The ceiling groaned.
Not the tired sigh of old beams.
A deliberate drag across boards, flour dust falling in pale curtains.
Rot-sweet air pressed against lungs.
Every sound arrived too loud—the hiss of steam, the rattle of pins, Neve's ragged breaths.
Harun knelt by the pallet.
One arm kept the girl upright.
The other held his chisel loose and ready.
The Mask heated until his cheek prickled.
Truth: Above. Something hungry.
Finn's eyes flew to the rafters. "Did you hear—?"
Maera shoved the younger children behind her skirts. Knife trembling. "Not here. Saints help us."
The landing door creaked.
Yellow lantern-glow spilled through smoke.
A man in a work coat too clean for the mill stepped in.
Gloves gleamed with grease.
Ledger hugged it to his chest like a shield.
His gaze swept barrel—bowls—Mask.
His mouth flattened. "So it's you."
Harun studied the stance.
Weight leaned back.
Counter, not cutter.
"What's your name?" he asked, tamping down the burn, chewing his calf.
"Kars," the man said.
Truth: Not Kars. Borrowed Mask, borrowed mouth.
The Mask urged him to pull the lie out by its roots.
Harun swallowed it. He needed careful, not clever.
"Back from the barrel," Harun said. "Slow."
"Bureau property," the man answered.
"The stamp is," Harun said. He let the chisel catch lamplight.
"What's inside belongs to hunger. And it's listening."
As if to agree, the lid seam bulged.
A bead of black seep wobbled, glossy and fat.
It touched the salt and hissed like fat on iron.
Children whimpered.
The commander shouldered in with his pistol high.
Jaw clamped so hard the tendons stood in his neck.
"There he is," he said. "Mask-thief. I knew he'd crawl somewhere rotten."
"Sir—" Tallen's voice cracked. He hitched a boy higher in his arms.
The child wheezed like a holed bellows.
"Quiet." The commander never looked back. "He's mine."
Harun lifted his head.
The bronze cheek of the Mask threw back the lantern.
"If you shoot in here," Harun said, "you break the seal. You give it breath. You'll be the first throat it empties."
The commander's aim didn't waver—
But his eyes cut to the barrel.
Another hiss.
The bead pressed the salt—retreated.
"What's in there?" he demanded.
"Supplement," Kars said smoothly. Too smoothly.
"Thin harvest. We add ash. It fills bellies."
Heat curled behind Harun's eyes.
The words slid out on their own.
"Two spoonfuls last night. Now the girl is drowning."
Kars stiffened.
Maera flinched like slapped.
The commander's face hardened. He lowered the pistol a finger's width.
"If the Bureau hears you've meddled with stock, you swing, foreman."
"The city must eat," Kars said, forcing a smile.
"And the city will starve if you feed it this," Harun said, rough and steady.
Neve coughed—a spray of black that sizzled on boards.
Harun pressed a fresh, steaming rag to her mouth and kept her chest propped.
Tiny fingers clutched his wrist, as if she could climb out of drowning.
"Steam," Harun said. "More."
Finn fed splinters to the stove.
Flame licked up.
The pot rattled.
Steam poured, laying a heavy, damp hand over rot.
The room fogged.
Sweat ran down Harun's temple.
The Mask turned coal-hot.
Truth: If hunger moves, you must answer.
The commander heard whispers he couldn't name.
His pistol dipped again. Voice rough: "Ten minutes. Then he comes with me."
Maera's knife shook—then stilled. Red-rimmed eyes found Harun's.
Something else lived there now. Not just fear. Sharper.
"If you let them take him," she whispered, "I'll kill you first."
Harun nodded once, as if she'd given him a plan.
The ceiling creaked, boards bowing.
A crack like bone.
The barrel's lid split in half.
Black poured free.
It didn't splash.
It crawled.
The first graycoat screamed as it kissed his boot.
His mouth stretched too wide, teeth naked.
Eyes rolled white while the black climbed his throat.
"Saints," Finn breathed.
The commander fired.
Thunder in a box.
The shot tore the crawling dark apart—
for a heartbeat.
Droplets sizzled in flour, twitched, wriggled, slid together again.
The Mask burned until Harun's vision blurred.
His breath caught.
Palm trembled on Neve's ribs.
"Stay," he said.
The word hit the air like a flat hand on water.
Everything froze.
Children.
Commander.
Even the black went rigid—like an evil thought obeying for once.
One heartbeat. Two. Three.
Then the dark laughed—a sound without sound—
and surged.
"Net!" the commander snapped. "Pins—now!"
The tidy guard scrambled, slick fingers scattering iron.
The hoop-bearer limped forward with mesh, leg blooming red through cloth.
Black slipped across floorboards, testing seams, sniffing for breath.
It flowed around the salt, annoyed, like a river finding a new bank.
"Keep your mouths closed!" Harun barked. "Salt on tongues!"
Maera jammed grains into the younger children's mouths, then her own.
Finn did the same, grimacing at the sting and taste.
Truth: Breath calls it. Heat slows it. Salt denies it.
"Hold her up," Harun told Maera.
He shoved Neve higher, rolled a cloth behind her shoulders.
"Small breaths. Slow."
The black slid toward the pallet.
It bulged at the salt crescent, found a hairline gap, and began to thread.
Harun dumped what was left of Maera's jar in a shaking arc.
White hissed. The gap sealed.
Kars hugged his ledger tighter.
Face carved smooth.
"This is your medicine," he murmured. "You asked for more bread. You never asked with what."
"Drop that book and lift a hand," Maera snarled.
Kars did neither.
The commander chambered another shot.
"Back," Harun snapped. "You'll scatter it."
"I'll burn it."
"You'll feed it air."
Steel and silence collided between them.
The black rose in a glossy shoulder and leaned toward Tallen.
Toward the boy in his arms.
Tallen staggered back.
The Mask shoved words into Harun's teeth.
"Left foot," Harun said. "Always left."
Tallen obeyed before he knew he had.
The black splashed where he'd stood—
ate a pit in the boards—
steamed.
Truth: It follows a pattern. Force it to miss.
Harun's calf screamed where earlier black had kissed it.
He dragged breath through grit.
"Finn!" he barked. "The pot."
"It'll scald—"
"Better steam than this."
Finn grabbed the pot with a towel and tipped.
A sheet of wet heat poured.
The black recoiled—hissed—thinned.
Harun saw it then:
Not rage. Reflex.
It moved to where breath gathered.
It hated heat because it carried no breath of its own.
"Lanterns down," Harun said. "Low to the floor."
The commander glared.
Tallen, jaw clenched, lowered his.
Shadows dropped.
Heat pooled where Harun wanted it.
The black flowed along baseboards, skirting salt, searching for mouths.
It brushed the towel under Neve's knees—
smoked.
Drew back.
Truth: Bar it. Bind it. Name it.
Harun tasted metal.
Let the Mask weigh each syllable.
"Stay."
The room held.
"Turn."
The black turned, slow as heavy sleep.
"Down."
It flattened. Shivered. Spread like a wet page.
"Cage," Harun said, and kicked the fallen lid's splintered half against it.
The tidy guard, breath ragged, slammed pins along one edge without asking why.
Maera pressed salt onto the other, grinding with her palm until grains squealed.
Finn dragged the stove rag across, steam billowing to bleed heat into the seam.
The shape bucked.
The pins rattled.
The lid jumped.
"Hold!" Harun shouted.
Tallen put his shoulder to wood, tears bright, jaw set.
The commander hesitated—
Then holstered his pistol and grabbed the far corner, rage making a kind of strength.
Kars did not move.
The black surged for the smallest gap—
toward Kars's polished boot.
Harun didn't spare him.
He flung the last pinch of salt he had left in a crooked line between boot and seep.
Hiss.
Retreat.
Truth: You have seconds, not safety.
The waterwheel groaned outside—
a giant heart turning slow.
The whole room seemed to pulse with it.
Neve's breaths hitched—once, twice—then drew a longer one through the steam.
"Good girl," Harun murmured. "Stay."
The makeshift lid trembled under every push.
Pins crawled back out of holes slick with black.
Salt thinned to a wet paste.
"Rope!" Harun snapped.
Maera tore a strip from the blanket.
Tallen knotted it; the commander cinched it tight; Finn double-wound the corners.
They made a ugly work of it—
and it held a nasty thing.
For now.
Boots pounded in the lane.
A bell beat, closer.
Reinforcements.
The commander's breath sawed.
His eyes burned holes through Harun.
"This ends when they arrive," he said. "You're coming with—"
The ceiling groaned again.
All heads tilted up.
A second bulge swelled in the split beam above the barrel.
Black sweat pearled.
Gathered.
Fell.
Harun moved without thinking, shouldering the lid harder, putting his whole weight into the rope.
His burned calf screamed.
The Mask seethed.
Truth: You held one mouth closed. There are more.
The new drop struck the floor and split—
two beads racing in opposite arcs—
one toward the children, one toward Tallen's boy.
Harun's voice cracked raw.
"Stay!"
The beads faltered—
shook—
strained.
The door crashed inward.
Greycoats flooded the threshold, flames licking at wicks, pikes glittering.
"Down your weapons!" someone barked. "By order of—"
They took in the scene, blinked, reset their fear.
The commander drew himself taller, not letting go of the rope.
"Containment procedure," he barked. "Now!"
Harun didn't look away from the beads quivering on the planks.
He had one more syllable left in him.
One more circle to draw that wouldn't last.
He tasted salt, blood, and smoke, and spoke it anyway.
"Bind."