The streets were near-empty when they stepped out, the rain having chased away the vendors and night-strollers. Lanterns swayed in the wind, throwing pale orange halos that distorted as water streamed down their glass.
Amina led without looking back, her stride unbroken. Every so often, she'd cut into a side alley so narrow that Ishan's shoulder brushed brick, the smell of damp stone and rusted iron thick in the air.
"You're not going to tell me where we're going?" he finally asked, stepping over a gutter where water ran black.
"If I told you, you'd think twice," she said. "And I can't have you thinking twice."
She turned sharply, ducking under a half-collapsed archway, and the world changed.
They were in an older part of the city — older even than the archives Ishan had seen. The stones here were uneven, patched with moss, and faint symbols had been carved into the walls. Symbols that pulsed faintly, as though remembering an energy they hadn't felt in years.
"This place…" Ishan trailed off. "It feels—"
"Alive?" Amina supplied without turning. "It is. Or it was. You'll see."
They reached a heavy door set into a sunken alcove. Amina placed her palm against it, whispered something too soft for Ishan to catch, and the door gave a low groan before swinging inward.
The air inside was warmer, touched with the scent of oil lamps and something sharper — iron, maybe. The room beyond was vast, far larger than the building above could have suggested.
And it wasn't empty.
Half a dozen figures stood in a loose circle. Some wore hoods, others plain clothes, but all of them turned as Amina entered. Ishan felt the weight of their stares, as though each was measuring him, assessing what kind of trouble — or asset — he might be.
"A recruit?" one of them asked.
"Maybe," Amina said. "Depends if he's ready to stop asking questions and start listening."
A tall man stepped forward, his face hidden in the shadow of his hood. "You brought him here. That means you think he can handle it. But does *he* think so?"
Ishan didn't answer immediately. His mind was a storm of questions — who these people were, what Amina was involved in, why the air seemed to hum with some invisible tension.
Then something changed.
The air grew heavier, and the light in the lamps flickered — not from wind, but from a ripple in the space itself, like heat bending the horizon.
One of the hooded figures drew in a sharp breath. "They've found us."
Amina's head snapped toward the far end of the room, her hand already going to the hilt at her side. "We're out of time."
Before Ishan could react, the wall opposite them began to split — not crack, but *unfold*, stone peeling back like paper to reveal a yawning darkness beyond. From that darkness came a sound he would never forget — something between a low growl and the grinding of metal on bone.
The tall man's voice was calm, almost resigned. "Looks like your first test comes sooner than we thought."
Something moved in the blackness.
Something with too many eyes.