—Anchor XVII: Free the stolen hour.
—Requirement: Take the false tongue from the tower.
—Condition: No song. No door. Only breath.
The north tower stood with its mouth open to night. A narrow stair hid behind the choir loft—a slit of stone for men who were paid to be quiet. Mira found the seam by feel and pushed; dust lifted, then settled as if deciding not to argue.
They went in single file. No words. Hands on cold. Steps counted like pen strokes.
Four, hold, six.
The stair wound left, then left again. The tower's old bones moaned once, a settling sound. Far below, the procession's last chords faded. The false bell's hum lived in the stone—perfect, thin, obedient to a ledger.
Riven went first after Mira's signal, shoulders turned sideways where the spiral tightened. Selene took the rear, blades asleep, eyes open. Damien climbed in the middle and let the hum ride the skin of his teeth. He bent it with breath until it slid past his ears and didn't sit in his head.
Halfway up, iron bars crossed the stair—a gate meant to keep honest men honest. Mira palmed the latch. It refused. She tipped a copper sliver under the pin. The pin sighed. The bar lifted a quarter inch and stopped. Old metal sulked.
Riven shifted forward, set both hands to the gate, and gave it a slow breath's worth of pressure. Not force. Weight. The bar rose as if embarrassed to have made a fuss. They slid through.
Higher. The air cooled. Rungs of a maintenance ladder replaced the last turn of steps, bolted into stone damp with old rain. The hum sharpened. They climbed into it.
A trapdoor waited, swollen with weather. Mira mouthed three and tapped the wood, counting to Selene's thumb. On the third knock, Selene pressed her palm under the hinge and lifted. The door gave a little, then a little more. Cold air pushed their faces. They were in the throat.
The bell hung in its frame like a held breath. Below its lip, a rune plate gleamed blue-white: a wafer of etched lines banded to the clapper's neck with new straps. It whispered obedience into bronze. Wires ran from the plate to a small box set in the timber—battery, relay, a thin coiled arrogance.
The false tone gathered there. It ticked without sound.
No song. No door. Only breath.
Damien slid onto the timber and reached for the clapper with careful hands. The metal was cold enough to bite. The bell's weight slept above him, a mountain on a hinge. If it fell an inch, it would sing. The city would obey.
Riven eased in beside him, braced knee and back against the frame. He set one palm to the clapper to take weight and nodded once. On you.
Mira flattened herself along the beam by the relay box. The screws were new, teeth still proud. She took out a tool wire as thin as hair and set its hook to the first screw. One, two turns. The screw did not clatter. It accepted a better idea.
Selene lay on her belly with her cheek to wood, eyes level with the rune plate. Three studs. A braided lead. She leaned in and tasted the air a breath from the etching. Ozone and neatness.
Damien matched the false hum. He drew it into his chest without letting it settle, then pushed it past and out. Four, hold, six. The hum in the plate wavered a hair, too polite to decide.
He wrapped his fingers around the strap banding plate to clapper and felt the tiny teeth that had bitten into old bronze. He could cut. He could tear. Either would sing.
Riven tightened his grip. The muscle in his forearm trembled. He didn't change his face.
Mira turned another screw. The relay box shifted a fraction. She caught it with the web of her hand and kept it from tapping timber. Sweat ran into her collarbone and stayed there, well-behaved.
Selene slipped a slender pick under the braid and lifted one copper strand. The rune flared, cautious, then settled. She did not pull. She waited for it to want to let go.
The false tone gathered itself for another fall.
Damien put his mouth against cold metal and breathed the tower's measure at it, the one he had paid that morning. The clapper thawed under his skin a degree. The plate's light thinned. The hum leaned into his breath as if the habit wanted to remember how to be a bell instead of a number.
The whole tower shifted half a thumb on its foundations. Wind found the mouth and pressed. The bell moved. The hinge groaned.
Riven took the weight and made a space where gravity could think about something else. His teeth showed, not as a grin but as proof that bodies are honest.
Mira loosened the last screw and trapped the relay box under her palm. It writhed like a captured insect. She crushed it against the beam until its neatness cracked. A wire spat. The plate's light blinked once, offended.
Selene lifted the braid with her pick and snapped a single hair. The rune flared, then dimmed to a sulk.
Damien pinched the strap's teeth with thumb and blade and rolled them out of the bronze, one notch at a time, biting the inside of his cheek when the leather creaked. Breath in. Hold. Out. He made his pulse slow until it measured like a metronome that had decided to be kind.
Footsteps sounded below. Metal on stone. Wardens taking the service stair, choosing restraint, rehearsing it for the microphone they believed in.
Mira's eyes cut sideways. Two. Then four.
Selene's fingers found the second stud and eased it back with a patience knives rarely ask for.
The plate loosened against the clapper's throat. It clung out of habit. Damien turned his wrist and let his breath flow through the metal a shade deeper, pennies and rain. He thought of the bell he had asked to stand with him at dawn. He asked this one to remember that, once, its work had been to carry a morning, not a man's will.
The plate slipped.
Riven took the bell's twitch and swallowed it. Something in his shoulder made a sound that would be a bruise by dawn. He didn't complain. He was a wall.
Damien did not remove the plate.
He waited.
The false tone fell, expecting its cage. It found breath instead. It tried to take hold of his ribs, to write itself in neat lines. He let it in and let it out in the same measure. Four. Hold. Six. The hum lost its nerve.
He slid the plate free with two fingers and cradled it to keep it from tapping the timber. Selene unhooked the last lead. Mira fed the relay box a wire that made it forget who it was. The bell stayed asleep.
A voice came up the stair below, careful, public. "Inspection," a warden said to the empty air, for the record. Selene rolled onto her side, held her breath, and watched the square through a stress gap in the stones. Asher stood in the procession's shadow, still as a picture that had paid for its frame.
Riven exhaled one measured breath and shifted the clapper back to center, a fraction at a time. The bell accepted position like an old man easing into a chair he deserved.
Damien set the plate on the beam and pinned it with his palm. The carved lines were clean, the etch precise. A sigil at the base—small, smug—married the Spear's grid to bronze. He pressed his thumb over it until the cold bit away the feeling in his skin.
Mira lifted the relay's cover and blew the last of its light out with a whisper the tower didn't care to hear. Selene braided the cut lead back on itself so it would not accidentally remember.
The warden reached the last turn of stair and paused out of habit—men stop to look important on thresholds. He listened to a silence that sounded like a bell behaving. He let the habit win. He turned back down to write that the hum was proper.
Damien slid the false tongue into his coat. The tower breathed, real now. Not perfect. Honest.
They began to retreat.
The trapdoor swung back into its swollen frame. The ladder took their weight in order. The gate accepted being what it was. The spiral swallowed them, stone by stone.
Halfway down, the thin writing woke at the edge of his sight.
—Anchor XVII accepted.
—Skill unlocked: Bell Hand.
—Effect: While touching a bell, your breath steadies its strike; forged tones lose purchase.
—Debt: The tower will take an hour. Pay in body or in voice before dawn.
They reached the quiet under the choir loft. The seam closed behind them. Night pressed its thumb harder on the square.
Outside, the procession realized it had been hearing a forgery and stood there, waiting for the sound a city deserves. The cathedral bell tested its throat, found itself, and rang once—wrong first, as bells do when embarrassed—then again, itself.
The crowd let out a breath they hadn't asked permission to hold. The name moved through them without being owned.
In the alley, Riven shook his arm out and hid the wince that tried to be a noise. Selene caught it and did not say anything. Mira opened her palm. The ruined relay lay there like a dead beetle with expensive shoes.
"The hour," Selene said quietly.
Riven looked toward Nocturne though stone was between them. "It wants paying."
"I'll pay it," Damien said.
Riven shook his head. "You hold routes. The city listens to you because you walk. It needs that more than it needs your back under a bell."
Mira tucked the relay into a pocket where knives don't go. "We can split it," she mouthed. Half and half.
Selene looked at the sky where red gave up to night. "It's a long hour."
The cathedral bell rang the second right note. The sound walked the stones and did not stumble.
Damien touched the false tongue in his coat and felt the cold of it through cloth. He breathed four, held four, let six out into air he did not own.
He didn't argue with Riven. He had already paid one morning. He had others to pay.
Riven smiled without his mouth. "Keeper by rule," he said, very soft, as if the tower were listening. "Let me keep something heavier than a door."
They went down into streets that had been counting wrong and had decided to stop. The tower took a minute and waited for the rest. The hour stood there like a debt with patient shoes.
At Nocturne, the fig leaves were dark enough to be honest. The ring under the lintel murmured when Damien set his palm to it. The door wanted to know who would stand for it.
Selene stretched her shoulder, rolled her wrist, and looked at the sky as if measuring whether it would break. Mira checked the lamp and trimmed the wick to a coin of flame. Riven set his hand on the clapper and tested the weight like a man greeting an old friend who might finally ask for help.
"Go," Riven said, Keeper now, decision where it belonged. "Finish the work you can do on your feet. I'll sit the hour."
Damien didn't say thank you. He held Riven's gaze long enough for agreement to be the same as gratitude, then turned.
The city breathed with him. The bell above the cathedral breathed with Riven. The false tongue lay cold in Damien's coat. Asher's patience changed shape in a room with numbers that refused to count what they could not hear.
The hour began.