The canal water was a cold, filthy slap, shocking the air from Ravi's lungs. He came up sputtering, the stench of sewage and damp rot clinging to him. For a moment, the world was just the murky water, the looming stone walls of the canal, and the distant, chaotic shouts from the ruined tearoom above.
He was alive. He was unharmed. He was catastrophically exposed.
Lyssara surfaced a few feet away, her expression a mixture of fury and shock. "This way," she commanded, her voice a low, ragged hiss. "Before they think to look down."
She swam with a silent, efficient stroke toward a darkened archway where a sewer drain emptied into the canal. Ravi followed, his movements clumsy, his borrowed cloak a leaden weight dragging him down. The escape wasn't triumphant. It was a filthy, ignominious retreat.
They hauled themselves into the outflow tunnel, the iron bars of the grate slick with algae. The grinding sound of the Nethervault's door sealing them in an hour later was the first moment of real security they'd had. They stood dripping in the green-lit antechamber, the silence a stark contrast to the chaos they'd left behind.
The strategic victory was ash in their mouths.
"You had to touch the building," Lyssara said. It wasn't an accusation. It was a diagnosis. A final, grim tallying of the damage. "The sword was a revelation. The building… that was a confession."
"I panicked," Ravi shot back, his voice raw. He hated the defensive tremor in his own words. "They were about to take the priest. I saw the gargoyle. It was the only thing I could think of."
"You don't think," she corrected him, her sharp gaze pinning him to the spot. "You react. And your reactions break things. Not just swords, Ravi. Stone. Mortar. The foundations of a city that has stood for a thousand years."
She turned and stalked into the central command chamber, leaving a trail of dark, wet footprints on the pristine floor. He followed, a miserable dog in his master's wake.
The scrying table was a testament to his failure. The red sigils of the Warden's Watch were no longer just panicked; they were converging, sealing off the entire canal district. And a new set of sigils had appeared—a dark, briar-thorned gray—moving with a cold, terrifying efficiency. Aurelise's household guard. They weren't fighting each other anymore. They were locking down the city, a pincer movement with a single, clear target. Him.
"They're not just hunting a jinx anymore," Lyssara murmured, her hands gripping the edge of the obsidian table. "They are hunting a confirmed anomalous entity. Look."
She pointed to a handful of new sigils that were activating on the map, ones that hadn't been there before. They glowed with a faint, arcane purple. "Those are the Warden's magisters. Glyph-breakers. Rune-binders. Men who specialize in containment, not combat. They won't try to stab you, Ravi. They'll try to put you in a box you can't touch your way out of."
A box he couldn't touch. The concept sent a shiver of a fear down his spine, a new and terrible vulnerability he hadn't considered. He was a force that unmade contact. What happened if they simply denied him contact altogether?
His gaze drifted from the map to his own hand. The hand that had dissolved steel. The hand that had touched a window frame and shaken a building. He remembered the tremor, the deep, resonant groan of the stone. It wasn't like a punch. It was like he had struck a bell the size of the world, and it was still ringing.
"The building," he said, his voice quiet. "It wasn't just a crack, was it?"
Lyssara's expression was grim. "It's a wonder the whole facade didn't collapse. The energy you released... it wasn't kinetic. It was something else. A stress wave. A de-coherence of physical law. Words don't exist for it because it's not supposed to be possible."
She finally looked away from the map and met his eyes. The calculating strategist was gone, replaced by the scholar's daughter, staring at a truth that terrified her.
"I thought your body was a shield," she whispered. "I was wrong. It's a focal point. All that incoming force… it has to go somewhere. The world itself absorbs it. It buckles. It fractures." Her voice dropped lower. "Every time you save yourself, Ravi, you wound the world."
The truth of it settled on him, a weight heavier than any failure. Every broken sword, every shattered bone, every ruptured stone—it was all a debt being paid by reality itself. The city wasn't just in danger from him. It was in danger because of him.
He sank down onto the floor, his back against the cool pedestal of the table, heedless of his wet, filthy clothes. He wrapped his arms around his knees, the same defensive posture he'd used his whole life. But he wasn't hiding from a punch anymore. He was hiding from himself.
Lyssara watched him for a long moment. The silence stretched, filled only by the low hum of the vault. The tension between them, the anger and the blame, slowly seeped away, replaced by the simple, stark reality of their situation. They were alone. Together. And the entire world was now hunting them.
She walked to one of the storerooms and came back with two rough, dry blankets. She draped one over his shoulders, her fingers brushing his neck for a fleeting, cool moment. Then she sat down a few feet away, wrapping the other blanket around herself.
They didn't speak. There was nothing left to say. The plan was in ruins. The myth was dead. There was only the cold, hard truth of their predicament. He was a walking cataclysm, and she was the only person in the world who knew it. For the first time, it felt less like a partnership of strategist and tool, and more like one of shared, desperate survival. The respect that had been born of his mysterious power was gone, replaced by a fragile, terrifying intimacy born of its revelation.
He didn't know how long they sat there, two damp, shivering fugitives in the heart of an ancient, silent fortress. But eventually, a new sound chimed from the scrying table. It was a clear, soft note, different from the others.
Lyssara got to her feet and looked at the map. Her body went rigid.
"What is it?" Ravi asked, his voice dull. "More guards? Magisters?"
"No," she said, her voice a strained whisper. "Something else. Something new."
He forced himself to his feet and looked. A new sigil had appeared on the map. It wasn't the Warden's aggressive red or Aurelise's thorny gray or the magisters' arcane purple.
It was a single, pure, and chillingly serene point of silver light, located directly over the Grand Market, where the body of Captain Valerius had fallen. It wasn't moving. It was just… watching. Observing.
"That crest," Lyssara breathed, a new and deeper fear in her voice. "The Silver Bell. It can't be."
"Who is it?"
She turned to him, her eyes wide with a dread that eclipsed everything that had come before.
"The Choir of Threnody," she said. "The faith militant. Theologians. Exorcists."
"The Warden arrested one of their priests. They must be angry."
"No," Lyssara whispered, her gaze locked on the unwavering silver sigil. "Kaelith Ardentor wasn't arrested. After the chaos, he simply walked away. And now he's reported a miracle. They're not investigating a crime, Ravi. They're investigating a divine event."
Her voice dropped, the final, devastating words sealing their new reality.
"They're not looking for a man anymore. They are looking for God."