They returned to the inn by way of the Hellbound's entry road, because in Deepcrest there was no true away from it—only farther, only closer.
The closer they walked, the less Deepcrest sounded like Deepcrest.
Laughter thinned. Footsteps softened. Even the gull-things kept their distance.
A vendor on the boardwalk stopped ringing their bell mid-jingle and tucked it under the counter like it might offend the air.
A pair of sailors saw the House-children coming and didn't wave this time. They simply stepped aside, heads bowed—less greeting, more agreement: Yes. We know where that road goes. We know what it takes.
And the area near the entrance to the Hellbound Barracks felt like the last place mercy had touched before thinking better of it.
It opened wide just before the true descent—a plateau of black stone veined with dim red light, as if the mountain had been cracked open long ago and never fully healed. The ground was uneven, not from neglect, but from old violence. Jagged ridges rose through the path like broken teeth, and the stone underfoot carried a faint warmth that never became comfort.
It felt like standing on the skin of something asleep and dangerous.
Massive pillars flanked the threshold, not carved by loving hands but forced into shape by power and repetition. They rose from the rock like fused vertebrae, wrapped in chains gone half-sunk into the stone—each link etched with ancient glyphs that glimmered only when no one looked at them directly. Tattered banners hung between them, fabric darkened by soot, old blood, and time.
They did not stir in the wind.
They hung like warnings.
The air grew thicker—
as though sound itself had to struggle through it.
The breeze that came from beyond the entrance carried the scent of scorched iron, wet ash, and something sickly sweet beneath it—like flowers left too long on a grave. It pressed against skin with intimate cruelty, sliding beneath armor and cloth as if the barracks wanted to learn the shape of every person who entered before deciding what to do with them.
Torches burned in iron brackets hammered into the stone walls, but their flames were wrong. Too still. Too blue at the center. They cast light without warmth, and the shadows they made clung too long to boots and hems, stretching thin across the ground like reluctant hands.
Beyond the open threshold, the first visible stretch of the barracks road cut downward between walls of volcanic rock and black-metal reinforcement. It was broad enough for marching armies, but it did not feel built for the living. Iron grates lined the edges where heat breathed up in slow bursts from unseen depths below. Here and there, cages hung from hooks driven into the cliffside—empty now, rusted at the joints, swaying just enough to suggest they remembered weight.
There were no birds.
No insects.
No harmless things.
Only the occasional metallic groan of chains shifting somewhere deeper inside.
Then the chains stopped.
Not slowly—immediately.
Like whatever held them had just turned its head.
A beat later, far down the road, boots struck stone in perfect unison—one measured step—then nothing again.
As if the Barracks had taken attendance.
As if it had counted four… then paused.
Waiting to confirm the fifth.
The far-off thud of mechanisms too large to be natural. And underneath it all—almost too faint to name—the echo of disciplined movement: boots striking stone in unison, then vanishing, as though the barracks itself inhaled its own noise.
The entryway did not invite.
It processed.
It judged.
It stood there like the mouth of a machine built from punishment and obedience, waiting with perfect patience for the next soul foolish enough—or doomed enough—to walk through.
And just before that threshold, where the safer world ended and Hellbound discipline began, there was always that terrible pause in the air—
the moment where even silence seemed to brace itself.
Tavran felt it the instant they neared the inn.
Not in the air.
In his sister.
Xheavend slowed.
Her hood was still up. Her mask still in place. Her steps still quiet.
But the timing of them changed—too even, too measured, like someone else had borrowed her feet.
Her pink eye fixed on nothing.
Then—without looking—she turned her head toward the Barracks road.
Not like a child staring.
Like a compass aligning.
"Xhea?" he murmured.
She didn't answer at first.
Then—softly, like the words had to climb out of somewhere far away—she said, "I'm tired."
Varin, still flushed with leftover laughter from dinner, blinked. "Already? Little storm, you—"
"I want to read," Xheavend interrupted. No irritation. No mood. Just… flat. "In my room."
Rezorin's gaze sharpened at once, the way it always did when a pattern broke.
Icardà's expression softened—then tightened, as if he'd felt a chill run up his spine but didn't want to name it.
Tavran nodded, gentle. "Alright."
Xheavend turned toward the inn doors without looking back.
No wave.
No teasing.
No request to be carried.
Just that quiet, careful walk—like she was following a thread only she could feel.
They let her go.
Because she was nine.
Because she was strong.
Because sometimes the safest thing a child can do is pretend she isn't afraid.
And Tavran hated that he understood the difference.
Upstairs, doors closed one by one. The inn's glow dimmed. Varin finally stopped pretending he wasn't tired and collapsed into bed with the dramatic sigh of a man defeated by softness. Rezorin retired with the kind of discipline that looked like rest only because it had rules. Icardà lingered in the hallway a little longer than necessary, listening as if he could hear nightmares through wood.
Then even he went quiet.
But Tavran did not sleep.
He stepped out onto the narrow balcony that ran along the inn's upper level, the wood still warm from the day, the night air carrying salt and something quieter beneath it.
That was when he saw her.
Xheavend sat on the balcony outside her room, perched on the railing like it was just another place to exist, a book open in her lap. Her hood was still up, her mask still in place—but the way her legs swung, slow and absent, was almost… peaceful.
Too peaceful.
"Xhea," Tavran called softly.
She looked up immediately.
There it was again—that small, easy smile. The kind that didn't match the way she'd walked upstairs.
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to train," he said, leaning against the post. "You want to come?"
She lifted the book slightly. "Not tonight."
A pause.
"I'm reading."
Tavran huffed faintly. "Since when do you pick books over throwing yourself off cliffs?"
"This one's good," she said.
He tilted his head. "What is it?"
She turned the book just enough for him to see its worn edges, the spine repaired more than once.
"It's about twin sisters," she said. "They go on adventures. Everywhere."
Her voice softened.
"They never stay in one place too long."
Then quieter—almost like the question wasn't meant to survive the air:
"Do you think we'll ever go on adventures like them?"
Tavran didn't answer immediately.
Something in him hesitated.
Not enough.
"We will," he said finally, lowering his voice. "Someday. I promise."
She watched him like she was weighing the promise.
Then she nodded.
"Alright," she said lightly. "Go train."
Tavran pushed off the post. "If you need anything, tell Icardà."
Xheavend tilted her head. "What about Varin or Rezorin?"
He snorted. "Icardà'll be the calmest out of the three of us."
She laughed—soft, real.
"You're right," she said. "Varin might lose it if he heard you say that."
And for a moment—just a moment—
she sounded like herself again.
Not the quiet version.
Not the careful one.
His sister.
Tavran didn't realize how tightly something in his chest had been wound
until it loosened.
She's okay, he thought.
Like he had any right to decide that.
And that was the mistake.
"He'll survive."
Tavran stepped back, already turning.
"Good luck in your training," she called after him.
He lifted a hand without looking back.
And ran.
And ran.
He didn't look back again.
Not until later—
standing at the window, Watching the Hellbound entrance—
the mouth of it.
The place that had stolen their parents.
The place that was always waiting to steal more.
His father had taught him in the mountains, once, when Tavran was small enough to think strength was simple.
If you fear the fall, you will fall wrong, Zcain had said. If you trust your body, you will survive the drop.
Tavran didn't know if he trusted anything anymore.
But he trusted training.
So he went.
Out into the forest beyond Deepcrest, where the trees grew thick and the moonlight caught in their leaves like trapped water. He found a rise of stone and climbed until the village lights were just a glow behind him.
Then he tied a blindfold over his eyes.
Not for drama.
For honesty.
He breathed once.
Twice.
And stepped off the mountain.
Wind tore at him.
Branches reached.
The world became sound and instinct.
He touched a tree trunk with his boot, rebounded, twisted his body midair and caught the next surface with his palm—rock, bark, stone—every impact a correction, every correction a vow.
He moved like falling was a language he'd learned fluently.
Like fear was something he could outrun if he ran fast enough.
He didn't know how long he trained.
Minutes.
Hours.
A lifetime.
Then—
a scream ripped through the forest.
"TAVRAN!"
Varin.
Not laughter.
Not competition.
Pure panic, sharp enough to cut the night in half.
Tavran landed hard, tore the blindfold away, and turned toward the sound.
Varin burst through the trees like a storm that had finally found a name, face white under the moonlight.
His eyes were wild.
His voice cracked.
"Tavran—" he panted, swallowing air like it wasn't enough. "Xheavend is gone."
For a heartbeat, Tavran didn't understand the words.
Gone?
No.
That wasn't—
He had just seen her.
On the balcony.
Book in her hands. Legs swinging. Smiling like nothing in the world had touched her.
Good luck in your training.
The memory hit too clean.
Too complete.
Like something had been placed there carefully—
instead of lived.
Instead of earned.
Tavran took a step back.
"No."
It came out quiet.
Wrong.
Varin didn't move.
Didn't argue.
Didn't correct him.
"She was on the balcony," Tavran said, sharper now. "She was laughing."
His voice cracked.
"I saw her."
Nothing answered.
Not the forest.
Not Varin.
Not the night.
And something inside Tavran—something trained, something precise, something that had never failed him—
finally broke.
"What do you mean, gone?" Tavran asked, and even his voice sounded wrong—too calm, too dangerous.
Varin shook his head hard, like he could shake the truth into something else.
"Her room," he said. "The window—open. The bed—untouched. Icardà tried to track her—nothing. Rezorin's already searching the docks."
He swallowed again.
"But she's not here."
The Hellbound wind shifted.
That sick-sweet scent drifted in, faint as a memory and twice as cruel.
Tavran's hands clenched.
Not in anger.
In refusal.
Then, somewhere deep inside the story—beneath the laughter, beneath the masks, beneath the careful plates of food and the games and the brief illusion of safety—
something clicked.
A lock opening.
A nightmare remembering its way back.
And now, my little nightmares—
it's time we switch to Xheavend.