The first thing I remembered was the smell. Sweet chemical pungent worse than rot, like malt cooked over a flame until it hardened in your teeth. I woke to it crawling into my lungs, and for a second, I thought I was back topside, wedged in one of the main city's clinics with a drip in my arm.
Then the water rocked. My head cracked against the gunwale, and my eyes opened to lantern light swaying above.
The skiff was still moving. Narrow, wooden, stitched together from planks that didn't belong to the same tree. It creaked with every push of the pole. Beside me, Kael was slumped, his sheathed knife across his arms, mouth half-open like he was daring the sewer to crawl inside.
The Ferrymen stood at the stern. Three of them tonight, tall and crooked, their stitched bodies jerking with every movement. One's arm ended in a child's mannequin hand, porcelain fingers clamped around the pole. The lanterns dangled from hooks in their ribs, glass blackened with soot.
I didn't ask how long I'd been asleep. Didn't feel like the kind of place that forgave weakness. Instead, I sat up, shaking pins and needles out of my leg, and asked, "Where are we?"
None of them answered. Just soft clunks with their limbs, their version of silence. The water under us slapped like a tongue.
We stopped when the tunnel bent low, the ceiling brushing close enough I could touch it with my knuckles. The Ferrymen didn't speak, but they tilted their poles and ran us against the stone bank. Lantern light jittered across wet walls, catching graffiti burned into the brick: runes that looked written in rust.
"Why stop?" Kael muttered, his voice ragged.
The lead Ferryman rasped, "Skiff hungers. Tribute feeds."
It took a moment to click. My stomach sank.
The boards under me weren't just wood. They were alive, or at least, not dead. When I leaned close, I could hear it: a slow gurgle, like breath moving through hollow bones.
The damn boat ate.
Kael's hand brushed the hilt of his blade. "Does it eat anything?"
The Ferryman tilted its waxen face toward him, head jerking like a broken marionette. "Meat. Motion. The runoff demands."
I couldn't tell if they were mocking us or just built that way. Either way, the point was clear. We wouldn't ride any farther unless we fed the boat.
That's how we found the dock.
Not a marketplace in the way a city would keep one. More like the stitches of dock extended from the walkways, platforms lashed together from scaffolds, driftwood, bones. Lanterns swung low, teal-green flames licking glass. Figures clustered: Ferrymen mostly, though other shapes moved between them. Hunters, maybe, or scavengers mended too wrong to be human.
Trade happened quietly. Corpses stacked in heaps, rats and sludge dripping into the water while Ferrymen counted in whispers. Weapons leaned against walls, each with tags written in ash.
Kael slowed. His eyes caught on something resting against a pillar: a scythe. Blackened metal, edge hooked, cruel as a fang. Too big for him, not his style. But I saw the way his hand twitched toward it, as if his knife suddenly wasn't enough.
"You thinking about changing religion?" I asked.
He snorted, but didn't look away. "Just… clean. Sharp enough to cut through situations."
A Ferryman noticed. It shuffled closer, lantern light staining its face waxy pale. "Points," it hissed. "Kills. Feed, and blade feeds you."
Kael tore his gaze away with effort, muttering something low. I didn't push.
That's when I remembered the Matte Card.
It had been sitting in my pouch since Kael handed it, flat and quiet. A square of black so absolute it ate light, like looking into the absence of everything. Supposedly currency. Supposedly.
I pulled it out, held it up. "This any good here?"
The Ferryman's lantern flickered. It leaned close, almost reverent. "Matte. Hungry." Its voice trembled. "Feed it."
Kael raised a brow. "Feed it what?"
The Ferryman's pole tapped the pile of corpses stacked on the dock.
We didn't argue.
I dropped one of the sewer rats onto the card. Nothing happened. Kael didn't wait for me. He moved straight line and no hesitation. His knife flashed, quick and neat, and a rat dropped twitching to the planks.
That's when the Card stirred. Not at the body. At the moment.
A ripple went through the black square, like ink disturbed. The rat spasmed once, its last breath sharp in the air, and then something invisible tore free, sucked down into the card. Not the flesh. Something without transference to chaos points.
The body slumped lifeless, untouched, but the Card burned hot against my fingers. Words etched themselves across the surface, faint scratches glowing dull white before fading.
Kael leaned over, grinning. "Well. Guess it does eat. Just not the way I thought."
We tried again. Lamprey, cut mid-drop. Sludge mimic, split before it could pull itself together. Each time, the corpse stayed where it fell.
The Ferrymen watched without comment. Their wax faces tilted as one, lantern light trembling.
We went back out hunting after that. Rats in packs, lampreys dripping from ceilings, sludge whispering in half-made voices. Work, dirty but simple. Kael handled it like an exercise, his blade flashing until his shoulders glistened with sweat. I burned with the Prism, careful not to overcharge.
Every kill, we tried both. Fed some to the skiff. Fed some to the Matte Card.
The skiff groaned with pleasure, wood pulsing warm beneath our feet.
The Matte Card just grew heavier in my hand. By the third rat, it was almost warm. By the fifth, it pulsed faintly.
Kael joked, "Feels like a tab we're running up."
Talking in the sewers feels unhygienic, let alone joking. So, I save it for the necessities.
We went back out hunting after that, but the dark fought us harder than the mobs.
The Prism was sluggish, its glass veins dim. Down here, without sunlight or clean reflection, it barely held a charge. Every time I tried to fire, all I got was a weak pulse, enough to stun a rat but not enough to burn it. The beam died inches from the barrel, swallowed by the damp.
And the lantern I'd carried since the last layer was fading too. Its wick hissed, flame shrinking to a nervous glow. Each gutter made the tunnel close in tighter.
Kael noticed first. "We're not getting far like this." His knife dripped rat blood, his jaw tight.
He was right. We couldn't wander away from the Ferrymen's dock; their green lamps were the only things that cut the dark wide enough to see. Beyond that, the sewer was just an endless throat waiting to swallow us.
Hence, we worked close. Rats in packs, lampreys dropping in clumps, sludge whispering in broken words. It wasn't clean — not with me running on sparks. I felt half-useless, managing distractions more than kills, while Kael's knife did the heavy lifting.
By the thirtieth rat, the lantern was trembling low, shadows writhing on the walls like they wanted to break free. Kael cut down another lamprey and muttered, "If that light dies, we're screwed."
I didn't argue. I just tightened my grip on the Prism, praying for one clean shot left in it.
The Prism sputtered, glass veins dim. Without sunlight, it couldn't hold a charge, and my lantern's flame was wheezing out too. Every gutter made the tunnels feel closer, like the dark was leaning in to listen.
The Ferrymen saw it.
One of them lifted its hooked pole, tapping the hull of the skiff. "Light," it rasped, the word cracked and wet. A second figure raised a lantern — iron-framed, warped glass glowing with some teal-green fire.
Kael frowned. "What's the cost?"
The answer came like laughter. "Kills. Always kills."
The lantern was heavier than it looked. I nearly dropped it the first time, wrists straining. The metal burned cold, as though it didn't want to be carried by me. But when we took it into the tunnel, the air shifted. The shadows hissed back. The Prism thrummed awake in my palm.
We didn't buy it. Not exactly. The Ferrymen made us promise to return it, their wax-slick fingers counting our kills as if the lantern itself kept score.
Kael swore as he hefted it onto his shoulder, the light bending across the wet stone. "We're carrying half a streetlamp through this pit. If it eats me alive, I'm blaming you."
I ignored him. For once, the Prism shone clean, cutting a rat into smoke before it even screamed.
The lantern's weight bent my wrist the longer I held it. The teal-green light had a thickness to it, not flame but liquid fire, pouring shadows down the tunnel. Kael shifted it onto his shoulder like he was hauling lumber.
"Better not break it," he muttered.
I glanced at the scythe again as we passed the pillar. Still leaning where we'd first seen it, hooked blade dark as a throat. The tag etched in ash had changed, faint letters visible under the lamp's sick glow.
[Hundred Fifty kills. Fresh.]
Kael slowed, shoulders rolling like he wanted to stretch the price off them. "That's not impossible. You realize that?"
"It's also not dinner," I said. "We spend points on a blade, and the skiff starves. Then we walk."
He grinned without humour. "Knife'll do. For now." But his eyes didn't leave the weapon until we stepped past.
The skiff moaned when we loaded another corpse onto its deck. Tribute satisfied, for the moment. Its planks twitched like something dreaming.
I kept one hand on the Matte Card in my pouch. It felt heavier tonight, pulsing faint, as if the feedings had changed it from a vegetative object into something that breathed shallow in the dark. When I brushed its edge, a prickle travelled up my arm like static.
We didn't wander far. The lamp's glow cut maybe thirty feet before the black swallowed it whole. My Prism thrummed in the light, alive again, but I didn't trust the charge to last.
When Kael stripped a rat off his blade, I thumbed the Prism's edge on Norse's slack until its glass veins flickered into comm mode. The beam cut thin, weak, but well enough to ping Amaya.
Static. Then her voice, shredded through the sewer walls: "—map fragment. Careful, Vyn, the System—"
The signal stuttered, image crackling into my lens. A grid, half-complete. Routes twisting like veins from where we have fallen. Blank gaps where the scanner couldn't pierce.
Then silence.
Kael wiped his knife, glanced at me. "She alive?"
"Alive. Worried."
"She's always worried." He kicked a rat's corpse into the skiff, watching the planks twitch. "Maybe she's right this time."
The Ferrymen had been silent all night, their wax faces unreadable, lanterns swaying. But when I asked, "What hunts in these tunnels besides us?" one stirred.
Its ribs creaked. Its head twisted toward me like clay softening under heat. The words rasped like bones scraping.
"Just us. And the guards."
The other Ferrymen hissed sharp, like warning each other not to speak further. Their lanterns dimmed, then flared again.
I didn't ask for more.
Instead, I sat back against the skiff's side, the Prism dim in my lap, Kael sharpening his knife by instinct. The lantern burned cold between us, humming like it had its own hunger.
The Matte Card pulsed once, harder this time. Flashing red points on undiscovered areas.
I slipped it back into my pouch, pulse jumping in my throat.
Red bled across its surface, new points stuttering into being like burns on skin. One blinked steady, then slid, crawling closer to where the skiff drifted. Another flared bright, then vanished. The wood beneath us groaned deep, planks tightening as if something had already fed.
Kael leaned over my shoulder, lips tight. "Feels like somebody just left."
One cluster pulsed brighter in the unknown, like it was waiting for us to notice. Kael frowned at it. "Not on her map."
"No," I said. "But it's close."
The skiff shuddered, wood twitching as if it sensed where the Card pointed. The Ferrymen hissed in unison, lanterns dimming to sullen sparks. One of them rasped, "No feet walked. No blood fed
I pushed the Card toward its waxen face. "Then we'll feed it. Show us."
The Ferryman recoiled, head jerking like a puppet on the wrong strings. The others clattered their poles against the gunwale in protest. But one lingered — the one with the porcelain child's hand. Its lantern swung low, flame guttering as if it were listening.
Kael shot me a look. "You're serious."
"Dead serious." My voice cracked in the damp. "That's where we go next."
The porcelain-handed Ferryman creaked forward, its pole hooking the water with a hiss. The others hissed louder, but it ignored them, turning the skiff toward the dark where no light reached.
Kael exhaled, sharp as a curse. "Hope you're right about this."
I didn't answer. Couldn't. The Card was heavier in my hand now, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, each dot alive in a way I didn't want to understand.
Everything down here ate: wood, light, even the silence. Another dead lamprey was booted off the skiff and dunked into the water.