The ground remembered something, but not like stone worn by weather or dust hiding stories in its layers. This was deeper. Not a mark, but a wound. A quiet truth buried in the bones of the city.
Dust hung in the air, unmoving. When Trudge's hum stopped, the silence that followed didn't just settle—it pulled tight. A tension like something bracing to snap.
Lysa felt it in her wrists. Cold. Hollow. That place below her ribs where something once beat steady—it clenched. The spiral bone in her hand pulsed, faint but heavy. Not just Kael's end, but something older, unfinished. A sorrow that hadn't gone quiet, only deeper.
Behind them, the rupture ticked faintly. Not alive. Not dead. A slow sound, like breath dragging through broken lungs. The city's bones, folding inward again. Feeding on what they'd left behind.
No one spoke.
Fennel clutched her coat, jaw tight, eyes down. Rill leaned against a broken spar, one eye wet, the other cold. Ivar stood apart, motionless in the gloom. He wasn't afraid. He wasn't angry. He was calculating.
Then he tilted his head—sharp, birdlike.
"There's more," he said.
The words cut clean through the silence. No rush. Just certainty.
Fennel's voice broke. "More what? Voices?"
Ivar didn't answer. He touched the wall. Fingers flat. Feeling.
A pulse answered. Quiet. Only he could hear it.
"Beneath," he said, almost to himself.
Rill frowned. "The Ribcage."
He nodded.
"Kael came here. Again and again. This is where the lattice thins. Where things get through. Drawn to pain."
Fennel stepped back. "Let's move. Before we end up under it."
They went.
Down into Eelgrave's memory. Where pain stayed buried. Where the city forgot to lie.
The Ribcage wasn't marked on maps. No territory lines. No Warden patrols. Those who knew of it were mostly dead. Or close enough. It wasn't a place—it was something the city hid in its gut.
The air changed the further they went. Thick. Rotten. The walls were bone, shaped not by nature but by hands that didn't care. Pipes ran through them, leaking black fluid. Glyphs blinked in and out, forming shapes that didn't stay long enough to read.
Ivar moved like he'd walked it before. Slow. Focused. Fingertips grazing the walls, listening.
Fennel watched him. "Is he alright?"
"No one's alright down here," Rill said. Her hand hovered over her blade. "This is where the city started eating itself."
Ivar stopped. "The walls," he said, "solve for grief."
Fennel blinked. "What?"
He didn't repeat it.
Lysa held the spiral close. It felt like Kael's voice had been sealed inside, a memory stuck in bone.
The Ribcage pressed in on them. The scent of copper and old fire. Something beneath all that—blood, candle ash, rust.
Rill stumbled.
"My other self sees something," she whispered. "A chapel. On fire. Not mine. Not now. Just something that won't fade."
Lysa looked to Ivar. "How much deeper?"
He stood before a staircase that hadn't been there. The wall behind him had shifted. The bones moved.
"Close," he said.
He touched the wall again. "Kael never found what he came for. This place doesn't give answers. It keeps them."
They stepped into a wide, low chamber. Columns rose around them, twisting up like bent limbs. A tunnel ran forward, but it was closed. The way blocked by bone.
And at the center stood something… wrong.
It wasn't alive. But it wasn't fully dead either.
Its body looked patched together—scrap, wire, smoke. Bones held in place by brass. Limbs moved like a broken puppet. The face was smooth, empty. But in its chest, something burned. A spiral. Dim. Hot.
It didn't speak. But its voice filled their heads.
"You failed him."
"You were his weight."
"You became what they feared."
Fennel backed away. "What is that?"
Ivar stared. "Kael's regret."
"A memory?" Rill asked.
Lysa shook her head. "No. A punishment."
The spiral flared hot in her hand. The figure twitched forward.
Rill raised her blade.
"Don't," Lysa said, stepping between them. "It's not a guardian."
The walls shifted again. Their path sealed.
The voice came again:
"You think I chose this?""You think I wanted to bloom?"
Fennel wept. "This isn't real—"
"It is," Lysa said. "He gave everything. Even when he had nothing left."
The spiral cracked in her hand. Lines spidered across its surface.
She remembered Kael—thirteen, shivering beside her in a ruined chapel. He'd given her his coat. Stayed awake through the cold.
"He never asked for anything," she said. "He just gave."
The figure crumbled. Smoke peeled from its bones. It collapsed inwards, like a prayer folding shut.
The wall opened.
Ivar brushed the bone.
"These bones remember," he said. "They open for kindness."
He looked back at them. "Not rage. Not clarity. Just compassion."
Lysa nodded. "Truth. Faced."
And they walked on.
They walked on, their steps slow but steady, leaving behind the remains of Kael's regret and stepping into whatever came next. The spiral bone in Lysa's palm no longer trembled—it was cool now, solid. It didn't buzz with grief. It carried weight. A promise.
The tunnel ahead didn't grow brighter. No relief waited at its end, no promise of light or peace. But it didn't fight them anymore. The walls didn't close in. Something had shifted. The way was open.
Behind them, the Ribcage hummed—quiet, uneven. Not music, exactly, but something close. The sound of something letting go.
Maybe it wasn't just a prison. Maybe it was a place to shed what you couldn't carry.
Ivar paused a few steps ahead, his hand still on the bone wall.
"To move forward," he said, quiet but certain, "we have to listen. This place remembers everything."
His fingers spread against the wall, feeling the cold, unyielding surface like it held more than stone.
"It remembers his pain. The weight he carried."
He turned, his face unreadable in the low light. "Do we?" he asked. "Do we even know what he gave up for us?"
Before anyone could answer, a metallic clatter broke the silence. A sound like chain links dragging over stone, or a gear skipping its teeth. From a side alcove—one they hadn't seen—a figure emerged.
They moved with a limp, dragging one foot, their body covered in rusted metal and bits of old machines. The air filled with the scent of oil and burned wires.
They were built more than clothed—patches of skin showed between scraps of cloth and steel. One eye was a mess of ticking gears. The other, clouded and dull. They looked like someone who'd forgotten how to die.
Around their neck hung chains, each looped through some broken gear or rusted cog, worn like charms.
They muttered as they walked—low and cracked, barely louder than the grinding in their joints. "The cog-spirits stir... the Spine groans... the Unmaker breathes…"
The figure stopped in front of Ivar. The gear-eye spun and clicked, trying to focus.
"The Rememberer seeks the Forgotten," they rasped. "But some locks should stay closed. Some doors don't open back the right way." Their voice had no warmth—just static and rust. "What you're chasing... might unmake you."
They laughed—a dry, broken sound. Then they turned, shuffling back into the shadows, joints creaking with each step. The alcove swallowed them whole. It was as if it had only existed to let them through.
Rill was already moving. Blade out. Eyes narrowed.
"What in the Silent God's name was that?"
Fennel hugged herself, her arms tight across her chest. "I don't want to see any more of this. I want to go back."
Ivar didn't speak. He watched the alcove, frowning like the figure's words had struck something deeper than fear.
"That wasn't madness," he said, soft. "That was a warning. Broken, yes. But clear enough."
He looked to Lysa. "Some doors really are better left closed. Do we know what's waiting?"
Lysa didn't answer right away. She wasn't sure anyone could.
Still, something about the scavenger stayed with her. Another broken thing, patched together from Eelgrave's remains. Not whole, not sane—but still trying to speak truth.
She tightened her grip on the spiral bone.
"We keep going," she said. Her voice didn't shake this time. "Kael gave everything for this. We don't get to turn back now."
No one argued.
They moved forward, the tunnel stretching out ahead, shadows shifting with every step. The clockwork man faded behind them, but his words didn't.
Each step took them deeper.
Not into safety. But toward something that had been waiting.