The tunnels breathed.
Mireth felt it the moment her boots hit the damp stone—an ancient, living pulse humming through the bones of Stonewatch. The air was cold and metallic, thick with rot and forgotten magic. Water dripped somewhere ahead, slow and deliberate, like a heartbeat counting down.
Cael moved fast despite his limp, torchlight shaking shadows loose from the walls. Symbols carved into the stone flashed past Mireth's vision—old ones, half-erased, nothing like the hunter sigils above.
"These tunnels," she said between breaths, "they're older than the city."
Cael nodded. "Older than the crown. Older than the gods people still pray to."
That made her stumble.
He caught her elbow before she fell. His grip was steady—too steady for someone who claimed to be ordinary.
"Careful," he murmured. "The ground here remembers things."
She pulled free. "Don't touch me."
Cael didn't argue. He just kept moving.
Behind them, metal scraped stone.
Hunters.
Mireth's pulse thundered. The mark on her shoulder burned—not flaring, not awakening, just aching, like a wound that refused to close.
"They're close," she whispered.
"I know," Cael said. "They always are."
They turned sharply into a narrow passage barely wide enough for one person. The walls pressed in, damp and slick. Mireth's breathing grew shallow, memories clawing up her throat—chains, darkness, voices chanting above her.
Not again.
The voice inside her stirred, weak but alert.
You are not bound, it reminded her. You walk freely now.
She wasn't sure that was true.
A scream echoed behind them—short, sudden. Then silence.
Mireth froze.
"That wasn't—" she began.
"—one of us," Cael finished grimly. "Hunters don't scream unless something else finds them first."
Her stomach twisted. "Something else lives down here?"
He hesitated.
"Yes."
They reached a cavern where the tunnel widened into a circular chamber. Broken pillars lay scattered like fallen ribs. At the center stood a stone altar cracked clean in half, its surface blackened as if burned from the inside out.
The moment Mireth stepped into the chamber, her mark pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Hard.
She gasped, dropping to one knee as heat flooded her veins. Images slammed into her mind—fire raining from the sky, voices screaming in languages she didn't know, figures kneeling before a throne made of bone and light.
Cael spun. "Mireth!"
She clenched her fists against the stone. "This place—" Her voice shook. "It's been touched."
Cael's face tightened. "By the Silencing."
The word echoed unnaturally, like the chamber itself recognized it.
"What really happened there?" she demanded. "At Valenreach."
Cael lowered his torch. Shadows climbed the walls.
"The gods were not killed," he said quietly. "They were cut off."
Mireth looked up sharply. "That's impossible."
"So everyone believed," he replied. "But I heard them when I crossed the threshold. Not voices exactly—more like pressure. Like being watched by something that couldn't speak anymore."
The black lines beneath his skin pulsed faintly.
"They're trapped," he continued. "Bound outside the world. And every marked soul is… a thread."
Mireth's blood ran cold.
"Then what am I?" she asked.
Cael met her gaze. "A doorway."
The chamber shuddered.
Dust fell from the ceiling as something massive shifted in the dark beyond the altar.
The voice inside her screamed.
MOVE.
Cael grabbed her hand and yanked her upright as stone cracked behind them. A shape pulled itself from the shadows—tall, twisted, humanoid but wrong. Its skin looked carved rather than grown, runes glowing faintly where eyes should have been.
A Warden.
Ancient. Forgotten.
"Oh no," Cael breathed. "They're waking up."
The creature let out a sound like grinding rock and charged.
Mireth reacted without thinking.
She reached inward—not for strength, but for permission.
The mark blazed.
Fire erupted from her palms, white-hot and silent, slamming into the Warden's chest. The impact hurled it backward into the altar, shattering stone that had stood for centuries.
Mireth staggered, pain lancing through her skull.
"That was—" Cael stared. "You said you were weak."
"I am," she gasped. "That wasn't me."
The Warden began to rise again, cracks spiderwebbing across its form.
Cael swore. "It won't stay down."
Hunters' voices echoed from the tunnel entrance—too close.
Mireth looked between the two threats, heart racing.
"We can't fight both."
Cael glanced at the broken altar, then at her. Something resolved behind his eyes.
"There's another way," he said.
"What way?"
He pressed his palm to the blackened stone.
The runes flared.
"Mireth," he said urgently. "When I say run, don't look back. Don't stop. No matter what you hear."
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
"I'm closing the chamber."
The Warden screamed—not in pain, but fury.
The hunters shouted.
The ground began to collapse.
"No," Mireth said. "I'm not leaving you."
Cael looked at her then—really looked—and for a moment the weight he carried showed through the cracks.
"You're not meant to die in tunnels," he said softly. "You're meant to end something."
The mark burned in protest.
He is wrong, the voice hissed. Or lying.
"Mireth," Cael said sharply. "NOW."
She hesitated for half a heartbeat.
Then the ceiling gave way.
She ran.
Stone and fire swallowed the chamber behind her as she burst into a side tunnel, the roar deafening. Heat washed over her back. She fell hard, rolling into darkness as the world collapsed in on itself.
Silence followed.
Heavy. Absolute.
Mireth lay shaking, lungs burning, tears streaking dirt from her face.
"Cael," she whispered.
No answer.
Only the faint echo of something ancient laughing—far beneath the city, far beneath the world.
The voice inside her went quiet.
That scared her more than anything else.