Echo Guild was two rooms and a promise.

  Weapons on one wall, chipped cups on a shelf, a map nailed to a table by four different

  knives that disagreed on north. Rhoen poured water that had aspirations of tea.

  “House rules,” he said. “No stealing. No leaving teammates. No dying unless it’s very funny.”

  Nima raised a hand. “Define ‘funny.’”

  “Not you,” Rhoen said.

  Eira leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, staff at her back again as if it had always lived

  there. She had washed the dust off and kept the steel. “You sandbagged,” she told Kael.

  “I held back.”

  “That’s sandbagging with manners.”

  He didn’t argue. The fox circled once and settled at his feet like a moon that had given up.

  Rhoen slid a slate over. “Names?”

  “Kael. Nima.”

  “Origins?”

  “Guides don’t disclose,” Nima said.

  “Guides don’t get paid,” Rhoen said.

  Nima smiled without humor. “Ech—Echo Guild pays late anyway.”

  “True,” Rhoen said. “Welcome aboard.”

  He angled the slate to Kael. “Why Glade-Way?”

  “Road led here.”

  “Roads lead everywhere.”

  “Then I’ll see everywhere.”

  Rhoen grunted. “You will if you live through tonight.”

  Kael waited.

  Rhoen tapped the map. “Three disappearances in the market cellars. Smell of copper. Sound

  like humming. No bodies. The ground shakes. We’ve been patching over the tremors with

  jokes.”

  Eira’s mouth tightened. “And prayer.”

  “Which never pays the bill,” Rhoen said. “We’re going down in an hour. You’re on the team.”

  Nima paled. “We—what? I guide above the ground, not under the regrets of the earth.”

  “Consider it a vertical promotion,” Rhoen said.

  A runner thumped up the stairs, breathless. “Master! Drakon Mercs at the south gate—

  picking a fight.”

  Rhoen swore softly. “Of course they are.” He pointed to Kael. “You and Eira buy us thirty

  minutes. Keep it clean. No Spectacles.”

  “Define ‘Spectacle,’” Kael said.

  “Anything that makes Glade-Way talk about us for more than a day,” Rhoen said. “Go.”

  South gate. Drakon Mercs wore their arrogance like matching coats: dark leather, brass

  buckles, blades etched with someone else’s money. Their captain—a man with a jaw like a

  bad decision—twirled a baton that hummed sour.

  “Eviction notice,” he called. “Echo Guild hasn’t paid protection.”

  “We don’t do protection,” Eira said. “We do protection.”

  “That a joke?” the captain asked.

  “Not yet,” she said, and flicked her wrist. The staff unspooled into a bow; the string formed

  out of nothing, humming on a pitch that made teeth remember childhood.

  Three mercs moved at once. Eira’s first arrow broke into four mid-flight and pinned wrists

  to wood. Kael stepped in front of the fifth merc without drawing.

  “Leave,” he said.

  The man laughed and swung high. Kael’s palm kissed the blade, turned it aside, and let the

  follow-through put the mercenary on his back, confused at the very concept of gravity.

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  “Restraint,” Kael told himself out loud.

  “That’s new,” Eira said.

  “Trying it,” he said.

  More mercs. More poor decisions. Kael angled every strike to bruise, not break; Eira’s

  arrows found knots and belts and pride. Nima, who had refused to come, appeared anyway,

  shouting, “Kael, behind you!” from in front of him.

  They put six men down without personal injury and exactly one insult to a mother. The

  captain spun the baton and raised it skyward.

  “Spectacle,” Eira warned.

  “I know,” Kael said.

  The baton screamed. A cone of sound hit them like a wall. Kael slid a foot back, weight low,

  breath steady. He let the wave wash over the blade as he drew it a thumb, then two—First

  Pulse, shallow, just enough to cancel the edge of the blast without lighting the street.

  The mercs faltered. The captain stared. “What are you?”

  “Tired,” Kael said, and walked forward through the last of the sound. He tapped the baton’s

  head with the bell at his belt.

  It didn’t ring.

  The baton stopped humming anyway.

  The captain did the math. He swallowed, considered his future, and chose it. “We’ll be back,”

  he lied, retreating with dignity scattered like coins.

  Eira exhaled. “You really are holding back.”

  “I’m trying not to break the road,” Kael said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it listens,” he said. “And because if I start, I might not stop.”

  She looked at him like she was adding columns. “Good answer. Reckless truth.”

  “Is there a discount for those?”

  “No,” she said, almost smiling.

  A rumble ran under their soles. The street grumbled like a sleeping animal turning over.

  Eira’s eyes cut to his. “Cellars.”

  “Cellars,” he agreed.

  Back at the guild, Rhoen handed out lanterns that glowed like bottled breath. “Keep them

  close. If they flicker, your soul is arguing with your body. Settle the argument.”

  “How?” Nima asked, already flickering.

  “Eat a fig,” Rhoen said, and tossed him one.

  They took a stair that decided it wanted to be a ramp. The air cooled and got older. The fox

  padded ahead, tail drawing thin silver lines over damp stone.

  Pipes and roots and things that had decided to be both. The lantern light hovered at

  shoulder height like a cautious idea. The hum grew louder—a very slow heartbeat. Kael

  matched it without meaning to. One-two-three. One-two-three.

  Eira’s bow breathed green in the dark. “If something tries to eat us, please don’t forfeit.”

  “I’ll consider it,” he said.

  Nima’s lantern flared. “Is that good?”

  “No,” Rhoen said. “It means we’re near.”

  They rounded a bend into a chamber that wasn’t a chamber yet. Stone announced it was

  considering an extension. In the middle lay a patch of floor that glowed.

  Rhoen raised a hand. “Stop.”

  Kael didn’t stop.

  He stepped into the glow and listened.

  The hum wasn’t stone. It was thread. A cord pulled taut under everything. He could almost

  see it.

  The fox growled. The glow trembled and opened like an eye.

  Something under the town woke up.