shaky.
"The same thing my friend wanted. The information. What did the Coven want from him? What was the message?"
Twitch licked his dry, cracked lips.
"It wasn't a message. It was a package. I was just the courier. I was supposed to give it to your friend."
"A package? Where is it?"
He nodded toward a grimy, burlap sack tucked behind a pile of rubble.
"There. Take it. It's cursed. I don't want it."
I walked over and cautiously nudged the sack with my boot. It was heavy. I knelt and opened the drawstring. The smell that hit me was awful—stale blood and something else, something metallic and sharp. I reached in and pulled out the contents.
It was a small, ornate wooden box, its surface carved with the same jagged, runic symbols I had seen in Rhyian's command center. And resting on top of it was a single, withered, grey object. A severed human hand, its fingers curled into a claw.
But that wasn't the shocking part. On the third finger of the withered hand was a simple, elegant silver ring, a signet ring engraved with a familiar crest.
A stylized 'V'.
I stared at it, my blood turning to ice. I knew that crest. It was from one of Silas's books. It was the personal signet of the Varen family. It was Silas's ring.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. The kind, gentle archivist. The man who had shown me the prophecy. The one person I thought might be an ally. The traitor.
A sudden, sharp hiss from my earpiece made me jump. It was the first sound I had heard from them. A warning.
"What is it?" Twitch squeaked, seeing the look on my face.
Before I could answer, the ghoul behind him, which had been passive and listless, suddenly threw its head back and let out a piercing, unearthly shriek. Its body convulsed, and the chain holding it to the wall strained, the iron ring groaning in the stone.
"What's wrong with him?" Twitch cried, scrambling away.
I knew instantly. The static in the air changed. It was no longer just Twitch's nervous energy and the ghoul's corrupt signature. A new energy was flooding the tunnels—cold, disciplined, and utterly hostile. It felt like a pack of hunting dogs closing in.
"They're here," I whispered, my eyes darting to the dark tunnels surrounding us. "The Coven."
The trap wasn't for the dead contact. It was for whoever came to meet him… It was for me.