Rain fell over the city like a whispered warning. Thin sheets of it slanted across the crooked rooftops and hissed against the alley cobbles. By the time Corwin and Hester reached the broken stair behind Hollow Market, their cloaks were soaked and the map Verin had left was damp along the creases.
Ashra and Liran were already waiting beneath the rusted overhang. Ashra glanced up, her eyes hard. "You sure about this contact?"
"As sure as Magra Vale allows anyone to be," Hester muttered, brushing rain from her face. "She's... particular."
"She's a witch," Liran said. "A real one."
"She's a historian," Hester corrected. "Just one who lives in a cemetery and speaks to bones."
They climbed.
The staircase wound like a spine between narrow brick walls. At the top, an old iron gate stood slightly ajar, groaning as Corwin pushed it open. Beyond it lay a half-collapsed mausoleum, its doors hanging crooked, the stone blackened from time and weather.
Inside, candles flickered without wind. And at the far end of the corridor stood a woman wrapped in dark green shawls, her hands folded atop a crooked cane carved with runes that shimmered faintly in the low light.
"Magra Vale," Hester said. "We seek your wisdom."
"You seek the dead," the woman replied, voice dry as parchment. "Come. But tread carefully. The dead remember more than they should."
She led them into a crypt beneath the mausoleum. Shelves of skulls lined the walls. Ancient books bound in skin and brass were stacked in piles like fallen towers. The air reeked of herbs, dust, and something metallic.
"Verin Endren," Magra said at length, her eyes settling on Corwin. "That name is fire. You wear it poorly."
Corwin bowed his head. "He left something behind. We're trying to finish it."
"Fools finish what wise men abandon."
But she listened. She let them speak. And after long moments of silence, she turned and reached into a hollow in the stone.
From it she withdrew a sealed scroll tube. "Verin came to me once. Long ago. He feared the Circuit would be his ruin. I told him all Circuits lead back to the beginning. To the First Alchemist."
She handed the scroll to Corwin. "There are three more. Names he never trusted to paper. But you will need them."
Liran frowned. "Who are they?"
"Ghosts," she said. "Scattered pieces of a broken guild. Seek them and be wary. The Carrion Order is not the only shadow hunting you."
Magra Vale spoke one last warning before they left:
"The Circuit is not a key. It is a compass. And not all compasses point true."
They left the mausoleum as the rain ceased.
And somewhere in the city, unseen, a thread pulled taut in the great loom of fate.
The Carrion Order felt the shift. And began to move.