Pain—not sharp, not fleeting—but a slow, grinding ache that pulsed behind his ribs with every heartbeat.
Eldrin woke to stone and lantern-smoke. The ceiling above him was a patchwork of damp and spiderwebs, the room was the under-cellar of an old prayerhouse that should've fallen years ago. His shirt clung to his chest, clammy with fever-sweat. He tried to sit up. His left arm trembled, then buckled.
"Stay down," a voice rasped. "You're not done coughing up death yet."
Old Morn stepped into the lantern's circle—gray robes, gray beard, eyes like cooled ash. Caretaker. Gravedigger. Keeper of the unwanted.
"How long?" Eldrin asked, breath a sandpaper scrape.
"Two nights," Morn said. "You blacked out when the stall came down. They say the ground heaved like a living thing. Broke the posts, threw the apples, crushed a boy's foot. Lucky you were the one buried. Folk forgive the buried."
Eldrin swallowed. The taste of dust wouldn't leave his mouth.
Not again…
The ache behind his ribs flared—no heat on the skin, nothing anyone could see—just that sick, familiar pressure, as if something inside him were turning its head to listen.
"There've been… whispers," Morn went on. "Wardens sweeping blocks with their counters. Looking for a pulse."
Eldrin's fingers curled in the blanket. Counters—ivory needles that quivered near essence. The Wardens pressed them to newborns on naming day, to beggars in alleys, to any chest they pleased.
If the needle trembled too hard, the owner stopped being a person and became a resource.
"I was buying broth," Eldrin said. "That's all." He could still hear the ladle clanging, the stallkeeper's laugh, the groan in the timber like a wounded ox. Then the world tilted; wood snapped; a wheelbarrow clattered. His body had moved before he knew it, a sidestep that should've taken a thought. It hadn't.
Like the time he bent for a dropped coin and a slater's hammer whispered past the space his skull had been. Or when he reached for a cup and the shelf above him shed a shower of nails without touching him. Little mercies that came too quick, too clean, as if his bones already knew they were coming.
"You don't owe me confessions, boy," Morn said. "You owe yourself caution. If the wrong eyes see what follows you—"
"I know." Eldrin forced air back into his lungs, rode the ache until it dulled. "Hide. Quiet. Breathe."
"Breathe," Morn echoed. "And don't tempt the gods with luck."
He shuffled to the door to snuff the lantern, but froze halfway. The hairs along Eldrin's forearms prickled. The ache under his sternum shifted—turned, listening—like a wolf raising its head.
Bootsteps. Heavy. Three of them. Not the quick, clumsy trot of drunks; not the soft drag of the sick. Measured. Deliberate.
A knock followed—three blows that went
through wood and into stone.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Eldrin's breath hitched. That was a Warden's tempo. He'd heard it once before, when they swept the riverside flats and took a girl in a blue hood because someone had seen a shimmer on her wrist.
Old Morn's hand hovered over the lantern. He didn't snuff it. Didn't speak. In the stillness, Eldrin could hear other things: a belt buckle clinking. Leather creaking. The faint chime of ceramic—the counter needle.
The ache flared again, sharper now, and the floor answered with a tiny whisper. A grain-on-grain slide he felt through his palms as much as heard—a settling of dust, a soft complaint of earth. No one would notice it but him.
Another knock. The wood shuddered. Morn threw Eldrin a look: a question, and an apology.
"Under the table," Morn mouthed.
Eldrin shook his head. The counter would stir the instant they crossed the threshold; whatever they were reading, they'd already scented it from the street.
"Back stairs," Morn whispered instead. "The bone chute. It'll spit you in the old ossuary."
Eldrin swung his legs off the straw. Pain snarled at his ribs; his vision pinwheeled; he staggered. The ache spiked—listening, listening—and the lantern guttered as if a draft had slid its knife through the flame.
Morn hissed and cupped it, steadying the wick.
"Wardens of Greyhall," a voice called through the timber, high and sharp with the Awwan tilt. "Open. Inspection."
Morn glanced at Eldrin's chest as if he could see through cloth to the thing that was not a thing. "You move now, or you don't move again."
Eldrin reached for the wall. The under-cellar was a blind warren of shelves and bones and old prayer banners gone to mildew. He knew it like his hand. Two steps to the washbasin. Three more to the spice rack. Then a narrow gap where the stone sweated in summer and froze in winter. He slid into the seam and pressed flat, slow enough not to wake the ache further.
The door above screamed open. Boots hit wood. The lantern's light went thin under the table and Eldrin heard the first chime sing from the ceramic needle.
"Father Morn," the Warden said. "We have reports of a market surge. A pulse."
Morn made his voice smaller. "Pulses happen. The ground shifts when it has to. Ask the bishops: 'The world groans under our sin.'"
"Open your palms." A pause, a clink. "Steady. Good. And the cellar?"
"Graves," Morn said. "Picked clean years ago. You're welcome to bless the dust."
Leather creaked. Another chime—brighter. The ache behind Eldrin's ribs twisted, and the stones around his shoulders creaked in sympathy.
Not much. Enough to dust his hair. Don't.
He swallowed, pressed his forehead to the damp rock until the dizziness steadied. He listened. He counted breaths. Three Wardens. One more near the back—lighter steps, a scribe or a lad with a list.
"Anything unusual this week?" the sharp voice asked.
"Two funerals," Morn said. "One was a child. Fever. The other… forgot to breathe after too much wine."
"Names?"
Morn gave them. The ache throbbed once, hard, when the child's name fell into the dust. Without meaning to, Eldrin's hand closed on the rock, and the thin skin of soil over his knuckles shifted in tiny avalanches he could feel. The floor beneath the Wardens sang—a note softer than a sigh.
The ceramic needle chimed again, higher now. Eldrin clenched his jaw. He didn't want. He didn't reach. He didn't ask. But the world close to him was always listening for him, the way he was listening for it, and sometimes the echo was louder than both of them.
"Cellar," the sharp voice said. "Down."
Boards groaned. Light spilled across the far wall in a wavering wedge. Eldrin slid deeper into the seam, ribs scraping stone. The ache bucked once, angry, and the wall quivered. Powder fell into his lashes. He willed himself smaller. Shadow. Thread. Dust.
A boot toe scraped inches from his cheek. The lantern haloed a gloved hand and the porcelain counter cupped in it—a long, thin needle in a bath of milk-white. Close, it looked almost bored. Its point drifted.
Then it jerked.
The Warden's breath changed. "There."
Eldrin didn't think. He moved. Not far; he had nowhere to go. But his fingers found the old mortar joint, and he pushed—not with muscle, which was string and ache, but with that other thing that wanted before he could. The wall answered with a soft cough, as if clearing its throat. Stone powdered. A beetle skittered. The needle's quiver changed pitch.
"Hold," the sharp voice snapped. "These cells are rife with interference. One step back. Slowly."
Boot leather squeaked. The needle stilled, then trembled again—fainter now, distracted by other breath, other bones, other names sunk into the floor.
"Bring the boy," the sharp voice said.