Impact drove the air out of my lungs. Water slapped me sideways, and the Prism nearly tore free. I rolled, coughing, my palms scraping against stone so slick it felt greased. Kael hit the nearby water with a splash. He hauled himself up onto the ledge, boots squealing against wet stone, his jacket plastered flat to him like soggy paper.
We weren't in the dock anymore.
The place leaned, tilted, as if the whole world had slipped sideways. A cone of walls sloping down into black water, narrowing the deeper it went. Looking up made me dizzy: every ledge seemed to slant toward the same vanishing point, as if we'd been poured into the bottom of a funnel not meant for human things. The air reeked like rusting metal after a storm. My HUD stutter static, then finally blinked something stable:
[Side Mission 22:]
[Chaos Potential: Excellent]
[Observation Rate: 62%] [POINTS: Variable.]
My stomach knotted when the [POINTS] readout throbbed like a lure. Variable. Which meant kill-count. Which meant this wasn't empty.
Kael whistled low, wiping water off his face. "Well. This is new."
"Not new enough," I muttered, steadying the Prism. The water was higher than it had any right to be. It lapped just below my knees, warm and viscous, carrying a sheen glow which bent in the oily water. Each step tried to keep our boots; the floor felt soft underfoot, like soaked leather stretched too thin.
The walls glistened. Beads of condensation rolled down in steady ticks that echoed, magnified until the sound was too big. Like we were moving through the chest cavity of something alive. My skin prickled at the thought.
"Cheer up," Kael said, voice too loud in the silence. "At least it isn't boring."
Ripples startled the surface.
Kael strode ahead anyway, knife out, grin held despite the filth, "Told you. Hunt zone."
I gripped the Prism tighter, HUD glitching with each flicker of its light. My overlay scrolled jagged glyphs across my vision, half-erased updates. Observation Rate climbing. Chaos drain accelerating. My light source running out half. None of it good.
The squeals started behind us.
They came in bursts, sharp and chittering, until a rat the size of a small dog crawled into the glow. Eyes shining like ember-coals, its fur patchy and skin swollen, veins glowing faintly under the hide. It wasn't alone. More scuttled down the side ledges, their tails lashing, teeth too long for their jaws.
Kael pivoted as the first rat lunged out of the dark water, half-swimming, half-scrambling. Its eyes glowed an unholy green, too large in its skull, bulging like fungus-swollen grapes. The thing's fur hung in wet mats, teeth clicking so fast it sounded mechanical.
Kael booted it mid-leap. The rat smacked the wall, squealed, and splashed under.
"Of course," Kael muttered, blade flashing down to pin another through the throat. The squeal rose to a strangled pitch before cutting off. "Well, dinner's sorted."
I swung the Prism. The glass-light burned through its side; the body ruptured in a spray of steaming black fluid. The HUD chimed:
[+5 Chaos Points]
[+3]
[+6]
Pathetic numbers. Barely even covering the drain.
Something slapped onto my boot. I looked down. A lamprey-thing had slithered from the wall — its sucker mouth opening wide, teeth like rows of glass shards. It latched, tugging once, hard enough to leave a perfect round scar of missing leather when I kicked it free. Kael cursed, yanking another off his ankle, knife carving a wet gash through its body. They twitched, writhing in the water until the sludge itself swallowed them down.
Worse were the sludge-things. Little humanoid shapes that rose from the water, faces blank and melting, arms tapering into dripping points. They moved like children learning to walk, jerky, wrong. The first one lunged; I smashed its head flat with my heel, the "skull" bursting into a smear of mud.
The HUD recorded the kills with lazed boredom.
Kael dragged his blade free of a rat's ribs, wiping it on the corpse. "Guess the locals aren't welcoming."
I bent, Prism-threading a shard of light through the rat's carcass. The wire tightened, holding it rigid. A marker Amaya could trace. The Norse head shifted in the sack at my side, heavy as a cinderblock.
That was when the light changed.
A pale glow drifted toward us, not fire but something colder, muffled, as though trapped under water. Lanterns. Silent, gliding across the surface. Boats followed — riveted skiffs patched from iron and rot, their edges slick with black moss. Three figures standing in them wore hoods pulled low, their skin waxy and water-swollen, veins like pale ropes under translucent flesh. Ferrymens, perhaps.
They didn't stir the water.
One raised a finger at the corpses clutched in our hands. Its voice rasped like rust flaking from a gate hinge: "What will you do with those?"
Kael froze halfway through cleaning his blade, squinting at the figures.
They weren't men, not entirely. Cloaked, hooded, each one a silhouette too thin and too tall, their outlines flickering slightly at the edges, like reflections in unsteady glass. Their faces—if they had faces—were half-hidden in the gloom, features slack as if carved into clay and left to dry.
The skiffs bumped the ledge, soundless. The figures didn't step aboard, didn't step off. They simply… leaned. Waiting.
"What will you do with those?" they asked again, their voices scraping in overlapping chords. Their heads angled toward the dripping corpses of rats and lamprey-spawn piled on the ledge at our feet.
Finally shrugged, ever the opportunist. "Trade, I guess. You want 'em?"
I shot him a look, calculated. We didn't know their strength, didn't know their intent. Better to test. I nudged one of the lamprey-things toward the water with the Prism's tip. "Take it."
The nearest Ferryman bent with unbearable slowness, lifting the body like it was sacred. The creature's body hit the black water with a plop. Instead of sinking, it hung there, suspended. The Ferryman dipped a single finger—long, bone-white, segmented like old porcelain—and stirred. The corpse dissolved almost instantly, eaten away by the sludge. The silence afterward stretched, as though the water itself had to give an answer first. Only when the ripples stilled did the Ferryman nod once, satisfied.
The figure pulled its finger back. Watched the water climb its hand, crawling like mercury before settling back into the pool. Reverent. Almost worshipful.
The second Ferryman tilted its hooded head at Kael. Not at his knife, not at his kills, but at the bulge of the card in his jacket pocket. It said nothing, but the weight of its attention was worse than words.
Kael shifted uncomfortably, for once without a quip.
The third Ferryman raised a hand, palm open, waiting. Invitation, not command.
Then, in eerie unison, they tapped the rims of their boats. Invitation.
I stepped in first. I dragged one swollen rat-body and slid it across. It vanished into the figure's palm like the water itself had claimed it, no blood, no mess.
"Good," the Ferrymen rasped together. "You may pass deeper. And trade more… later."
The skiffs rocked softly, the oars still moving in perfect silence. No one had touched them.
I stepped aboard. The skiff slid away the moment my weight settled, no push, no oars breaking the surface. It floated as if on glass, unmoved by the current. The Prism's glow barely touched the black water stretching ahead.
The Ferrymen stood at either end, their long poles dipped into sludge without ripples, as if the water obeyed them alone.
The tunnels deepened. The air grew hotter, pressing against skin like damp cloth. The ceiling dripped constantly, every drop echoing like a ticking clock. My comms crackled; Amaya's voice broke through static, strained.
"I can't map this place. It isn't inside the grid."
"Figures," Kael muttered. Then louder, leaned back on the gunwale, water still dripping from his hair. "So. Where's the way out?'
The Ferryman at the prow answered without looking back. "The way out is not for you."
"So it exists," Kael pushed.
"Seams exist," the voice grated. "But the last door sealed when its maker left."
Before Kael could argue, the water rippled.
One of the Ferrymen hissed through its teeth.
"Do not look long. Do not speak to it."
The first crash was distant — a dull tremor through the tunnel walls. The poles of the Ferrymen shook. Lanterns dimmed.
Kael straightened, hand on his knife. We both listened. The tunnel carried the roar, distant, muffled, like machinery grinding under a thousand gallons of water. Then, screeches. Not human. Sludge-creatures howling as something tore them apart.
Then the creatures came again. Sludge-shapes clinging to the ceiling, dripping down like candles melting too fast. Rats, fused into a squealing, many-eyed mound, surged at the prow, its mass slapping against the boat. Kael roared, slashing down, shoving the thing back into the water. I fired the Prism, shard-light sparking too bright in the narrow tunnel, the shot ricocheting against stone before finding the target.
The Ferrymen said nothing. Only poled faster, their hoods bowed as if ignoring the fight entirely.
The water convulsed. Rhythmic. Grinding. Like gears chewing the world apart.
Then it stepped out.
From the far channel came a shape, vast, dragging itself through with iron clanks and the sound of stone grating. It filled the side-channel as if the tunnel had been built to contain it. Shoulders hunched under corroded plating, chains dragging from its arms into the dark. A melted helm for a skull, sockets black and weeping stagnant water and centuries of filth, and a chain-hook clutched in one hand.
The Guardian. Looks like one to be called so.
It did not see us. It did not need to. Its chain-hook swung wide, catching a sludge-thing mid-lunge, ripping it into a dozen dripping parts. Another snapped out, hooked a sludge-beast, and ripped it apart like it was nothing more than trash.
The Ferrymen drove the skiff down a side-channel, poles cut the sludge like razors, their lanterns trembling.
"Do not look," they hissed again. "It does not hear you. It does not leave."
I risked a glance anyway. Just once. The Guardian moved, but I couldn't tell where it was headed, and that was worse than seeing nothing at all.
When at last the shriek of chains receded and the water stilled, Kael spat into the sludge. "So much for our ride out."
Finally, one Ferryman turned, its face waxen under the glow. "Exit?"
Behind us, chains rattled again. Static hissed. My eyes grew heavier, losing swallowed light in black water.
"It guarded one. Now, its task is to walk. To clean. To wait."