"Move!"
Arthur pushed a confused dweller aside and stepped into the darkness beneath the Sky Sliver.
"What's all the fuss about, Isaac?" He hissed over his shoulder.
"Just keep walking."
He froze when Kael's remains came into view.
"What is that?"
His voice came out slightly smaller than intended.
"I'm not sure. I was out here with Emlyn when something came down on her."
Arthur's eyes widened. He kicked the tangling tendrils aside and crouched closer, and that was when he recognised the hair. A cold shiver moved down his spine. He glanced back at Isaac.
Indifferent. Completely indifferent.
"Bloody hell."
He murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
Forty years ago, when the first depth had been assigned to him as his territory, he had also been given a mote. A defence against the one that held influence over everything in his surroundings. At first he hadn't been able to comprehend how something like that could exist. He had felt powerful reaching rank three, genuinely powerful, but every time he woke up and watched these mortals moving through their days with no awareness of what was being done to them, a feeling he couldn't name kept returning. Something close to terror. If the Royal Noble families held a mote capable of influencing hundreds of square kilometres, was there any real limit to what they could do?
He had never found a satisfying answer to that question. He had simply learned to live with it pressing against the back of his mind.
And now, looking at Isaac standing over what remained of his wife with the expression of a man reading a notice board, the feeling was stronger than it had ever been. He almost wanted to kill Isaac. Not out of cruelty. Out of something that felt uncomfortably like mercy. Whatever this was, whatever Isaac was experiencing without knowing he was experiencing it, death felt like the more dignified option.
Gaining some confidence, he pulled the blade free with a wet slick of crimson, the steel dragging against the lips of the wound.
'A normal blade? Is this a mortal? No. It can't be. Those tendrils have to be the work of a mote.'
His gaze moved upward. More than three kilometres to the surface from here. He himself, rank three, wouldn't survive that fall. And on top of that, the influence of the mote covering the depth reached all the way to the lowest layer of the sewers. Whatever this person was, it had to have affected them somehow.
'Should I just bury him somewhere?'
It wouldn't be the first time someone had fallen down here. Crime happened throughout every layer of the sewers, and with crime came accidents. That was partly why they had bricked over the paths to the third layer, to prevent anyone stumbling into the mote's influence by mistake. But people were greedy. The lowest layer offered privacy and secrecy that the others couldn't, and of course people went looking for it regardless.
"Isaac, bring these two to the mass grave."
Arthur said it absently, moving some snow white hair aside.
Then he froze.
A crest. A noble crest.
He pulled his hand back and took several trembling steps away, his breathing coming in uneven bursts.
This wasn't some lowlife criminal. This was someone who actually mattered to people with the power to ask questions.
"No. No. No."
In a sense the noble was fully accountable for where he had gone. That was what Arthur told himself. But underneath that, he knew. It was his responsibility to ensure no one without authority entered this space. This wasn't some small private operation funded by a single Luminaire. The entire depth had been constructed to keep mortals as slaves, maintained by resources he couldn't begin to calculate, powered by a mote of a scale he tried not to think about too directly. The people behind it had reasons for keeping it secret that he had never been allowed to understand.
Just as he was about to start cursing properly, something moved in his peripheral vision.
An arm, lying several steps away, had begun pulling itself toward the body. It reached, meter by meter , and then snapped back into place.
"Is he healing?" Arthur stared. "Who is this?"
For an hour he paced in anxious circles. More than twenty people stood around him and not one had the capacity to ask if he was alright or offer anything resembling help. Even Isaac, someone he considered close to a friend, the man whose wife lay somewhere beneath the mass, stood watching with the same blank expression as everyone else. He sometimes wished there was someone else down here who knew what he knew, someone he could think aloud with. But he was the most informed person in the depths by design. It was both a privilege and a particular kind of loneliness.
When the three hour mark passed the body finally twitched.
Arthur let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. He hadn't dared touch the body the entire time, afraid of disrupting whatever healing was at work.
—
Everything felt like a distant dream. Voices somewhere. Something he assumed was light. Someone kicking him. A warmth beneath him, the kind of warmth you only get from holding someone close. All of it entered his mind without any of it processing. Every sensation he thought he felt was a guess based on broken logic.
'Where am I?'
Kael's first coherent thought.
His hand shot forward, fingers digging into the dirt. Then his eyes opened.
He pushed himself up.
Beneath him a young woman lay, eyes wide and empty of everything.
He looked at her for a moment, then collapsed onto her again.
'Ah.'
He felt it immediately. His Thought reserves were barely above a thousand. The fall must have caused damage on a scale that forced the Primordial eye to burn through everything he had just to keep his absolute vitals functioning. Lungs. Heart. The parts of his brain that couldn't be allowed to fail. And once those were stabilised his Thoughts had run dry entirely, leaving the eye with nothing to work with. So it had waited, drawing on his natural Thought production one trickle at a time, and Kael had lain in a mess for hours, until finally there was enough to continue.
This time he managed to push himself up with the help of an arm clutching his.
"I've got you."
A deep voice, close.
Kael looked up.
A middle aged man with brown hair and a full beard he clearly gave too little attention to. An ugly scar ran down through one eye, making him stand out in a crowd.
"Where am I?"
Kael rasped.
Arthur's grip faltered. He looked at him with wide eyes.
"The first Depth."
"I see."
Kael responded without fully understanding. His mind was still in disarray.
"You fell."
"I know."
Arthur took a full step back. He should be under the mote's influence by now. So why did he remember where he had come from?
"Do you feel dizzy?"
Kael moved his fingers through his hair and looked around.
"No. It's getting better."
How was he unaffected? The question spun around Arthur's head without landing anywhere useful. This man had to have some defence against it, but the idea was almost unbelievable. Only a chosen few were ever given the counter mote. He forced himself toward the only explanation that made sense. He was a noble. That had to be it.
Kael looked down.
The military cape was little more than a torn rag. His shirt sleeve was completely severed at the shoulder. A clean tear marked where the blade had passed through.
Kael reached out his hand and Arthur returned it to him.
"The first Depth, you said?"
Arthur shook himself back to the present before responding.
"Yes. And don't push it. You're not supposed to be here. We need to get you out."
"Please, I insist. Your secret is safe with me."
"Ask anything more and I'll need to kill you. Noble or not."
Kael raised his chin slightly.
Was that a threat?
It was.
By now Arthur had clearly assessed him as rank one. Forty years surrounded by people who couldn't think for themselves had apparently done something to his manners.
'If only I had Syleena's motes.'
Kael sighed inwardly.
"Fine. Show me the way out and I'll be on my way."
Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose.
"It's not that simple. Everyone permitted to be here is expected to be able to fly, and to have explicit authorisation to enter the third layer at minimum, let alone this place."
"I can climb."
"You don't understand. You being here at all is enough to get us both killed." Arthur exhaled. "What were you even doing in the third layer?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
"There's a way out that I don't believe even the Royal Noble families know about. Take that one."
Kael tilted his head slightly. He really wanted him gone.
"Of course. Is it far? How large is this place exactly?"
Arthur clenched his teeth.
On one hand that information was strictly forbidden to anyone without authorisation. On the other, he had begun to hate this place. Hate the Royal Noble families and everything they had built down here. And if he was being honest with himself, which he rarely allowed, he was lonely. Not just surrounded by people who couldn't think. Genuinely, quietly lonely for a conversation that went somewhere.
"If you had what it took, you could theoretically travel beneath all five continents using this system."
Something shifted in Arthur's expression as he said it. The closest thing to satisfaction he had felt in years.
Kael almost lost his footing.
'How haven't I read about it anywhere?'
"Are you serious?"
Arthur nodded.
"This entire network is under strict Royal Noble surveillance, which makes your presence here genuinely baffling. The fact that you made it this far without being detected is either extraordinary luck or something I don't have an explanation for yet." He crossed his arms, and despite how wrong it was, he found himself enjoying this more than he wanted to admit. "The same mote is also governing everywhere it can reach, possibly several, no one outside their circle knows for certain. From what I've been able to work out it's likely mind pathway. Anyone who gets close to finding the first Depth is supposed to either turn back or surrender entirely to the mote's influence, their mind going blank until they stop moving and starve to death."
He paused.
"It has other applications too, of course. What you see around you is one of them."
He glanced toward the nearest mortal.
Kael followed his gaze, to a mortal gazing at the sky sliver in ignorant bliss.
"You said first Depth. Are there others? Deeper layers?"
Arthur hesitated.
"I'm not sure."
"Why isn't this space used better? Feels like a waste, only mining minerals here."
Kael picked up a grey rock and turned it over in his hand.
Arthur scratched his forehead. Who was this noble? How did he openly criticise the Royal Noble families like this without a second thought?
"There are reasons." He started carefully. "What we're standing on is comparable to a desert on the surface. Bare, stripped down, an absolute minority of what this place actually is. A tenth at best. The rest is filled with underground vegetation and..." His eyes moved to the darkness beyond them. "Ancient beasts and Dreadborne that have spent generations adapting to these conditions, completely overrunning it."
Something shifted in Kael's expression.
Of the three thousand ingredients the soul-bound mote recipe required, many had been entirely unfamiliar to him. Things he could tell from the name were related to things he knew, but had never encountered. Could it be that the Depths contained ingredients the surface world had long since written off as extinct or simply beyond reach?
"I imagine it wouldn't be a problem for the Royal Noble families to clear them out if they really wanted to."
He tossed the stone aside.
Arthur laughed the way a teacher laughs at a student who has confidently said something completely wrong.
"We're advised not to explore without being rank five at minimum. The only reason I know there's another way out is because of my motes. A tiger wolf down here is what a mouse is on the surface."
It was difficult to take seriously, given that tiger wolves on the surface could reach six meters from nose to tail.
"Wouldn't walking into the depths be suicide then?"
Arthur shrugged.
"Possibly. But if you try to climb out the way you came I'll kill you myself. I'm being generous here." He glanced at Kael's arm. "Besides, whatever healing mote you have, it's impressive."
Something close to greed flickered in his eyes as he said it.
"Tell me the way out then."
Arthur gestured for him to follow.
"Fair warning. It could take weeks, depending on the Luminaire."