"Don't breathe loud," Asher said.
His knuckles found the seam and pushed. The stuck panel shuddered, scraped, then gave. Paint flaked off in long curls and fell on black stone.
Something waited beyond the door. He felt it. Not a feeling he liked.
"Why did everything have to be difficult," he thought. His mouth tasted dry. He tried to swallow, and it didn't help.
Juno edged close. "You good?"
"Fine," Asher said. His hand found the key in his pocket. The one Tiffany had brought. Cold. It felt too cold for a place buried this deep.
He blinked. Twice.
"Use it," he told Juno.
"Why me?"
"You've got the bolder shoulders," Asher said with a huge evil grin. "If something jumps out you can best handle it."
Juno's mouth twitched like he wanted to argue. He didn't. He took the key and slid it into the swollen lock. The tumblers clicked, loud in the dead hall, and the hidden door unsealed with a long groan.
Stairs led into black.
Air rolled up from the throat of the stair. Wet-stone and mold and that sweet, wrong note like old blood left in a bucket too long.
Ryvak lifted the lantern. The flame guttered, then steadied with a small stubborn sound. "Cute," he said. "Haunted stairs. Damn."
"We go," Raven said. Her voice was soft. It still cut.
No one fought her. Juno moved first, careful on the slick steps. Tiffany came next, small and tight, the bow unstrung but her hand near the quiver out of stubborn habit. Raven followed with both long knives she favored, blades low. Ryvak took the lantern and tried to look brave. Asher went last.
A few minutes later, the door rolled shut behind them. The sound chased the light away. It might have been paranoia, but Asher thought he saw someone slip in after them.
Step after step. The stair wound down like a drill into bone. Their breathing turned into a rhythm he didn't love—four in front, him behind, the flame wobbling in Ryvak's hand. The light threw bad shadows, long and wrong on the curved wall.
He counted shadows because that's what he did when places felt like this. One at each heel. One at each palm. One at the chest. One at the spine. The Stone warmed, slow and patient, as if saying yes, yes, I'm here. He ignored it, like always. It clung anyway.
The stairs ended in a narrow hall.
A door sat at the far end. Not a door. A wall pretending to be a door. Iron straps sunk into stone. Plate thick enough to stop a ram. The kind of thing the Empire would spend a year arguing about how to budget, then build anyway with locking buckles and a speech.
Juno tested the handle. "Sealed."
Ryvak swung the lantern toward the wall and almost smacked into Juno's back. "Warn a guy," he muttered.
"Shh," Raven said.
Silence held. Their breath came back at them as if the hall didn't like losing air.
"I see writing," Tiffany said, tentative, as if the words might mind the sound. "There."
On the left wall, shallow letters had been scratched into the stone. The script had the tired angle of something made by a hand that knew pain.
Blood to open the door.
Ryvak's face went flat. "Of course it does."
"Step back," Juno said.
He dragged a gauntlet knuckle across his index finger. The cut welled fast, clean, bright. He pressed it to the lock. The iron drank like it had been thirsty for a while. Something inside the wall woke. A hidden bar slid with a noise like teeth scraping.
The door grudged open. Wind moved for the first time in years.
Beyond, the hall widened into a long chamber with a waist-high stone well sunk into the floor, wide and black enough to swallow a man. Opposite, an archway opened into deeper dark. The stone around the arch had a different pattern to it—older, he thought. Or meaner.
They gathered at the well. The lantern light never touched the water. It just died on it.
Tiffany tied a line and lowered a bit of iron. It touched with a sound that didn't match water. She tugged back up. Nothing clung. Nothing changed.
"Waste," Juno said. "Leave it."
They crossed to the arch.
Raven halted at the threshold. "Prepare," she said.
Three things happened together. Asher planted anchors of shadows. Tiffany's bow went up fast, her hands suddenly calm. The world took a breath that did not belong to them.
And the Guardian stepped out of the dark.
It came heavy—plate warped by heat, a shield broad enough to be a door ripped from hinges, a spiked flail sleeping in its fist until it didn't sleep at all. Three sunken holes glowed in the ruined helm. Not eyes, exactly. Not anything he wanted to name.
The chain screamed as it swung.
"Asher, right!" Ryvak yelled.
Asher dove and went left. The flail blurred past his ear and chewed a crater into the wall. Stone teeth rattled across the floor. He felt the wind of it in his hair. He felt the weight of it in his ribs a heartbeat later as the shield punched him without ceremony.
He hit stone, hard. The Stone at his spine flared like a brand. He tasted copper and cheap soap and the old sweat trapped in his collar. Stiff collars. Empire special. Great for parades and ceremonies. Not so good for actual combat.
He got up desperately.
Tiffany's arrows zipped in quick triplets—chest, throat seam, visor slit. Each struck true. Each bounced off the armor, with a load metalic cling.
She hissed through her teeth, threw the bow, and drew a small dagger. She went low.
Juno crashed in with his gauntlets like hammers. His first hit dented the breastplate. His second staggered the thing a step. The Guardian didn't care. It drove its shield flat into Juno's shoulder. Bone almost cracked. Juno flew back seven feet and dropped to a knee and bit pain. He didn't scream. He just breathed hard and stood again.
Ryvak came in on the other side with a mace that looked stolen from a museum. He swung in tight fours at the joint of the helmet and the pauldron. One blow skidded, the second slipped, the third landed with a thud that sent a black spray out from under the rim. The Guardian's helm twisted a finger's width.
It turned to him.
"Asher," Raven said. No shouting. No panic. Just a line of sound standing very straight.
He answered without words. He let his vision slip into the thing the Stone liked. Threads. They came slow, as if dragged from cold water, thin and gray in the lantern stink. One at the elbow. One at the hip. One at the neck seam where the broken helm locked into the collar. Not many. Enough.
He moved toward the elbow.
The flail came first, lazy now, like the Guardian had measured them. The ball whispered past his hair. He stepped in on the swing and cut the chain. Sparks. No give. He adjusted by half a step and slashed the link that looked wrong. The edge bit. The chain snagged. The flail lost momentum and skated along the floor in a hiss.
The shield met him instead.
He took it on the flat of his blade and nearly broke his wrist. He let the impact pass through and away instead of fighting it. The shield slid. He slid with it, and his blade kissed the seam of the elbow he'd seen. It bit. Not deep enough. He went again and again, patient, each strike at the same place, each a knock at a locked door.
The Guardian's arm shook.
Tiffany was already there. She darted in like a small knife herself and drove steel into the softening gap he'd made. The dagger found meat. Black ichor gushed across her hand, hot and cold at once. She gagged and set her jaw and pushed until the thing's forearm quivered.
Juno slammed his gauntlet into the dent he'd made and made it worse. Bone broke under the metal. The Guardian staggered.
Ryvak drew back for one more swing. "Duck," he said.
Asher ducked. The mace landed square on the bent rim of the helm. It rang. The Guardian's head snapped aside. The glow in the three holes flickered. The thing took two wrong steps and tried to decide which of them to murder first.
Asher didn't let it choose.
He stepped into the angle he'd earned and drove his sword into the elbow until he felt the old hinge give. Metal popped. The hand loosened. The flail handle fell. The arm hung.
The Guardian didn't die. It shifted the shield to guard the wound and tried to crush him instead, smart and hateful at once.
He slid away and let it follow.
"Left hip seam," he said, because words were faster than trying to explain the threads. "Cut."
Juno's good arm smashed the hip seam like a blacksmith. Tiffany cut low at the same place, fast and clean, her face pale and set.
"Back," Raven said.
Ryvak didn't listen. He never did when he could end something. He brought the mace up and over and drove it into the top of the helm not as a swing but as if he wanted to nail the Guardian to the floor. The metal collapsed with a sick groan. Something inside gave. The three holes' light went to ash. The thing swayed.
Asher slammed his sword up into the neck seam and pushed until the hilt met metal. The sound the Guardian made wasn't a human sound. The body shook like a bad bell and crashed to the floor in one slow, final spill of weight.
Silence came hard.
Armor clattered where it settled. Dust lifted and drifted in sheets. The lantern flame went thin, then licked back.
Asher stood still until the Stone quit roaring in his spine. Then he pulled the blade back and stepped away because the corpse made his skin crawl in a way he didn't want to name.
Something rose from the wreck. Smoke first. Then a shard formed out of it, black-red and pulsing like a heart you could hold. It hung in the air for a blink. It hit the floor soft as a breath.
Tiffany looked at him.
Juno looked at him.
Raven didn't. She watched the archway like it might move.
Asher crouched and took the shard before his hands could shake. It was warm and wrong. The Stone at his spine lit like a burned fuse. It drank. It always drank. This time it drank deeper. He felt the charge pour into it and then into him, not like water, like teeth. He had to clench his jaw to keep breath from turning into sound.
His count jumped. He didn't look at numbers; numbers just appeared, mean and bright, whether he asked or not.
40/100. Till evolution.
Juno pressed his hand to his shoulder and tested it. The bone shifted wrong under skin. He grunted once without drama. "Later."
Tiffany wiped black blood on the stone and didn't look at it after. "I hate this place," she said.
Ryvak bent for the lantern and winced when his body remembered the flail. He picked the remaining pieces up anyway and held it a little higher, like light could protect pride. "Same," he said.
Asher couldn't quiet the Stone right away. It breathed in his back, a cold animal trying to curl itself deeper into bone. He didn't tell it no. He didn't tell it yes. He just did what he always did. He outwaited it.
They stepped through the arch.
The space beyond swallowed the lantern light like a wealthy man swallowing wine and asking for more. The ceiling reached farther than the flame could guess. Pillars climbed, black and slick as if polished by hands that no longer existed. Lines of silver glyphs wandered the walls like veins in a sick eye. They pulsed low, second heart, second breath. Not language he knew. Not language for men.
The room's center held a machine shaped like a coffin, if coffins were hungry. Obsidian smooth. Red metal veins crawling it like a bad vine. No handles. No comfort.
"Gods," Tiffany breathed.
No one corrected her. Even Asher, who didn't spend breath on gods, kept quiet.
On the far side, a crystal burned in a black-steel frame. The glow traveled through the conduit and into the coffin's veins like oil on fire. Asher felt the charge in the air when he got close, as real as a slap. Not a Standard shard. Not any shard he knew. His Stone twisted toward it without his permission.
"No," he thought, and the Stone pressed back with small, greedy hands, a thing in the dark scratching at the door.
The coffin was clearly meant to infuse the recipient with shard power.
Juno stared at the crystal like it insulted him. "We draw."
Raven shook her head at once. "Not me."
"Because?" Juno asked.
"Because no," she said. She met his eyes like a quiet wall. Her gaze cut to Asher's spine for a breath he felt anyway. "I can see the future."
"So four," Ryvak said. "Great odds if you're me."
Tiffany snapped an arrow in her hands, even and neat, and held out the pieces. One long. Three short. They didn't speak. They reached.
Asher's hand hung over the shafts longer than he needed. The anchors cooled and warmed in his palms. Threads webbed the air around the shards and the machine and the people he cared about more than he wanted to. He could have followed them. He could have cheated. He didn't.
He took a stick and kept his face bored.
Ryvak drew last.
He lifted the long piece high, teeth flashing under a split lip. "Ha," he said, bright and stupid and brave. "I win."
Juno grunted. Tiffany managed a smile that tried and failed. Raven didn't move. Asher thought about the first time he'd said I don't want to be like him and didn't attach a face to the word him because the list was long.
They gathered at the coffin.
A slot waited on the side. Ryvak pressed the only nearby conduit crystal into it. The red veins lit as if they had waited for that exact pressure for a long time. The lid hissed open on hidden pistons, slow like it wanted them to change their minds.
"Do not die in there," Juno said, which counted as concern from him.
"Wouldn't dare," Ryvak said, and climbed in.
He lay back. He looked for a handle. There was none. He swallowed. Asher watched his throat move.
"I'm ready," Ryvak said.
He tried to smile like a brave idiot. The lid came down with the quiet of a blade. It sealed with a breath of hot air that smelled like old rain on iron.
Sound left.
For a few long heartbeats, nothing. Then red bled along the coffin's seams. The veins went bright enough to throw their shadows onto the far wall. Black followed the red. Silver stitched through like spider threads.
Ryvak screamed.
It started like a man getting cut and turned into something else. His back arched. His fists beat the lid. The sound traveled through Asher's teeth and into his spine and met the Stone there and hissed. Veins lit under Ryvak's skin, bright like hot wire, spidering his arms and throat. The light crawled up his jaw and over his temples like a crown drawn by a cruel hand.
Tiffany flinched and then held herself still. Her palm found the dagger on instinct. She didn't draw, but she needed it near.
Juno stood like a statue that had decided to be patient. Sweat ran down his temple. His hurt shoulder shook once and quit.
Raven had moved closer than the others without anyone noticing she'd moved at all. Her face didn't look afraid. It didn't look anything.
Asher breathed and tasted metal and mold and the bad sweat trapped in his collar. He thought about the south. He thought about dust and heat and the way time went wrong when the Hive came. He thought about Thorne and how the man had looked at him like a problem that could be fixed with enough will. He thought, I don't want to be like him, and a darker thought slid after it like oil.
What if I already am.
The scream cut off.
The lid rose on a hiss of steam. Smoke poured out and crawled across the floor in a low fog. Ryvak sat up like a drunk waking on the wrong floor. His breath hammered at the air. For a heartbeat, his eyes were silver coins. Then the light drained away and left him as he had been, only not.
Black veins patterned his temples for a blink and then faded like fish under water. His skin steamed in the cold. He looked around too fast, then slower, then smiled wider than made sense.
"Feels like I just fell into a bad dream and climbed out," he said, voice rough sand. "Better on this side."
He swung his feet down and almost went to his knees. He caught himself with a small curse and a grin that only broke a little. He flexed his hands like he couldn't feel where they ended.
Asher didn't talk. The Stone hummed louder, hungry, pleased and jealous in the same breath, like it had seen a rival eat and wanted seconds from the same plate. It pressed up his spine like fingers. He didn't give it a name. He never had. Naming implied friendship.
Juno reached out like he might clap Ryvak's shoulder and remembered his own hurt at the last second. He let his hand fall. "You good?"
Ryvak opened and closed his fists and frowned at the air. "Define good."
"Still you?" Tiffany asked. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to.
Ryvak's grin cut to one side. "I think so." He rubbed his temple where the black veins had been. "Mostly."
Raven watched him like a teacher with a student who had brought a wolf to class. "Stand," she said.
He stood. He swayed. He laughed at himself to make it look like a choice. "New legs."
"New everything," Tiffany said under her breath.