If a city has a heart, it beats where things sink.
It was like drowning without wet. Sand pressed the way water presses when it decides you're an answer it doesn't like. Kade kept the line tight, threads fixing to anything they could bite. The Mist Horse dissolved into fog at the lip and flowed down in pieces, reassembling around him with a rattle like bones in a drum.
Light bled in from bell-metal above. It came in pieces too.
Euthy's silhouette in front of him was reduced to edges—elbow, jaw, gloved knuckles on the rope. She moved economically. He swallowed grit and said nothing.
The ground decided to be ground again all at once. They spilled into a cavity where sand sloped away from black stone. A cistern once. Now a lung that forgot how.
The bells above chimed once—not from clappers, but from weight redistributing through the frame. The sound went down, not up.
The pane in Kade's vision updated.
[DOWNWELL: SUBSTRUCTURE]
Censer Interaction: active
Activation Sigil: probable
"So the Cen—" he began.
"—is the bell frame," Euthy finished. "Of course. Drop a weight, toll a bell, wake a shrine."
They stood still until the sand stopped pretending it was a wave. Kade let Instinct run. Pressure lines mapped themselves through him—where the floor bulged, where the ceiling held too much.
Something moved below. Not sand. Not water. Not the Collectors' glassy glide. It moved like a shadow of a hand through cloth.
He didn't tell Euthy. She already knew.
"There." She nodded at a half-collapsed altar built into the cistern wall. It was a circle ossified into stone. In its center, an empty slot with a shape like a teardrop cut in half.
"Sigil recess," she said.
"And the Sigil?"
"Probably inside whatever's trying to kill us."
"Good," Kade said. "I was starting to miss it."
They advanced together. He took the left; she took the right. The Mist Horse kept a weird space behind them, hooves phasing through sand without ever sinking.
Halfway there, the sand heaved. Not up. In. A void inhaled under Kade's left boot. He didn't think. Threads spiked, Duskveil dragging him sideways hard enough to wrench ribs. Something groped where his leg had been—a cluster of pale, blunt fingers that weren't fingers. They recoiled from the threads like from hot iron.
Euthy cut at the fingers. Her blade met nothing and still rang.
[HAZARD ENTITY — "SUMP HAND"]
Behavior: Pulls to submerge. Avoid direct pressure.
Counter: Lateral force; binding threads; cold.
"Cold," Kade said.
The Horse heard its favorite word. It blew vapor over the place where the Hand had reached. Frost crystallized over the sand in delicate spider-maps. The next grab came slower. Kade stepped through without giving it a second try.
He reached the altar.
The empty teardrop waited like a mouth that expected a spoon.
"Where is it?" Euthy said.
The answer came behind them—nine bells sinking a note through stone. The sound was so low it made his teeth think about leaving. The altar vibrated. A panel slid. Inside: a shard of metal, curved like a sliver of moon.
[ACQUIRED: DOWNWELL SIGIL (1/3)]
Activation status: 1/3
Remaining: Bearer Sigil; Censer Sigil
"Two left," Kade said.
"Bearer—the person," Euthy said. "And the Cen—"
The bells tolled again. A different cadence. The sand changed its mind about being polite. It surged upward, trying to reset the trap with two warm people inside.
"Up," Kade said. Duskveil turned the wall into a ladder and he ran up it, boots on vertical like they had a contract. Euthy followed on smaller steps, gloved fingers catching edges Kade couldn't see. The Horse went to mist and shot past them, reforming at the frame like a piece of winter choosing where to happen.
They hit the rim as the cistern filled, sand purling over the lip and stopping as if the bowl were full. No spill.
Kade spat grit. "I hate cities that keep secrets after they're dead."
Euthy slid the scarf down from her mouth. There was a line of blood where sand had argued with her skin. She wiped it with her wrist and smiled the way people smile when a test confirms they can still cheat death. "We have one Sigil. Two to go."
Kade tucked the Downwell piece away. It was colder than the shard from the Collector, cold that didn't leave after you let go. It made his pocket feel like a lie.
"You said 'Bearer' sounds like a person," he said. "We check the Ledger. Any targets tagged as carriers?"
He flicked the pane. The list updated. Five targets, three remaining. Two were beasts. One had a mark now—"Bearers circle"—like a clerk's minuscule spite bled into system text.
Euthy's eyes tracked the same line. "That one."
"Of course it can't be simple," Kade said. "Can't kill a thing and pick up a coin. Has to be a circle."
"Circles imply more than one," she said. "We may need to break a ritual, not a skull."
"Skulls are faster."
"We can do both."
She turned away, already choosing a path toward the market's eastern lanes. The Mist Horse butted Kade's shoulder. He let it. He could feel the Downwell Sigil like a cold tooth in his pocket. He could feel Euthy the way a good knife feels next to your ribs—perfect balance, wrong place.
She moved light. Too light. He watched the line of her coat with the part of his mind that keeps you alive when eyes lie. Something weighed the left inner pocket down. He hadn't seen it there before they went under. It wasn't the Downwell piece; he had that. It wasn't her blade; he knew its hang. It sat flatter. Metal on leather on skin.
He said nothing.
They passed through a row of shattered stalls where the wind didn't reach and smell got stuck. The world narrowed to footfalls and the memory of bells.
"Try not to bleed," Euthy said absently. "It attracts the Collectors."
"I'll bleed when they give me a reason," Kade said.
She didn't look back. "They always do."
At the mouth of the eastern lanes, the sand sloped into a labyrinth of half-collapsed alleys. From within, something dragged itself along stone and didn't care if the stone remembered. A voice—not kind, not loud—floated out. "If you're hunting Bearers, you're late."