Greyharbor never felt like the kind of town that could hide anything. The sea took what it wanted, the factories spat smoke into the sky, and the people cursed their luck out loud. If there were secrets here, they had already been drowned, burned, or gossiped into the ground.That is what I used to think, until the night I broke into my father's study.
The storm had been chewing at the house all evening. The windows rattled, the roof groaned, and the whole place smelled of damp salt. My mother was asleep, worn out from another day pretending we were not sinking deeper into debt. She had locked the study after the funeral, said she could not stand the smell of tobacco and varnish, could not stand the sight of his things. I could not either, not really, but something about the storm made it impossible to keep away.
I used the knife I carried everywhere, thin and sharp enough to worry the old lock until it gave.
The room looked like he had just stepped out. Books stacked half-fallen on the desk, his chipped mug still stained with rings of coffee, a scattering of notebooks filled with the tiny, scratchy handwriting only he could read. My throat tightened, but anger steadied me. He had left us with questions, with whispers around town about debts and secrets. And then he had gone into the ground without a word of explanation.
I told myself I was just checking for leaks. That was a lie.Something near the desk caught my attention, a faint draft curling between the boards. I crouched, ran my palm across the floor, and felt a subtle shift. A loose plank.
My pulse jumped. I wedged the knife under the edge and pried it up.
A leather case lay hidden beneath, stiff with dust. Heavy when I pulled it free. Inside was a folded sheet of paper and my father's journal.
The paper was not written in letters or numbers. Its lines curled in strange shapes, half like veins, half like waves, as if the ink itself had never dried. A map, but not one I had ever seen in Greyharbor or anywhere else.
The journal was more direct. His final entry stopped me cold:
The truth lies below the city. If Kai finds this, tell him nothing. Let him choose.
I did not laugh. I did not cry. I just read the line over and over until the candle burned low. Choose what? Why leave me riddles when the town already had too many?
The floorboard creaked as if answering me. The storm pressed harder at the windows. I stuffed the map and journal under my jacket. If my mother saw them, she would lock the study again and I would lose the only lead I had.
I did not sleep. Not that night. I traced the symbols until my vision blurred, until I could almost make out the streets I knew beneath the twisting shapes. The courthouse. The seawall. The cathedral. All of them linked by tunnels that should not exist.
At the very center was a mark shaped like an eye.
By dawn, I knew I could not leave it alone.
The next day, I skipped school. I cut across the wharves, ignored the calls of the dockworkers, and headed for the railyard.
Nobody went there anymore. The tracks ended at a wall of collapsed stone, the old engines rotted where they had been left to die. Perfect for hiding things. Perfect for being alone.
I spread the map across the hood of a rusted freight car. For a long time the marks swam together like nonsense. Then, slowly, the city rose out of them. Streets I had walked a hundred times, alleyways I knew too well. The tunnels curved beneath it all, leading to the eye at the center.
The wind rattled the freight car, and for a moment I was sure someone was behind me. I spun, fists clenched, but the yard was empty except for gulls circling above, shrieking like they had seen something I could not.
I folded the map fast, shoved it deep into my jacket, and left.
That night, the storm returned, meaner than before. I tried to read the journal again in the attic, but the words blurred in the candlelight. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like footsteps.
By midnight, I could not sit still. I pulled on my boots, grabbed the lamp, and slipped out into the wet dark.
Greyharbor at night was a different city. The alleys shone slick, the lamps hissed in the wind, and every street felt sharper, emptier. I followed the map's path downhill toward the seawall, where waves crashed against the stone like fists.
The entrance was half-hidden by weeds. A drainage tunnel with rusted bars bent just enough for me to squeeze through.
Inside, the air was cold and metallic. Water lapped at my boots as I moved forward, deeper and deeper. My father's words whispered in my mind: The truth lies below the city.
The tunnel widened into a chamber carved with more of those strange symbols. At the center stood an iron door, half buried in rubble, the surface black with age.
When I pressed my hand to it, the metal burned with cold.
Something scraped behind it. A breath. A sound that was not mine.The door shuddered. Once. Twice. Then it began to open and for the first time in my life, I knew Greyharbor had secrets after all.