"Find them!"
The icy shout from the Veil's adept was followed by the frantic tolling of the alarm bell, a maddening hammering that seemed intent on shattering eardrums. Our temporary hiding place had turned into a tomb, and now the gravediggers were knocking.
"We're trapped," Margot hissed, flattened behind a stack of crates. "They've sealed everything."
"They're searching blindly," Bastien croaked beside us, his shrewd eyes narrowed to slits. "Like dogs without a master. The noise is our friend, for now. But it won't last."
He was right. Chaos was our shield. We could hear the confused shouts of the village guards coming from upstairs and the main corridor. Their heavy boots ran in disarray, doors were being opened and slammed violently. They were searching the building, but without a plan, driven only by the panic of having lost their prisoners right under the noses of their new, fearsome "allies."
Through the crack under the door, I watched the chaotic dance of guard boots running back and forth. But amid that chaos, I noticed something different. Something wrong.
One pair of boots, then another. They weren't running. They were gliding. Moving with a calm and discipline that was the antithesis of the surrounding confusion. While the guards screamed and slammed doors, these figures positioned themselves methodically, taking control of the corridor's strategic points.
I didn't need to see their faces. I'd already seen that kind of movement. I'd seen it in Kaelen's cold efficiency, in the silent discipline of his adepts.
It was them. They were letting the village's guard dogs bark, while they, the wolves, silently tightened the circle.
One of the shadows stopped. Right in front of our door.
My breath caught in my throat. It stayed there, in a silence so absolute it was more terrifying than any scream. I imagined it was listening. I felt an itch at the base of my neck, an almost painful impulse to pull out the medallion, to feel. To sense its aura, to understand if its attention was a real threat or just my paranoia, to have an advantage, any advantage. But Angelica's warning was a wall of ice in my head: "a beacon in the night." I resisted the impulse.
I glanced at my companions. They were motionless too. Bastien had flattened himself against the darkest wall, so still he seemed like one of the shadows, but I saw the slight tremor in his gnarled hands. He wasn't used to being prey this way, trapped in a stone cage. Margot, beside me, was the opposite image. She was a statue of compressed rage, the stiletto gripped so tightly her knuckles were white. Her eyes were fixed on the crack under the door, with the calculated attention of a predator studying a rival.
After an eternity that lasted maybe ten seconds, the shadow moved on.
"We can't stay here," Bastien whispered, his face drawn. "They're inspecting everything. Either we open that trapdoor now, or we never will."
We rushed to the position he'd indicated. We started working on the trapdoor, a desperate operation and, to my ears, deafening. The creaking of crates being moved, the scraping of dirt to find the trapdoor's edge, the metallic clank of the iron ring when Bastien grabbed it. Every sound was a death sentence.
Just as, with a joint effort, we managed to lift the heavy trapdoor a few inches, revealing a strip of darkness, the storage room door trembled.
BOOM.
A sharp, powerful blow, different from the angry kick of a guard. It was something more precise. Stronger.
BOOM.
The wood of the door cracked. They were breaking through.
Time for stealth was over. Fear gave us strength we didn't know we had. Bastien and I grabbed the iron ring and pulled with desperate fury. The trapdoor protested with a wrenching moan of old wood and rusted hinges, a noise that seemed loud enough to be heard all the way to Strasbourg, but we didn't care anymore. With one last yank, it opened completely, revealing a black hole and a wave of cold air that smelled of mud and stagnant water.
"It's open!" Bastien shouted, and without a moment's hesitation, he dove into the trapdoor's darkness. "I know the way! I'll lead!" he yelled from below, his voice already an echo in the tunnel.
His wasn't guidance. It was an escape. And we were just his cover.
Margot didn't hesitate. She lowered herself into the darkness without a word. I was about to follow her, but I turned, as if hypnotized.
The storage room door crashed inward, exploding in a shower of splinters.
On the threshold, silhouetted against the corridor's flickering light, was the figure of a Veil adept. His cross-shaped stiletto already in hand.
There was no time to think. No time to breathe. The adept lunged toward me.
But as Margot lowered herself into the darkness, I saw the Veil adept on the threshold. He didn't hesitate. He lunged toward me, the cross-shaped stiletto aimed at my heart.
Panic screamed at me to throw myself into the trapdoor. But training, those endless hours dodging Margot and Angelica's blows, took over.
I stepped to the side without backing away, at the very last instant.
The monk was caught by surprise, perhaps expecting me to flee or freeze in fear. His lunge went wide. I didn't try to fight him. I did the only thing a roof thief knows how to do better than a warrior: use the environment.
As he passed me, I stuck out a foot.
My boot hooked his ankle. It was an almost insignificant gesture, but enough to break his perfect balance. I saw a flash of pure, incredulous astonishment in his cold eyes as he stumbled, losing control. He staggered without falling, struggling for an instant to regain his balance.
It was all the time I needed.
I dove headfirst into the trapdoor, a plunge into darkness and the smell of mud. I landed awkwardly, almost on top of Margot.
"Victor, what—"
I didn't give her time to finish. I turned and grabbed the trapdoor's heavy iron ring and pulled with all the strength I had.
Above us, I heard the adept's angry shout as he recovered. I saw his boot appear in the opening, trying to block the closing.
But it was too late. With a dull thud the wooden trapdoor closed, swallowing the last sliver of light and leaving us in absolute darkness, with the hammering sound of our enemy's furious blows.
For an instant we stayed there, in the pitch darkness and smell of mud, hearts beating in unison with the blows on the trapdoor. Then I heard Bastien's voice, an impatient hiss from the darkness.
"What are you waiting for? Tea with croissants? Move!"
We shook ourselves. The escape wasn't over. It had just begun. We started moving by feel, following Bastien's sounds in a tunnel so low we had to proceed almost on all fours. The air was freezing, stagnant water reached our ankles. Every step was a noisy splash that echoed in the oppressive silence.
"Quieter, idiots!" Bastien croaked from somewhere ahead of us. "Or do you want them to find us down here too?"
The blows on the trapdoor above us stopped. An unnatural silence took their place, even more terrifying than the blows themselves.
"What... what are they doing?" Margot whispered.
I didn't have time to answer. A different sound, a metallic screeching, reached us from above. They were forcing the hinges. They weren't trying to break through the wood anymore. They were unhinging the entire trapdoor.
"Run!" Bastien shouted, his voice now charged with genuine panic. "They're opening it!"
Our escape transformed into a desperate run through darkness. We slipped in mud, crashing against the tunnel's slimy walls, guided only by the hope of an exit. Behind us, we heard a heavy, dull thud. The trapdoor had been opened. And a cold beam of lantern light cut through the darkness at our backs, projecting our long, terrified shadows ahead of us.
"There they are!" we heard someone shout from behind.
They started chasing us. We could hear their heavy footsteps splashing in the water behind us, accompanied by muffled curses. They too, apparently, didn't appreciate the décor. They were fast, but the mud, darkness, and low ceiling slowed even the most experienced hunters. We managed to maintain a small, precious margin of advantage. But they were relentless. And we were just rats in a pipe, with the greyhounds' breath getting closer and closer on our necks.
The tunnel seemed endless. My lungs were burning. But just when I was about to give up, I saw a light ahead of us: the weak grayness of night. An exit!
Bastien was the first to reach it, a rusted iron grate that opened to the outside. With a strength I wouldn't have attributed to him, he pushed it upward. The cold night air hit us, an incredible relief after the tunnel's stench.
We emerged one after another, coming out on the muddy bank of the river that bordered the village. We were free. For a fraction of a second.
From our right, from the village bridge, we heard shouts. "There they are! Down there!" It was the town guards, alerted by the alarm, who had now seen us. Their torches began moving in our direction.
From our left, from the tunnel we'd just exited, we saw the first black figures of the Silent Veil emerging from the darkness.
We were trapped. Again. In front of us, the dark and freezing river. Behind us, the village hunting us.
And then, I looked across the river. Toward the only escape route left.
The forest. Dark. Gloomy. Silent. The memory of the bear, the cello's lament, Anje's warning... everything came back to mind with the force of a wave. The Homme-Corbeau was there, somewhere, in his diseased forest. And maybe, he was waiting for us.
Behind us, wolves dressed as priests. Ahead, the village's enraged torches. And our only escape route was a forest that wanted to devour us.
And now, what the hell were we going to do?