The darkness down here was heavy. It had weight. It pressed against the lungs like water.
Kallum lay half-submerged in a pool of stagnant muck. The stench was a physical assault. It smelled of ancient sewage and the copper tang of rusted iron. It smelled of a city that had died and been left to rot in its own filth.
He coughed. The sound was wet and jagged. Pain radiated from his ribs. The fall had cracked something deep inside his chest. But the pain in his ribs was a distant echo compared to the agony in his arm.
The brand was silent now. The umber light had faded. It left behind a sensation of absolute numbness. His left arm felt like a block of ice grafted to his shoulder. He tried to flex his fingers. They responded sluggishly. They felt like dead wood.
He dragged himself out of the water. His boots scraped on slick, moss-covered stone.
He was in a tunnel. It was not the brick-lined uniformity of the modern sewers. These were the bones of Virenhold. The walls were cut from rough granite blocks. The ceiling was a chaotic jumble of collapsed beams and masonry from the city above.
Kallum shivered. The cold of the Undercity was different from the winter chill. It was a damp, permeating cold that seeped into the marrow.
He needed to move. The Watchers would not follow him down here. They feared the dark beneath their feet. But there were other things in the deep. There were things that did not fear the dark because they were part of it.
He checked his satchel. The leather was soaked, but the lead-lined pouch was intact. The obsidian shard was safe.
It vibrated against his hip.
It was a subtle tremor. It felt like a purring cat. The Vestige was awake. It sensed the depth. It sensed the proximity to the earth's wounds.
Kallum stood up. He swayed. He used the damp wall to steady himself. He began to walk.
He did not know where he was going. He only knew he had to go deeper. He had to find a place where the silence was absolute.
The tunnel opened into a vast, flooded cavern. It looked like the nave of a sunken cathedral. Columns of rot-resistant stone rose from the black water to support a ceiling lost in shadow. The air was thick with mist.
Then he heard it.
It was not a whisper. It was a hum. It was a low, discordant vibration that set his teeth on edge. It sounded like a bow being drawn across a cello string made of raw nerve endings.
Hmmmmmmmm...
Kallum froze. He crouched behind the bulk of a fallen pillar.
Lights bobbed in the distance. They were not the warm orange of torches. They were pale, chemical spheres of bioluminescence. They drifted over the water like willow-the-wisps.
Figures moved beneath the lights.
They were humanoid, but only barely. They waded through the waist-deep sludge with a disturbing, gliding grace. Their skin was the color of a bruise. It was translucent and slick with mucus. Their limbs were too long. Their joints bent at angles that defied anatomy.
The Chorus of the Deep.
The Order taught that they were heretics. Kallum looked at the creature nearest to him. He saw the way its jaw unhinged. He saw the way its eyes were sealed shut by fleshy, scar-like growths. They were not heretics. They were something else entirely. They were biology rewriting itself to survive the void.
The creature paused. It tilted its head. It did not have ears. It had gill-like slits along its neck that flared and shivered.
It was listening. Not to sound. It was listening to the song.
The Vestige in Kallum's bag pulsed. It let out a sharp, psychic spike. It was a beacon.
The creature hissed. It snapped its head toward the pillar where Kallum hid. The other lights in the cavern stopped moving. They turned.
Kallum's heart hammered against his ribs. He pressed his hand over the satchel. He tried to muffle the signal with his own flesh.
The nearest cultist lunged.
It moved with terrifying speed. It splashed through the water on all fours like a spider. Its long, wet fingers grasped at the air. It let out a wet, gurgling shriek that sounded like drowning.
Kallum scrambled back. He slipped on the slime. He fell hard onto his hip.
He could not fight. He was exhausted. If he used the Dirge again, the cold would reach his heart. It would stop it.
He looked around frantically. To his right, a section of the cavern wall had collapsed. It revealed a narrow fissure. It was barely wide enough for a man.
The cultist was twenty feet away. It opened its mouth. Rows of needle-like, transparent teeth glinted in the pale light.
Kallum threw himself at the crack in the wall.
He squeezed into the fissure. The rough stone scraped the skin from his shoulders. The space was tight. It squeezed the breath from his lungs.
He pushed deeper. The rock pressed against his chest and back. He could hear the cultist screeching outside. He heard the slap of wet flesh against the stone entrance. Long, webbed fingers scrabbled at the opening. They clawed at his boots.
Kallum kicked out. His heel connected with something soft that crunched. The hand recoiled.
He shimmied sideways. He forced himself deeper into the rock. The fissure turned sharply. It led away from the water. It led away from the humming.
He crawled for what felt like hours. The darkness was absolute. He navigated by touch. His hands found only cold, dry stone. The air grew stale. It tasted of dust and dead paper.
The passage widened. Kallum stumbled out into an open space.
He fell to his knees. He gasped for air. The humidity was gone. The air here was bone-dry.
He fumbled in his belt pouch for a lumen-stone. He cracked the alchemical seal. A soft, blue light flooded the room.
He was not in a sewer. He was in a tomb of knowledge.
The room was circular. It was lined from floor to ceiling with towering shelves of dark, petrified wood. The shelves were packed with scrolls. They held leather-bound tomes that were falling apart. They held stone tablets etched with languages that had not been spoken in centuries.
Dust lay on everything. It was a thick, grey blanket that muffled his movements.
This was a repository. It was an archive from the time before the Scouring. It was a place the Order had tried to bury.
Kallum stood up. His legs shook. He walked to the center of the room. There was a large table made of polished obsidian. It was covered in maps.
He reached out to touch a scroll. The parchment crumbled at his fingertip. It dissolved into powder.
"You are loud."
The voice came from the shadows on the far side of the room. It was calm. It was feminine. It carried no fear.
Kallum spun around. He drew his dagger. His hand shook violently.
A figure stepped into the halo of the lumen-light.
She was tall. She wore the fitted, practical leather of a Delver. Her cloak was the color of midnight. But it was her face that held him.
Her skin was pale. It was almost luminous in the gloom. Her hair was silver. It fell straight and heavy to her waist. Her eyes were the color of ice. They watched him with a profound, ancient sadness.
She did not look at the knife. She looked at the satchel at his hip.
"The shard is agitated," she said. Her voice was a soft melody in the dead room. "It does not like being underground. It remembers the sky."
Kallum tightened his grip on the dagger.
"Who are you?" he rasped.
"I am Elyria," she said. She did not move closer. She stood with her hands open and empty. "And you have brought a very dangerous thing into my library."
Kallum looked at her eyes. He saw no madness there. He saw no fanatical light of the Order. He saw only a terrifying clarity.
"The Chorus is hunting me," Kallum said. "They can hear it."
"Of course they can," Elyria replied. She tilted her head. She looked at the bandages on his arm. "Just as you can hear them. Just as you can feel the cold eating your bones."
She took a step forward.
"Put the knife away, Kallum Vire. If I wanted you dead, I would have let the Silt-Walkers drag you down."
Kallum hesitated. He looked at the woman. He looked at the ancient books. He felt the vibration of the Vestige slowing down. It was calming in her presence.
He lowered the knife.
"How do you know my name?" he asked.
Elyria smiled. It was a small, sad expression.
"The Abyss remembers names," she said. "Even the ones we try to forget."
She gestured to the obsidian table.
"Sit. You are bleeding on the floor. And we have much to discuss before the song gets any louder."