Torik hit the ground harder than expected.
His legs didn't break, but they damn well protested. Pain slammed up his thighs like molten metal had been poured into the joints. He rolled once, then again, finally coming to a rest in a shallow channel of runoff, its stone slick with city filth. His breath caught in his throat. His ribs thrummed. His knees pulsed.
Above him, the city loomed, towering, ironclad, watching. A graveyard of windows and soot-black rooftops. Silent, but not asleep.
He groaned and pressed a palm against the wall to lift himself. His legs held. Barely. One trembled. The other seemed to scream at him every time he shifted his weight. But they held.
He didn't have the luxury of collapse. Not tonight.
Somewhere behind him, the alarm bells were still ringing.
He limped forward into the alley's shadows, keeping to the cracks between buildings. One hand still clutched his dagger. The other dragged against the bricks for balance. Each step sent a spike of fire down his spine, but he kept moving.
The city was a wound tonight, tight and fevered. Guards spread like infection across every street. Torches burned in tight clusters. The red and gold sashes of House Ysara were everywhere, painting light across armor and iron-tipped spears.
He ducked behind a stack of crates as three soldiers passed, boots echoing too loudly off the stone. Their faces were hard, lit by the firelight of their torches. They weren't just searching. They were hunting.
Torik forced himself down a narrow gap between two buildings, sucking in his breath.
He stopped at the edge of a main road, peering past a curtain of laundry strung across an alley's exit. Three more patrols, one with a dog. They paused, sniffing the air.
Torik doubled back, slipping through a storm grate and into a half-flooded corridor beneath the cobbles. The water was ankle-deep and icy, and it soaked straight through his boots. Rats scattered. He limped forward, shivering, the ache in his knees growing deeper, like something trying to twist its way through the bone.
Still, he moved.
The image of the inhuman guard seared itself behind his eyes. The way it had looked at him unblinking. Its fist had gone through a wall like a smith's hammer through wet clay. And the hunger on its face. Not the kind that wanted food.
The kind that wanted him.
He gritted his teeth. He couldn't afford to unravel. Not yet.
East. Mox had said to go east. To the cisterns.
He found a rusted ladder and hauled himself out of the sewers, emerging into a garden long since overtaken by weeds. He could smell mildew. Piss. The scent of low places. Familiar.
He passed by a vendor's collapsed stall and ducked behind it as voices approached. Two guards, laughing as they tossed half-eaten meat pies between them.
"You really think the bastard got out?" one asked.
"If he's smart, he's already in the river."
Torik didn't breathe until they passed.
He kept moving. The worst part of the city was ahead. The wet-end slums where roofs collapsed under their own weight and people vanished for stolen chains.
The cisterns lay beneath the old water channels. Two bolt-holes there. Mox said they'd meet there at nightfall. And it had gotten dark, very dark.
He moved past shuttered doors and broken glass. Through alleys filled with sleeping bodies. Once, he stumbled and nearly cried out. The pain almost toppled him, but he bit down and swallowed the sound.
At last, he reached the marker: a rusted disc of iron embedded in a cracked stone wall. Two painted lines, one red, one black. The code. He pried the hatch open and climbed down into the dark.
The space beneath was wide and damp. Moss clung to everything. The walls. The ceiling. The rusted pipes that dripped water in slow, arrhythmic beats. A single torch crackled in a bracket.
No one was there.
Torik slumped down against the far wall. His body shook. His knees had gone to jelly. His hands were slick with dried blood. He counted the seconds. The breaths.
He waited.
And waited.
Still, no one came.
His heart slowed, but his thoughts did not. Panic didn't hit like a wave. It crept in, quiet and sure.
What if Mox wasn't coming?
What if he never was?
Torik stood up. Sat back down. Pressed both hands to his face. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream.
This was why he didn't trust people. Ever.
Mox had played him. Had taken the crown and run. Just like everyone else. It didn't matter how many jokes they'd shared. How many close calls they'd scraped through.
He should've known better.
And yet…
He pounded the floor with his fist. Once. Twice. A third time. Blood bloomed where his knuckles split, but he didn't stop. The pain was grounding. The pain made sense.
"I knew it," he hissed, voice shaking. "I knew it."
His breath fogged the air.
And then, unbidden, the memory came.
Ten years old. Cold. Hungry. The purse in his hands was heavier than he'd expected. The man beside him, Carlan, that was his name, had tousled Torik's hair and smiled like they were family.
Said he'd split it. Said they'd done the job together.
By dusk, Carlan had taken it all and told the contact that Torik had run the moment things got hard.
That night, Torik had slept in an alley, bruised and empty, stomach clawing at itself. That night, the world had taught him a truth.
People take.
Always.
Even the ones who smile.
Especially the ones who smile.
He clenched his jaw. Mox was a thief. So was he. That was the game. You don't get angry when a knife cuts you. It's the knife's nature.
But…
Why did it feel like something had been hollowed out of him?
Why did it ache worse than his legs?
The fire crackled low in the torch bracket. The room was still.
And somehow… somehow, a sliver of hope still whispered in the back of his skull.
Maybe he'd been caught.
Maybe he was on his way.
Maybe…
Torik shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone.
He hated that whisper most of all. Hope. The world wasn't about hope, it was about what was actually happening and what wasn't.