The spearpoint at Marcus's spine had opinions about hesitation.
"Hands where I can see them," the blue-eyed rider said, lowering his visor with a click. Behind him, a dozen soldiers in half-plate and oil-slicked greatcoats fanned out through the fog, iron hooves biting stone. Their surcoats bore a black raven and a downward sword: an emblem stitched with perfection.
Jace lifted his palms, fingers shaking. His eyes weren't here; they were trapped somewhere behind his skull, listening to a child scream in a language made of ones and zeros. He swallowed, voice barely a thread. "Where is Priya?"
The rider's gaze didn't flicker. "We aren't answerable to you! Chains come first."
Shackles bit Marcus's wrists, in a cold bruising grip. He catalogued the men automatically: old dents in breastplates; soot on cuffs; one with a healed sabre scar; one left-handed by the way the scabbard rode. Soldiers, yes—but drilled like constables. A hybrid culture, split down the seam between feudal ritual and industrial fact.
"Walk," the rider ordered.
They walked, legs trembling, heart hammering in their chests.
The forest exhaled as they left it behind. a tangle of skeletal branches giving way to a causeway of wet stone. Beyond the rise, a city unfurled from the fog: gaslamps hissing along iron rails; smokestacks spitting slow rain; cathedral spires sewn to the low clouds with lightning rods. Carriages rattled, wheels sparking on cobbles. Above the gate, a clockface turned with a heartbeat-slow tock, and below it hung a brass plate: RAVENSCAR—BY GRACE OF THE CROWN AND ENGINE.
"Victorian", Marcus mumbled. Not the museum piece. The living thing: soot under its nails and a prayer in its teeth.
He leaned toward Jace as far as the shackles allowed. "Keep your head down. Don't correct anyone's reality today."
Jace didn't laugh. "Where the hell is Priya?" he whispered again, like maybe the fog would answer if he paid it enough attention.
"Probably alive, Don't worry about it" Marcus said, because the lie had a good posture.
They passed under the teeth of a portcullis into a courtyard paved with drowned chalk. In the middle stood a statue of a woman in a scholar's gown holding both a sword and a slide rule. Her unforgiving stone eyes watched everything. Ravens perched on her shoulders.
The soldiers didn't take them into the cathedral. They took them beneath it, down a stair that sweated cold water and old iron. Torches flickered as the draft sucked air into the dark like a beast inhaling. Someone had chalked on the stair wall: FEAR THE HOLES THAT AREN'T HOLES. A guard had tried to scrub it off and given up halfway through the word AREN'T.
Cells and Bars. The smell of damp and penny-metal. Marcus filed the basics and focused on specifics: the grated drain with one bolt missing, the new metal locks, the rusty old hinge pins, the distance to the far wall exactly three paces and a lungful.
The door slammed. The rider with the blue eyes stayed. He lifted his visor. The eyes were tired, the mouth was not cruel, and the rank tabs read WARDEN-SERGEANT.
"You're in luck," he said. "The Inquisitor's clever. She likes puzzles."
"We're not here to solve a puzzle," Marcus said. "We're lost, and innocent"
"Everyone here is innocent." the sergeant said, and walked away, his boots thudding away into the dark hallway.
Silence fell over them. The gaslamp down the corridor flickered and steadied. Jace sank to the bench and stared at his hands for a long time.
"Hey," Marcus said, softening. "Breathe. We'll be out, this can't be forever, remember the AI is glitchy?"
Jace's voice scraped as it came out. "What is this place, Marcus." His throat closed. Then, as if waking, he jerked his head up. "I don't understand this... Where is Priya? And where are we?"
"An alternate history." Marcus said. "Maybe she's jerked into another mashup fanfic, or maybe she's here, but she cant recognize us." Marcus's eyes drifted toward Jace, who wouldn't even be recognized by his own mother if she witnessed this pitiful state of his.
"Being thrusted into a different fanfic than us.. That's possible?"
Marcus tipped his head toward the chalk scrawled on the steps still etched into memory. "This world isn't glitching, everything is way more realistic here, But this is probably because its filler time."
A bell tolled above them, slow and patient. Footsteps thudded measured,, light, and expensive. A key thrusted into the lock. The bars opened and a woman stepped in.
Her coat was raven-black wool, finest of the garments. Under it, a waistcoat the color of old paper. No sword. A cane of varnished oak with a silver raven's head. Her hair was pinned, not exactly to be pretty; her eyes were gray like the color of suffocating fog.
"Inquisitor Elowen Vale," she said, as if reciting a weather report. "Consultant to the Crown on matters of Ravenscare. You'll call me Inquisitor. You'll answer plainly. If you lie, I will certainly know, and your next cell will have a drain for a reason. Understood?"
Marcus met the eyes of the woman, who was clearly not a royal "Understood."
Jace licked cracked lips. "Why are we in the dungeon?"
The Inquisitor's gaze flicked to him, took in his state, and returned to Marcus. "You're the one who looks like he makes decisions," she said to him. "Names."
"wargyr wolfslayer," the words slipped out of his mouth like a habit. "He's justin."
"Ah! A wolfslayer" Vale smirked.
Jace surged to the bars before fear reeled him back. "Where. Is. Priya?"
That earned him a clinical glance. "So, You have another companion?" Vale said. "Well, whoever you're so adamant on finding, We have not caught.."
"We don't have any companion," Marcus lied. "He's lost his senses after losing his family"
"I see, quite sensitive then, Isn't he?" Vale walked to Jace, putting a finger under his chin to lift his face up. "Your sensitive friend over here, seems like you love him, don't you? Mr. Wolfslayer."
Jace made a sound that was part laugh, part choke. "Priya..."
"Then, You have a chance to save him" Vale said. "But, that will depend heavily on your capabilities."
"My capabilities?" Marcus whispered.
Vale's eyes warmed by a fraction. "Everyone respects a man who knows how to use his brain."
She tapped the cane against the bars, once. "Tell me about it, Mr. wargyr"
At the sound of the tap, a man entered, an hourglass in his hands.
Jace flinched hard enough to rattle the bench. Marcus stepped in, not because Jace needed rescuing but because he did.
"You will answer this before the hourglass runs empty" Vale said. "So, do,and perhaps you'll see the sun again"
"And, What if i don't?," Marcus said.
"Fail, and your bones will rot under Ravenscar." Vale said. "Hesitation kills more surely than malice. You better use that thing in your head, with no hesitiation"
Vale's mouth gave the ghost of a nod. "A raven leaves the Tower of the Crown at dawn, flying due east at twenty miles an hour. A second raven leaves an hour later from a perch forty miles to the east, flying due west at thirty miles an hour."
"Mathematics?" Marcus mumbled.
"They pass over a man in the fog who cannot see them." Vale continued, with a smirk, swaying her cane, with a pause, she leaned on the cane and began to pace, small precise ellipses of thought in motion. "How long after the first raven's departure do they meet?, You have some time, Mr. wolfslayer" She flipped the hourglass, the sand hissing down.
Marcus's brain clicked into gear. The problem was simple enough if you stripped the poetry out of it only including distance, speed, closing rate.
"They're forty miles apart," he murmured. "First one covers twenty before the second even starts, so…" His lips moved soundlessly, counting. "They're twenty miles apart when both are moving. Closing at fifty an hour. Twenty divided by fifty, two-fifths of an hour…"
His eyes flicked up to Vale's. "Twenty-four minutes after the second raven leaves. Which means an hour and twenty-four minutes after the first."
The sand was only halfway down.
Vale stopped pacing. She didn't smile, her face was too economical for that—but something in her shoulders shifted, almost approval.
"Correct, Absolutely correct, Mr. wolfslayer" she said.
Jace looked up, hope flickering like a candle in draft. "So you'll let us go?"
"No," Vale said, with a smile. "I said you might see the sun again. I did not say today or anytime soon." She tapped her cane once more. "You're still my guests. And i like to keep my guests where I can find them."
She turned and left. The hourglass-bearer followed. The lock clicked shut behind them.
Silence returned but heavier now.
Jace muttered, "Guess that was pointless." His shoulder slumping.
Marcus leaned back against the wall, but his eyes weren't on Jace. They were on the bench Vale had brushed past. A faint scrape mark in the dust caught his attention, as if it had been moved and replaced recently.
He crouched, fingers brushing the edge, then wedged his boot heel against it. With a grunt, he levered the plank up just enough to get his hand under.
Something wrapped in oiled cloth sat in the hollow space. Marcus pulled it free. The bundle was thin, flat, and warm from the stone.
"What is it?" Jace whispered.
Marcus unwrapped it. Inside was a sheaf of yellowed paper. The ink on the top page was neat, deliberate.
The Raven's Crown – Plot Notes, Draft 17Marcus and Jace are captured at Ravenscar. Interrogation by Inquisitor Selwyn.They attempt escape.
"This must be the replacement of the console"
Marcus flipped to the next page.
The Inquisitor leaves. They find the hidden key beneath the bench.
He stopped. Slowly, he reached under the bench again, this time his fingers closed around cold iron.
When he looked at Jace, there was no smile. "We're not staying," Marcus said.
The key was old brass, teeth worn smooth by decades of use. Marcus turned it in his hand, testing the weight, it felt oddly real. Then glanced at the page again.
Right at the fork. Down the narrow stair. Past the waterwheel.
"We follow it exactly," Marcus said, this is our way out.
Jace was already shaking his head. "We don't even know where that leads."
"It's out of this freaking dungeon." Marcus said, slipping the papers inside his coat. He fitted the key into the lock. It turned with a soft click, loud in the silence.
They stepped into the corridor. Torchlight guttered in the damp air, their shadows stretching behind them. Every footfall sounded too loud.
The first fork came almost immediately. Marcus didn't hesitate, taking the right turn, jace followed behind him.
The narrow stair was colder than the cell had been, slick with moss. Water dripped somewhere below. The roar of a waterwheel grew until it filled the passage, then receded as they passed it, the air tasting faintly of rust and algae.
At the bottom of another page, new ink bled into the paper as Marcus read. Jesus. He swore under his breath.
Through the second arch, there will be a door that doesn't belong.
They emerged into the open air. The fog was thicker here, curling between black stone pillars. The second arch loomed ahead, the carvings above it half-swallowed by shadow.
And there it was, just as the script promised, wedged between two soot-streaked wooden gates: a tall, narrow door of deep green metal, the surface pitted and flecked like old copper. No hinges, no handle. Just a keyhole.
The hoofbeats came first, then the shouts. The guards had discovered the empty cell.
Marcus didn't break stride. He jammed the key in and turned. A click like a deep exhale rolled through the stone, and the door swung inward onto blackness. The air that flowed out was not Ravenscar's, It was warm, dry, and smelled faintly of oil and something electric.
Jace hesitated. "Marcus- The hell you mean- I'm not going in there!"
The shouts were close now, boots pounding.
"Go! You suicidal freak!" Marcus said, shoving him through.
They stumbled onto slick tarmac under a jaundiced sodium lamp. The walls on either side were brick, graffiti curling in languages they didn't know. Above them, a strip of sky where unfamiliar constellations burned faintly through smog.
Marcus turned back. The green door was gone, replaced by a blank brick wall, damp with condensation.
Jace's breathing slowed just enough for him to say, "Where the hell are we now?"
Marcus pulled the script from his coat. The pages were blank except for one new line at the top:
REALITY GATEWAYS
Something moved at the far end of the alley, a dark tall figure, watching.
"Somewhere we're not supposed to be," Marcus said. "Again."