They returned just after second bell. Late enough for discretion, early enough to avoid suspicion. Ril's warehouse still smelled like oiled wood, old wax, and ink that never quite dried. A quiet fog hung above the floorboards, stirred only by their footsteps.
Ril was already in the back room. No guards this time. No open ledgers. Just a mug of something steaming on the desk and a long, unreadable look, as if she'd already decided what kind of conversation this was going to be.
She didn’t bother standing.
“You’ve got that look, Septimus.” Her voice was even, familiar in its flatness. “The one people wear when they’re about to say something they know I’ll hate, but expect me to say yes to anyway.”
She sipped her drink. “Talk.”
Septimus stepped forward, unhurried. “We found real talent at that foundry,” he said, “Walked him back from the brink. He still needs time. Real help. His potential isn’t smoke and mirrors.”
Ril raised a brow but said nothing.
“He can make steel alloys that defy sense. Hold a full bar, and it feels delicate. Lighter than anything that should be that strong.”
Something clicked behind Ril’s eyes. Not surprise. Calculus. That mercenary flicker of someone reevaluating odds, inventory, and future value all at once.
She set the mug down slowly, fingers drumming once against the rim. “You’re talking about manasteel.”
The words stretched between them.
“Last time someone tried to make anything like that, the Totemic Church burned the whole village down and called it an outbreak.”
Her voice had dropped. She leaned forward now, elbows on the desk. “And you’re saying this one’s alive. Recovering. Not chained or covered in scripture.”
He nodded. She exhaled, slow.
“You want my help keeping him safe? Or you want access? Or…” Her eyes narrowed. “You want to use me to help him disappear. Legally. Until he’s too valuable to erase.”
He didn’t blink. “You get a cut of the future,” Septimus said.
His voice was steady. Not pitched to persuade. His words laid down like the first stone in a foundation. “You protect Rollen’s name and location. No sale. No tracing. You make sure his forge opens clean and quiet when the time comes. In return, you get exclusive access to his first five commissions. Weapons, armor, prototypes. Crafted under our guidance, with whatever ore we pull from the west. You help us get into Ashen Row. Quietly. Documents, tunnel access, structural records. No names. No banners. Just doors that open when we knock. If you want a bigger stake later, you can invest coin. But your silence comes first.”
Ril listened. She took in the risk, the ambition behind the conditions. The clarity of someone who was not bluffing. She leaned back in her chair, her expression unreadable. "That's fair."
No sarcasm, no performative doubt. She took another sip, then set the mug aside entirely. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Five commissions. No meddling. Silence in exchange for a future.” A dry chuckle. “You’ve come a long way, hammer-man. From scarecrow muscle to architect of black market legacies.”
They shook on it.
“I’ll open the doors to Ashen Row,” she said. “Return tomorrow. Same time. I will have what you need.”
“You’ll want a torch,” Ril added, “And gloves. Ashen Row doesn’t like being disturbed.”
“Thanks, Ril,” Septimus said. “Until tomorrow.”
He slept in the next morning. The kind of sleep that only came when you’d fought for it. Septimus didn’t stir until the sun had already climbed past the edge of the slatted windows. The quiet was rare. Earned. Outside, Viremoor bustled with the rhythm of another day, but inside the Brass Nest, there was stillness.
Silas was gone. Again. Not unusual lately. He’d been disappearing for hours at a time. Never offered much explanation. Just a quiet return, always with that distant look in his eye and a little more weight on his shoulders. As if wherever he went, knowledge clung to him like dust.
Lottie found Septimus in the main room, half-dressed, leaning against the window frame with a cup of bitter brew cooling in his hand. She sat beside him without a word. For a while, they just listened to the city. Distant clangs of machinery, muffled chatter, and the low moan of wind against stone.
She asked quietly. “What was that place?”
Septimus didn’t look at her.
Lottie’s voice had softened. “The lantern memory. That place with the plastered walls… seen through the eyes of a child. The voices. You knew it. I saw it in your face.”
He exhaled slowly. Let the silence stretch. “It was called the Copper Kettle,” he said. “A little shop. Right here in Viremoor. The lantern didn’t just reflect something. It reached in. Took it from me.”
She turned to face him, but didn’t interrupt.
“My family ran it. Before… everything.” That last word carried a lifetime of weight. Septimus closed his eyes for a moment, then met hers. “That was just the beginning of it. The first chapter of something much worse.”
He looked down into the dregs of his drink. “I won’t go into all of it. Not yet. It’s still…” He shook his head. “It got worse. Then they covered it up. And I carried it. For too long.”
Lottie’s hand found his, warm and sure. He didn’t pull away.
“But something clicked one day,” he said. “Somewhere between blood and ruin, I gave up taking from people the way they’d taken from me."
His eyes connected with Lottie's. "Then I met this firestarter who has a bad habit of seeing the things people try to bury. And for some reason… she stuck around.”
Lottie didn’t smile. But her eyes did.
The next night, just after second bell, they returned to Ril’s.
“There’s a Church excavation log from a little over a decade ago,” she said. “Buried in the city archives under a structural hazard file. I got you a map, and the real reason they collapsed the vault.”
From beneath the desk, she pulled a sealed satchel. Heavy with documents, forged permits, and a keyring marked with an old Church seal. Now she leaned forward not as a broker, but as a partner.
“I don’t need to run the forge. I just want to be the one they come to when they need what it makes.”
Lottie nudged him in the ribs as they stepped out into the cool night air. “You’re not a bad man for being greedy, Sep.” She grinned. “You’re dangerous for being smart with it.”
He smiled a little. “I don’t know. I think a dangerous man would’ve handled it all himself. Taken the whole hoard.”
Lottie snorted, falling into step beside him. The soft clink of her iron marbles punctuated her steps. “Sure. And a dead man would’ve too. Right before someone else stabbed him in the back and took it anyway.”
Silas fell in behind them, coat drawn tight, eyes forward. “A smart man shares the hoard,” he said. “Then makes sure everyone guarding it owes him their life.”
They left the smoke and noise of Viremoor’s core behind as they turned west, into a district half-swallowed by time and silence. Ashen Row. Once gilded with promise. Now collapsed under history. The neighborhood was broken and buried. Crumbling support beams, sealed-off tunnels, old signs rusted in place that still bore faint Totemic residue.
Warnings etched in Totemic script and the common tongue.
CHURCH WORK ORDER – AUTHORIZED ZONE.
Ril’s forged documents led them to the vault site. A collapsed shaft, walled off beneath a kiln that no longer breathed. They pried the grate open, just wide enough for one body at a time.
Lottie peered down. “Why does it always gotta be a hole?”
Silas answered without looking. “Because no one hides sacred things on rooftops.”
The air below was dry and electric. Like the heat of a forge left untended. This place didn’t feel dead. It felt like it was waiting.
Septimus asked, “Should we take what we can and save it until Rollen’s ready?”
Silas touched the grate. His gloved fingertips dragged across the rusted metal like tuning forks. A low vibration met them. A warning.
“If the ore’s reactive,” he said, “it’ll need to be stored cold. Dry. Shielded. We can collect samples, but carrying too much might awaken something we don’t want following us out.”
He glanced at Septimus. “So yes. We take what we can. Not what we want. And we give it to Rollen when he’s ready. Not before.”
Lottie knelt beside the opening. She flicked a marble into the dark. It didn’t bounce. It vanished. A heartbeat later, the echo returned. Not a sound, but a sensation. A warble. Half chime, half breath. Like something trying to remember how to be alive. She blinked.
“That didn’t fall,” she murmured. “It was recalled.”
Her voice dimmed, not from volume but as if the stone preferred it that way. She stood slowly, rolling out her shoulders as if the air had settled onto her bones. “Let’s take only what we can carry without a nightmare crawling back out behind us. Rollen’s forge’ll need a foundation, not a curse.”
The grate opened with a groan, like something old trying not to scream. The ladder led into darkness thick with stone, iron, and a heatless hum that clung to skin like grief.
Lottie moved to follow, but paused halfway down. Her breath caught. Not blocked, but misaligned. She inhaled, and the air pushed back. Still and heavy, like a shipwreck at the bottom of a dead sea. She coughed once. Wiped at her eyes.
“The air’s wrong,” she mumbled. “Pressure feels off.”
Septimus turned his head, “You alright?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, “I need to keep low.”
But even her fire didn’t flicker. No spark caught. Her hands remained still at her sides. No wind. No heat. No yield.
“This place doesn’t want fire,” she said. “It wants the peace it can’t have.”
Septimus went first. Not out of pride. Not out of bravado. Because someone had to. And it was always him.
The corridor was scorched smooth. Not by flame, but by something with purpose. Silas dropped behind, sketching sigils, mapping resonance, recording what hadn’t yet faded.
Then he hesitated. His hand froze mid-line. His shadow twitched. It didn’t wrap around his form like usual. It split. One tendril slipped toward the far chamber. Another recoiled back toward the surface. As if trying to escape both the light and the memory. His fingers trembled and the charcoal fell from his grasp.
“It’s mimicking us,” he whispered. “Or playing back something I haven’t let myself remember.”
He pressed a hand to his temple. “My shadows... they aren’t behaving. They’re acting like they did before. When I first manifested them.”
Lottie turned to him. “Silas—”
“I’m fine,” he lied. “But I can’t call anything new down here. Not without it echoing something older.”
Septimus moved closer but didn’t reach out. “Stay in the now,” he said. “We don’t owe this place anything. Let it echo. We walk out whole.”
They moved through the dark beneath Ashen Row like wisps returning to the Fade. The corridor deepened. Not in length, but with pressure. Each step heavier than the last.
Lottie’s hair lifted slightly. Static clung to the ends. Silas’s lantern flickered, though no wind stirred the vault. Behind his eyes, Septimus felt the hum.
The walls began to glow before light touched them. Veins of metal webbed across the stone, pulsing faintly. Not with heat, but with resonance. A memory echo trapped in matter. The metal hadn’t been mined. It had grown here.
Silas ran his fingers along a silvered thread, lips barely moving. “This isn’t ore,” he said. “It’s born from resonance, not extraction.” He said nothing more. Just stared, as if reading a letter meant for someone else.
Septimus stepped to the edge and pried free two chunks with careful strength. They came loose easily. They were warm. Too warm. The hum inside them wasn’t sound but raw, unfiltered mana. The moment he touched the first one, the air sharpened.
His fingers clenched, his chest tightened. Not from pain, but from interference. Something in his spark stuttered. Mana shifted inside him, trying to realign. Like trying to fill a vessel that was already past its limit. The vault remembered him too well and remembered him empty. He held the ore tighter and the sensation faded, but not entirely.
Lottie stared at him. "Your aura pulsed when you grabbed it," she said. "Like it gave you something you weren't ready to handle."
He flexed his fingers. The ore still buzzed in his grip. “Didn’t like that,” he muttered.
He tucked both samples into his satchel. The hum followed him. The next chamber unfolded like it had been built from regret. Half-collapsed, its centerpiece was a shattered mechanism. Church design. Stripped of its iconography. No crest, no scripture, no doctrine. Just blackened metal and quiet failure. It hadn’t exploded outward. It had imploded. Like the mana inside had rejected its vessel.
Lottie nudged a plate of casing with her boot. “They were hiding this,” she said. “No symbols. No creed. Just bad ideas and worse engineering.”
Silas crouched beside the wreck. His hand moved fast now. Recording sigils. Sketching failure. Something ticked. A metal rivet slid across the floor.
None of them mentioned it. The final room had no color. Only pressure. Stone and glass fused in the center. Too smooth. Too deliberate to be natural. A pedestal rested in the heart of it, broken, and empty.
Septimus didn’t recognize it. It recognized him. This had once housed a Pulse Core. The core was gone. But the imprint remained. And it hurt to look at.
Silas stood near the edge. “They tried to move it,” he said. “And it fought back.”
Scorch marks arced outward in every direction except toward the pedestal. Near the base, untouched by blast or ash, lay a black coin. Cracked. Familiar. Septimus didn’t reach for it. Lottie did.
She knelt, picked it up carefully, examined the fracture line. The moment her fingers touched it, the echo in the room shifted. Something unseen exhaled. They stood there longer than they meant to, saying nothing, listening.
Then Septimus turned. He guided them out. Step by step. Steady. The vault didn’t resist. It remembered them leaving. And somewhere behind them, a tone. Soft. Like a memory folding closed. Waiting to be opened again.
They emerged into moonlight smudged with sweat and dust. The city had not changed in their absence, but they had.
Lottie exhaled slow, dragging the air deep like it might settle something inside her. “We’re not just playing mercs anymore, Sep,” she said. “We’re digging up history that still has its fangs.”
Silas didn’t speak. He only looked back at the vault, at the weight it left behind. Like he knew it would remember them longer than they’d remember themselves.
Septimus dusted his gloves, voice low. “Let’s make good on Ril’s investment. Tell her the truth. That it nearly broke us. Let her keep the samples until Rollen’s ready to earn his pay.”
Lottie let out a breathy laugh, wiping soot from her coat sleeve.
“‘Nearly broke us’? That place cost me more than I expected. I don't even have a metaphor for how bad it could've gone."
Silas clutched his notes like a fragile heart still beating. “It wanted us to take something,” he said. “But only because it knew we’d leave something behind.”
They didn’t sleep. Not really. They waited out the hours in the Brass Nest, each lost in their own ritual of restlessness. First light came slow, dragging itself across the windows like it had to consider whether to return at all.
The morning sun cut through the city dust, casting gold across the ruin. They arrived unannounced. Not uninvited.
Ril opened the back door before they knocked. She didn’t speak. Merely stepped aside and let them in, closing the door like it sealed something bigger than the threshold behind it. Her office still smelled of ink and gun oil. No ledgers open. No chairs offered. She was expecting something that didn’t belong on paper.
“You lived,” she said flatly.
“Barely,” Lottie answered. “Vault nearly cooked us like a stew.”
Silas didn’t look up from his notes. “The place remembered being worshipped,” he said, “and resented being forgotten.”
Septimus stepped forward. Laid the two ore chunks on the desk. The sound was more than weight. It rang. A soft tone that settled in the spine. Ril stared at them like she could see the shape of something still unmade.
“You hold onto these,” Septimus said. “Keep them cold. Safe. Out of sight. When Rollen opens shop, they’ll be the start of something no one’s ready for.”
Ril’s eye for appraisal was already at work, “Just how dangerous are they?”
Silas didn’t hesitate. “Enough that if someone touches them the wrong way, they might wake up a mana echo that never belonged to them.”
Ril’s eyes narrowed. She reached down and slid open a lead-lined drawer beneath her desk. It wasn’t labeled, but the infused sigil carved into the metal edge didn’t need translation. Whatever lived in that drawer knew how to bite. She locked them away.
“You keep delivering like this,” she said, “And I might start believing in causes again.”
She poured four glasses. Something amber, sharp, unapologetic. A toast. Not to success, not even to the forge ahead. To survival. With purpose. “To the kind of avarice,” Ril said, lifting her glass, “That builds empires. Quietly.”
The days that followed didn’t rush. At the Brass Nest, mornings came quiet. Lottie spent most of hers tending to her gear, walking the perimeter, pretending not to worry about the silence under the floorboards.
Septimus trained his body and mind in the courtyard behind the tavern. Measured movements, focused breath. Discipline in place of stillness.
Silas vanished and returned at odd hours. That was nothing new. What changed was the way he moved. Slower, almost as if his shadow hadn’t quite forgiven him.
Word came in fragments. Rollen was still holding his shift at the Foundry. Keeping his head down, clocking in and out like any other bonded laborer. But beneath that routine, he’d begun side work under Ril’s eye. Quiet shipments. New tools. Old names rewritten on paper that burned too easily. The forge wasn’t open yet. But the fire was already lit.
He sent word back through one of Ril’s runners. Cryptic, but clear. “The ore hums different for each of us. Some hold it, and it sings. Others… it recoils. Might be instinct. Might be memory.”
His first test piece had both shape and function. A thick vambrace, veins traced in steel, channels shallow but deliberate. When worn, it didn’t silence the world. It simply dulled it. As if the sound itself forgot how to reach you.
Septimus didn’t ask for thanks. Rollen didn’t offer it. But between them, there was respect. That was enough.
Ril reported that the Ashen Row vault remained untouched. No inquisitor investigations. No flagged records. No names listed. Ghosts. Just how she liked it.
The Glassworks incident was fading. Official word chalked it up to labor error. Faulty scaffolding. No mention of ritual arrays or whispering conduits. Just one more accident in a city built on ambition. Still, something moved beneath the surface.
Totemic lanterns began to vanish from black market stalls. Not sold. Not scrapped. Taken. Whoever was collecting them wasn’t leaving coin behind. They weren’t the only ones harvesting memories anymore.
One night, near the end of the lull, Silas knocked on Septimus’s door. He didn’t say much. Just asked if they could walk. They moved through the fog-draped streets until the city thinned, and the faint pulse of Viremoor’s Totem rose around them.
A soft purple glow soaked into the stone. Not a blessing or judgment. Just a presence, old as the earth. They stopped at the edge of the Totem's ring. Silas stayed just outside it, where Aberrants were taught not to step.
“I used to think shadow was all I had,” he said. “Safety. Secrecy. Solitude. But lately…” He trailed off, gaze steady. Not seeking approval, just understanding. “You don’t talk much about your past. But I can tell you didn’t walk away clean. Still, here you are. Building. Protecting. Not for gold. Not really.”
Silas nodded to himself before words followed. “You’re the first person I’ve followed willingly.”
The words landed quiet but heavy. Septimus took a breath. “Silas... I want you to know. You can walk away anytime you wish.” His voice didn’t waver. It was a truth, not a plea. “Don’t think I’m saying that to push you off. I just thought you should hear it. Even if it’d gut us... you don’t owe me your allegiance. We’re comrades.”
The words sank in like warmth through old stone. Silas didn’t speak right away. But his posture shifted. Shoulders eased. Breath steadied. Like something that had been clenched inside him finally let go. Septimus turned slightly toward the glow.
“I’ve done my time being a right bastard,” he said, softer now. “Good and proper. I do have regrets. But I can’t live with them. Not like that.”
He looked toward the Core, where the Totem rose unseen behind the buildings. “I don’t know how to name what I’m feeling. But I know I’m truly living now.”
He tapped his side, where his warhammer usually would be. “I don’t know if I’ll leave this world better than I found it. But I want to do right by you. And by other folks just like you.”
He looked back to Silas. “You’re bigger than your shadow, is all I’m saying.”
The Totem hummed low behind them. The city breathed in its pulse. Silas crouched near the chalk-worn edge of the Core ring, dragging his fingers through old ritual lines. “They said if I crossed into the Core, I’d risk... becoming something they couldn’t contain.”
Silas stood, brushing dust from his hands. His eyes didn’t quite meet Septimus’s when he spoke again. “You’re not rebuilding the world. You’re just... making sure the people in it don’t get buried.”
He shifted his weight. Rolled one shoulder like something unsaid had settled there instead. “You’ve done right by me. I’ll try not to waste it.”
Septimus didn’t answer. He just reached out and gave Silas a firm squeeze on the shoulder. Then turned, watching the black spires of Viremoor’s Totem pulse slow and steady. They stood at the edge of something ancient, where the resonance pooled at their boots, and let the silence hold. They didn’t speak again that night.
By morning, the city stirred like it always did. The world kept turning. Another day passed, then another.
And when the next night fell, it was Lottie who waited for Septimus. She was half-drunk on cider and moonlight, a braid undone, a single Starmark drifting in the lazy spiral of air she summoned with her finger. The thin violet-edged Hexbit turned slowly, catching the light.
When Septimus joined her, she didn’t speak right away. She let him settle beside her, quiet and close. The kind of silence only trusted people share.
Then, without warning, she opened up. “Y’know, I always thought if I stayed still too long, I’d start rotting from the inside out.”
She snatched the coin from the air. “But this crew? This weird, scarred, hammer-swingin’, light-bendin’, pebble-slingin’ crew? It’s like a house I didn’t know I wanted to be in.”
She glanced at him. No coy smile, no wink. Just a look stripped of all performance. “You're the reason it’s a house. Not just a tent or a storm shelter. You’re holding us together, even when you think you’re just dragging us forward.”
She leaned a little closer. “I like who you are, Septimus. Even when you don’t.”
Septimus gave her a small side glance, almost shy beneath the weight of it.
“When I first met you, I thought you were a self-righteous idealist... and I know full well now that I was dead wrong.”
His hands curled loosely in his lap. “I don’t know who I’d be if not for you.” His voice softened. “I know I can’t wash away the stains of my past, but... you were the breath of fresh air I didn’t know I needed.”
He rubbed his palm with his thumb, slow and steady. “And... well. I like who you are too, Lottie. Even when you try to hide what you're really feeling behind that mask you built.”
Lottie didn’t laugh. She didn’t dodge. She just blinked, once, like he’d knocked the wind out of her without raising a hand.
Then, slowly, that grin returned. Quieter now. Not reaching for a punchline. “Damn, Sep... you really know how to ruin a perfectly good deflection.”
She leaned back against the rooftop beam, arms draped behind her head. “Truth is… I built that mask because it made people laugh. Made ‘em underestimate me. If I could keep ‘em laughing, they wouldn’t ask why I never stayed anywhere more than a week.”
She looked at him again, a little sideways, like she was letting him see something no one else got. “But I’ve been here with you longer than I’ve been anywhere in years. And not once have I wanted to run.”
Her voice dropped, bare and real. “You’re the breath of fresh air too, y’know. Just... smells like leather oil and poor impulse control.” She nudged his shoulder with hers. Not to push him away, a reminder to say she was still here. “Thanks for seeing me. Even when I forget I’m worth looking at.”
Below them, the streets were quiet. The city exhaled. A subtle warmth bloomed in Septimus’s coat pocket. The token pulsed once. Not loud. Not sudden. Just a slow press of warmth. The sensation akin to hearing your name from very far away. Not a call. A reminder.
Septimus exhaled through his nose. “You didn’t think an elementalist favored by air and fire like you would actually put down roots, huh?”
Lottie chuckled, the sound no louder than a breath, but it warmed the whole rooftop. “Please. I’m one strong breeze away from setting the next tavern on fire and running to the hills.”
She nudged him again, gentler this time. Less tease, more tether. “But… no. I didn’t think I’d stay. Didn’t think I could.”
Her voice thinned to almost nothing. The only thing louder was the wind rolling over the tiles. Then she looked at him again. “I think maybe I needed you to say something before I could even admit I wanted to stay.”
She picked at the hem of her sleeve, suddenly unsure of her own hands. “You don’t have to say more right now. I can see the smoke coming outta your ears already. Just—”
She paused, then offered a crooked smile. All soul and nerve. “Just don’t take too long. I’m fire and air, remember? I burn fast when I feel too much for too long.”
And again, the token pulsed. Soft. Steady. Its pulse like a second heartbeat. Septimus groaned as he pulled it from his pocket. “C’s going to send her own shadows if we don’t show soon.”
Lottie snorted, brushing the ash off her knees as she stood. “Yeah, and if she does, I’m kicking at least one of them off a rooftop. Let’s go before she sends one made of knives and disappointment.”
She hopped down with easy grace, her usual reckless rhythm still intact, but something steadier behind it now. Something rooted.
Silas was already downstairs when they came in, hood down, drink half-finished. He didn’t ask. Just looked at them once, stood up, and followed. “You’ve got that look,” he said. “The kind that means she finally named the next job.”
His eyes found Septimus’s, and for a moment, something passed between them. The kind of look that didn’t ask if you were ready. Only reminding you there was no going back. “If she’s moving now, it means the game’s changed. And she wants us closer to the center.”
The kind of look that didn’t need questions. It made the path ahead feel narrower than before.
The trio arrived with the moon high overhead. The chapel was colder this time. The brazier still burned, but the flame flickered. Uncertain, as though it sensed that what came next didn’t warrant warmth.
C stood at the center of the sanctuary. No hood or veil. Just shadowcut robes and a notebook clutched in gloved hands. She didn’t greet them.
“You’ve proven you can act without orders,” she said. “That you understand the value of silence and precision.”
She stepped forward, eyes settling on Septimus. “Which means I’m going to ask you to do something even the Church won’t touch.”
There was no shift in her tone, no dramatic pause. Only the weight of what came next. “A cell has been breached. Not uncovered. Breached. South of the Paleflow Ridge. Near Stonehollow.”
Her voice was flat, but behind it, something old stirred.
“Something got out. And something else wants back in.”
She handed Septimus a sealed case. The clasp was etched with Totemic script, glyphs dull and scored, like they hadn’t been read in years.
“If we lose that site,” she said, “we lose more than history. We lose control.”
Her gaze moved between the three of them, measured and cold, but not careless. “And you strike me as someone who understands what happens when control slips. You’re not required to accept this. But if you do, know this.”
Her voice lowered by a fraction. “There won’t be backup. There won’t be answers. And if you fail… there won’t be a world left tidy enough to bury what follows.”
Septimus didn’t hesitate. “If it’s that deadly,” he said, “you can pay me upfront. For the job, and for my silence. I have a feeling you’ll know when we’ve finished cleaning up whatever’s waiting.”
C didn’t flinch. She didn’t negotiate. She just watched him. Then, after a long moment, she nodded. From the folds of her coat, she drew a sealed pouch bound in old Church ribbon, stamped with a sigil unfamiliar to any of them. Something older than the Council’s mark.
She tossed it to him without ceremony.
“That’s everything you need to disappear, mislead, or arm yourselves,” she said. “And a map of Stonehollow. Pulled from a ruined ledger house, older than the Church would like to admit. I’ve marked where you’ll need to descend.”
Then she stepped forward, closer now. Her shadow nearly merged with his. “I pay you now,” she said, voice low, “Because I want you angry when you see what they buried. Angry men survive.”
She turned then, robes whispering behind her like pages being turned. “Leave within the next two days. The breach is widening. I’ll know if it closes behind you… or swallows you whole.”
The chapel doors closed behind them. Lottie exhaled slow, arms crossed tight over her ribs like she was holding something in place.
“I dunno, Sep,” she muttered. “But if she paid us before we even saw the mess… it’s probably not something they meant to find.” Her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “It’s something they meant to forget.”
Silas, a step behind them, glanced toward the dark skyline of Viremoor. “If the breach is widening,” he said, voice flat, “it’s not a cell. It’s a ruin.” He shifted his weight, coat brushing stone. “And someone didn’t break in. They broke out.”
He looked toward the road they’d take at dawn. “She didn’t hire us to clean up a disaster. She hired us because the Church doesn’t want to be seen holding the keys.”
Lottie sparked her firestarter, more to settle her hand than light anything. A small flame curled in her palm, flickering low.
“‘Leave in two days,’” she said, mocking C’s clipped tone. “Like she’s our mom packing a lunch for a flesh-hungry secret they never wanted to admit was there.”
She turned to Septimus, her voice steady again. “So what’s the plan, Sep? We prep, gear up, maybe kiss a few people goodbye? Or do we charge in and hope the world doesn’t bite too hard on the way down?”
Septimus let out a short laugh. “The only people I’d want to kiss goodbye are going into the same death trap as me.” He adjusted the pouch at his hip and nodded once. “Let’s leave at dawn.”
Lottie raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching like she wanted to make a joke, but didn’t. Instead, she tapped her boot lightly against his beneath the flickering lanternlight. “Then we’ll just have to make sure we all come back,” she said.
She winked, not to tease, but to promise.
Silas, still holding the old map like it may stare back, looked out across the rooftops of Viremoor one last time for the night. “Leaving at dawn means we might get there before whatever’s inside figures out how to walk.”
He folded the map with care and slid it into his pouch, his voice quieter now. Almost an afterthought. “That’s the best we’re gonna get.”
He glanced toward Septimus, his face unreadable. “Know this,” he said, voice even. “The deeper we go, the harder it is to pull others back out.”