The skiff slides under the gate and into a pocket of the city that breathes like a sleeping animal.
Ropes hang from beams. Nets drape over racks. Herb bundles dry in rows, their stems whispering when the draft moves. A chalk sign sprawls across the stone arch in rough letters:
GLOAM INLET — LANTERN COMMONS
Bora's big hand steadies the bow. "Easy," he says, as if to the boat, as if to me.
We bump the dock. Hands—gentle, many—catch the skiff and pull us in. Lelia's moss hair is pinned back with bits of bone and copper; Root's eyes are the color of old oak, ringed and patient. Children crowd the edges, ready to scatter if I bare teeth, ready to grin if I don't.
Kirella steps out first, then offers me his hand. Leather, scars, warmth. I take it. The skiff creaks, and my boots meet the dock as if the wood had been waiting to learn my weight.
"Welcome," Root says. Their voice is soft, the way dirt is soft after rain.
I hang the lantern on a low iron hook at the entry. Its glow opens like a quiet door. It rolls over faces, posts, nets, rope, and stops on nothing sharp. Shoulders lower without anyone deciding to lower them. Someone laughs once, surprised.
Lelia notices my wrist. "You burn," she says. "Hold still."
She wraps clean cloth and ties a knot with the same neatness she uses to tie herb bundles. "Pepper mint," she adds, and pushes a warm cup into my hands. The tea tastes like heat and green. The glass-sick blur behind my eyes loosens.
Kirella shifts his shoulders and unbuckles one strap of his armor. The sound it makes—a small click, a small sigh—could convince a tired city to rest.
He glances at me. "We're inside," he says, as if checking the word for cracks.
"For now," I answer.
The Commons unfolds in little rooms around the dock: a kiln that smells like clay and ash; a long table bruised by years of bowls; a corner chalked with letters where a child draws a crooked sun and then eats the chalk because it looks like sugar. The child spits, makes a face, and everyone laughs softly without pointing. A woman with three small horns mends a shirt next to a human with a broken thumb. Another horned woman paints tiny eyes on wooden fish for a game I don't know yet.
There are monsters here. There are humans here. Mostly there are people.
Bora taps a pillar where a map is scratched in charcoal—veins of channels, circles for safe rooms, neat X's for dead doors. The line we rode from the Last Gate is crossed out: OLD LANTERN LINE — SEALED. A new note curls east: SIDEWAYS FLOW → HOLLOW ABBEY.
"Later," Lelia says, following my eyes. "Abbey waits. Today you breathe."
Root leads us to a small alcove under the wharf: pallet, peg rail, a shelf of clay cups. "Your corner," they say. "If the flood changes its mind, that bell rings." They point to a rope that vanishes under the dock and, somewhere far, touches the bridge with the broken tooth.
Kirella kneels and reties the cloth on my wrist, thumb gentle on the knot. "We are not alone," he says.
"Not alone," I repeat, and the words fit my mouth like bread.
A boy with soft green skin and wider eyes than the world leans in the doorway. He recognizes me. He pretends not to. He fails at pretending. "Is that light a pet?" he asks, serious.
"It's a kept thing," I say.
"What's kept?"
"Something you don't throw away when it's heavy," Kirella says, and the boy nods as if the world finally quit lying to him.
Root clears their throat. People drift closer—Bora with a repaired crate on one shoulder; Lelia with a ladle; the horned seamstress with a needle stuck under her lip; a man with bark-brown hands; a woman with moss under her fingernails; an old grandmother with a back bent like a bow.
"We have three rules," Root says. They hold up three fingers, slow, for those who can't read and those who can't remember.
"One: We keep each other. We share without counting. We hide each other without writing it down."
"Two: When flood comes, we move together. Strong carry heavy. Small carry messages. No heroes alone."
"Three: Light is shared. If you hoard the soft, the soft leaves."
The lantern hums—just enough to make someone look around for a bee. Root smiles.
"Questions?" they ask.
A child raises a hand. "Can we pet the vampire?"
Everyone looks at me. I try not to laugh. "If the vampire says yes," I say.
The child considers this weight of power and nods very seriously. "Later," he decides, and scampers away to draw more chalk suns that he definitely won't eat this time.
Bora sets the crate down by the long table and claps his palms, gentle thunder. "Meal," he declares. Bowls appear. Bread divides. Lelia pours soup that smells like garlic and sage and something sweet and cheap and perfect. People eat in pairs and threes and fives. They swap spoons when a spoon bends. They tear bread and pass it down with fingers that learned to be careful.
Kirella sits beside me, back to a beam out of habit. He watches the room as if danger could be a person at a table. He watches me as if safety could be, too.
"First good meal?" he asks.
"First meal with we in it," I say.
He looks at my hands. He looks at the lantern. He looks at the cup I hold like a thing that might fly. "We," he says, and the word is bigger than the room for one breath.
Lelia slides onto the bench opposite like a queen who happens to be barefoot. "You share well," she tells Kirella, eyeing the way he passed a crust without thinking and the way he tilted his bowl for the child with the chalk. "Good. Bad sharers sleep by the door."
"What happens if they sleep by the door?" he asks.
"They learn to share or the draft teaches them," she says. She winks and steals a carrot from his bowl the way an aunt steals a kiss.
Root stands at the end of the table and taps a spoon on a cup. The room softens to listen.
"The lantern," Root says, "is old. It remembers hands. It eats kept things."
Someone frowns. "Kept?"
"Promises kept," Root explains. "Mercy kept. Doors kept open. Bowls kept for someone not here yet. It burns on those like wood. The other light—the temple's glass—eats applause and pretty deaths. This one has humbler meals."
Eyes turn to the lantern. It glows modestly over the hook, a kitchen candle with a memory.
"But." Root's voice lowers. "Kept light calls hunters. The Key-man follows such lights because they unlock gates he would sell."
The room tightens. Wooden spoons stop for a beat and then move again, because soups don't wait, not even for fear.
Kirella's jaw squares. "So nowhere stays safe."
"Nowhere ever did," Root says. "But some places learn to buy time. Here we buy time with noise, nets, and neighbors who don't point."
Bora nods. "Flood rising?" he asks Root.
"Full," Root says. "For now. It will slosh. It will spit. But it won't climb fast tonight."
"Then we sleep," Lelia says. "And in the morning we stitch, and mend, and plan sideways."
"Sideways?" I ask.
Root points to the map pillar. "The Abbey," they say. "A place the glass forgot. If there is a gate that opens without applause, it begins there."
"Not today," Lelia warns again, kind and firm. "Today you learn where the latrine is and which kettles bite."
"Which kettles bite?" I ask, curious despite myself.
"All kettles bite," Lelia says. "Some just do it politely."
We clean bowls. We wash ladles. We set cups upside down like little domes. The lantern hangs and purrs in its small way, brighter when someone laughs, steadier when someone stops crying without knowing why.
A girl with yellow eyes and short hair—the one who tried to hook my hem in the corridor—hovers at the edge of the Commons, shame stiff in her shoulders. Her hands twist the edge of a rag.
I step to her. "You almost cut my sleeve," I say. I don't make my voice sharp. Sharp things already found her.
She swallows. "I thought you had coin there," she mutters.
"I did," I say. "And I hid it somewhere else because you taught me to."
Her eyes flick up, narrow with confusion, then widen with a kind of relief that looks like anger until it isn't. "You won't tell?"
"I'll tell Lelia you need work," I say. "Hands that quick can tie herbs and catch kettles before they bite."
A breath she didn't know she held leaves her. "I'm Syth," she says.
"Mirelle," I say.
She glances at Kirella, who stands near the post watching everything. "And your shadow?"
"Kirella," I say.
Syth nods, as if giving us names puts us on the ledger where debts can be counted and canceled properly.
The evening thins. People drift to their corners. Someone sings a low song about orange peels and rope that sounds like a lullaby if you lived where rope mattered. Children curl on folded nets like cats that learned to be quiet. The kiln breath warms the Commons like a tame animal. It smells like clay and bread and sleep.
Kirella walks the perimeter once, twice, because some habits are fences that protect the field. He stops by our little alcove and hangs his cloak on the peg. The space becomes a room the moment his cloak touches wood.
"Your wrist?" he asks.
"Better," I say.
He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to the back of it—nothing hungry, nothing loud. A touch like you give a scar to tell it you remember.
The lantern notices. Its glow gathers under his thumb, a small coronet of warmth that kisses my skin and doesn't ask for anything back.
"Us first," he says.
"Then the rest," I answer.
He smiles. The hard parts of his face forget to be hard. "Then ten quiet years."
"Then ten," I echo. I almost say here, but we don't own a map yet. We own a corner and a hook and a rule written on three fingers.
We settle on the pallet, boots near the edge, blades within reach. The Commons breathes around us. It is a good sound. It sounds like sleep that doesn't owe anyone.
I keep the lantern where its light just touches the floor and the first edge of our blanket. Its breath makes a thin ring that reaches the doorway and stops there, polite.
My eyes close.
I dream of kitchens I never had, of hands that never pushed me forward to make people clap, of a little boy with soft ears eating chalk and laughing, of a giant with a gentle brow carrying three bowls in one hand like a trick he invented by accident.
Something changes.
Not a sound, not exactly. The lantern's glow lifts a shade and the ring on the floor widens, thin as a breath held too long. The hook creaks. My eyes open.
A shadow stands on the far wall—long, thin, precise. It is only a shape, but I know it the way we know the shape of teeth even before they bite. A ribbon dangles from the shadow's hand. At the end of the ribbon, a key turns once, very slowly, without touching any lock.
I sit up. The pallet whispers. The shadow does not move. The ribbon stirs like a tail in patient water.
"Kirella," I whisper.
He is already awake. His hand closes on mine, two palms over the lantern's handle. The glow steadies, as if it, too, takes a breath with us.
The shadow thins, stretches, and slides along the wall like oil poured on a slope. It reaches the corner and vanishes into the seam where two stones meet.
Kirella's fingers tighten. "Did you—"
"I saw it," I say.
We listen. Only the kiln breath and the small, content grumble of a sleeping room answer.
I look at the hook, at the lantern, at the red scrap of cloth Root tied there.
"Safe places dream too," I whisper. "And sometimes the dreams are watched."
We do not sleep quickly after that.
We do not put the lantern out.