The river at midnight was a sheet of black glass, broken only by the faint ripple of the current. Kael stood on the dock, the planks creaking under his boots. He had waited for the town to sleep. For the guard to grow bored and retreat. For the moon to hide behind clouds.
The Pulse from the bank had been clear. The epicenter of the sorrow was not on the shore, but fifteen feet down, nestled in the mud and weeds of the deepest channel.
He had two vials. The first was a Draught of Water-Breathing. It didn't actually let him breathe water. It forced his body into a state of suspended animation, slowing his heartbeat to a crawl and allowing his blood to absorb trace oxygen from the water. It was toxic, painful, and gave him maybe ten minutes before his organs started to freeze.
The second was a Phosphor Potion. It would make the silver of his Warden medallion burn with a cold, blue-white light, a beacon in the abyss.
He uncorked the water-breathing draught first. The liquid was viscous, like oil, and smelled of menthol and grave dirt. He drank it.
A shock of cold shot down his throat, spreading through his chest. His veins burned with a sharp, icy pain. His heart stuttered, then settled into a slow, heavy thud he could feel in his temples. His lungs constricted, the urge to breathe becoming a distant, academic concern. The Toll.
He drank the phosphor potion. It tasted of chalk and lightning. His medallion, resting against his chest, began to glow. A pool of ghostly light spilled over his sternum.
He secured his swords on the dock. They were useless here. He took a deep, final breath of air—a habit, though the potion made it unnecessary—and stepped off the edge.
The water swallowed him.
The world became a silent, crushing weight. The potion-light from his medallion cut a narrow beam through the murk, illuminating swirling motes of silt. The cold seeped through his clothes, his skin, into his bones. He kicked downward, following the pull of his own Pulse, which thrummed in his skull like a second, sluggish heartbeat.
Deeper. The light from the surface vanished. The only sounds were the rush of water in his ears and the slow, drum-like beat of his heart. The oppressive grief of the place pressed in, a psychic weight that rivaled the physical pressure. It was a dirge in the darkness.
His Pulse guided him. The knot of Taint and sorrow was a cold, black star in his senses. He aimed for it.
Then, he saw it.
A pale, shimmering form, curled on the riverbed like a sleeping child. It was wrapped protectively around a dark, lumpy shape half-buried in the silt. The Wailing Echo. It was more solid here, at its source. He could make out the suggestion of a woman's form, of long hair floating in a current that didn't exist.
It turned its head.
The face was a watercolor blur, but the features were Anya's. The eyes were voids of sadness. It saw his light. It did not snarl. It did not charge.
It opened its arms.
The gesture was slow, gentle. An invitation. A welcome.
A voice, not in his ears but in the core of his mind, a whisper woven from river sounds and lost sighs: "It's so quiet here. No more pain. Join us. Be at peace."
The offer was genuine. It thought it was offering mercy. Salvation.
Kael's training screamed at him to attack. He raised his hand, forming the sign for Ember. He pushed Taint into it. A burst of crimson fire erupted from his palm, but the water swallowed it instantly, transforming it into a bubbling hiss of steam and a brief, angry glow. Useless.
The Echo drifted closer. It reached out a translucent hand. It touched his chest, over his heart.
The touch was cold. Not the cold of the river, but the cold of a loneliness so absolute it had become a physical thing.
Then, the world dissolved.
He is Anya.
The rough planks of the dock are under his/her bare feet. The air is warm, summer-night warm. His/her heart is pounding, but with a giddy, terrified excitement. Karl is here. Magistrate Vorlan's son. Handsome, powerful, dangerous.
"You have to understand, Anya," Karl says, his voice tight. He's been drinking. His eyes are glittering in the lantern light from the tavern. "It can't be. My father… the arrangement with the merchant's daughter…"
"You said you loved me," his/her own voice whispers, trembling.
"I do! That's why this is so hard!" Karl's hand shoots out, grabs his/her arm. His grip is bruising. The giddy excitement curdles into fear. "But you have to go. You have to disappear. For my future."
"I'm with child, Karl."
The words hang in the air. Karl's face transforms. Panic. Then, a terrifying calculation. "No. You're not. You're a lying whore trying to trap me."
"I swear—"
The backhand crack across his/her face is sudden, brutal. Stars explode. He/she stumbles, falls to the dock. The rough wood scrapes skin.
"Father said to make it clean if it came to this," Karl mutters, almost to himself. He's fumbling with something heavy, clanking. A chain. "The old way. So you don't… don't talk."
Terror, pure and electric, floods his/her veins. He/she scrambles backward, but Karl is on him/her, wrestling, his breath sour with wine and fear. The cold, heavy links of the chain wrap around his/her ankles. The click of a lock.
"No! Please, Karl! I'll go! I'll never tell!"
"It's too late," Karl grunts, heaving him/her toward the edge of the dock. "The old way is sure."
The shock of the water is a knife of ice. The world flips. Darkness. The frantic, flailing struggle. The chain is an anchor, pulling him/her down into the black. His/her lungs burn, a fire that screams for air. He/she claws at the water, at the fading light above.
The burning gets worse. A crushing agony in the chest. His/her vision tunnels. Spots dance.
Then… a tipping point.
The fight leaves.
A profound, undeniable truth: it is over.
With that acceptance, the burning… changes. It spreads, warm, suffusing. The panic melts away. A incredible, silent peace rises to take its place. The water is no longer an enemy. It is an embrace. The light above is not a hope, but a distant, unimportant memory. The pain is gone. The fear is gone. There is only quiet. Only rest.
It is the most beautiful, serene feeling he/she has ever known.
Kael gasped, river water flooding his mouth.
He was back in the dark, in the crushing cold. The Echo's hand was still on his chest. He could still feel the ghost of that blissful, final peace. It beckoned him, a siren song more potent than any monster's roar.
Join us.
For a fraction of a second, he wanted to. After a lifetime of pain, of coldness, of being a tool… this offered an end. A quiet end.
No.
The thought was a spark in the dark. He was not Anya. His sacrifice had not ended in water. It had forged him in fire.
He lashed out. Not with a Grimoire, but with his own hands. He ignored the shimmering form of the Echo and clawed at the dark shape it guarded. His fingers plunged into silt, closing around something solid and cold. An ankle. And around it, the thick, unforgiving links of a chain.
The Echo's sorrow shattered into a scream of anguish—a silent, psychic shriek that felt like needles in his brain. It was the pain of a grave being robbed, of a sacred vigil broken.
Kael planted his feet in the muck. He gripped the chain with both hands. He focused every ounce of will, every shred of Taint-fueled strength into the sigil for Aegis. But he didn't shape it outward. He held it in, let it build in his core, a pressure cooker of kinetic energy.
Then, he released it inward, against the water surrounding him.
THUMP.
The concussive blast was muffled by the river, but it was a shockwave that shoved him upward, tearing the chained corpse free from the riverbed's grip. He kicked madly, dragging the terrible, weighted burden toward the distant, imagined surface. The Echo swirled around him, keening, trying to reclaim its anchor, but its form was dispersing, weakened by the violation.
His lungs, despite the potion, began to ache with a phantom need for air. The ten minutes were up. The cold was leaching into his marrow. He kicked harder, his medallion's light showing only swirling darkness above.
He broke the surface with a ragged, sucking gasp that was more water than air. He choked, sputtering, dragging the horribly heavy thing in his grip onto the muddy bank. He collapsed next to it, chest heaving, the potions' effects fading into a deep, shuddering cold and a throbbing headache.
For a long minute, he just lay there, letting the rain of his own gasping breaths wash over him. Then, he pushed himself up.
Beside him, wrapped in riverweed and clad in the tattered remains of a servant's dress, was the body of Anya. Time and water had done their work, but the remains were unmistakably human. The iron chain was locked tight around her ankles. The links were dark, almost black, and even in the faint pre-dawn light, he could see the etchings.
He crouched, wiping mud from the metal. His fingers traced the grooves. Vaelyr script. He knew the basic forms from the simpler versions branded into his own bones. These were more complex, but their purpose was clear: Soul-Binding. Anchoring. Silence.
This wasn't just a murder. This wasn't just hiding a body.
This was a ritual. Someone—Karl, or more likely his father, the Magistrate—knew enough of the old, forbidden magic to try and ensure Anya's spirit could not seek justice, could not move on. They had chained her soul to the Taint-fouled riverbed, hoping she would simply… dissipate.
Instead, her profound sorrow had fused with the corruption. It had created a monster whose only desire was to share the peace of its own imposed silence.
Kael looked from the waterlogged corpse to the elegant, iron-bound chain. He looked up the hill, to where the Magistrate's house stood, windows dark.
His shock, his confusion, his own personal pain—they crystallized into something hard, sharp, and cold. A blade of pure, focused rage.
They didn't just kill her.
They used her. They perverted her death. They turned her into a weapon that killed others, all to cover their own crime.
He stood, water streaming from his clothes. He felt the weight of the silver crowns in his pouch at his belt. The price of a child.
He looked at Anya, at the chain.
His hands clenched into fists.
He knew what he had to do.