The silence of the storage closet was a flimsy shield against the groaning, mechanical heart of the city. James held his breath with every distant clang of metal, half-expecting a Regulator's masked face to appear at the door. But the immediate threat wasn't outside; it was the shivering form in his arms.
Sophia's fever had worsened. Her skin was clammy, and she muttered fragments of half-forgotten songs in a weak, raspy voice. The stone curse on her hand felt colder than ever, a patch of deathly chill that seemed to leech the warmth from the air. His chaotic escape had stressed her fragile system. She needed clean water, medicine, a real bed—things he had no way of getting. His reality-breaking power was useless against a common fever.
Guilt and fear gnawed at him. He couldn't stay here. Hiding meant letting Sophia get worse.
Carefully, he adjusted the blanket around her, scooped her up, and peered out into the dimly lit maintenance corridor. The Undercroft was a world unto itself. Massive, dripping pipes lined the walls, coated in a faintly glowing phosphorescent moss. The air was thick with the smell of rust, ozone, and refuse. Shadowy figures darted through the intersecting tunnels, their movements furtive and wary. These weren't the citizens of Luminar; they were the forgotten ones, the people who lived in the city's margins.
He needed information. The Sinking Grades were a myth, which meant no official map would show them. He had to find someone who dealt in myths.
He followed a wider tunnel towards a sound of haggling and activity, eventually finding a small, makeshift market gathered in a wide-open cistern. Undercrofters traded scavenged mechanical parts, vials of glowing moss, and bits of food. They were a hard-looking people, many with crude mechanical augments in place of limbs that proper Weaver-Healers could have regrown.
Cradling Sophia, James approached an old woman selling roasted sewer-rats on a stick. "Excuse me," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I'm looking for a place. The Sinking Grades."
The woman gave him a look of pity mixed with scorn. "You and every other poor soul looking for a ghost story. Ain't no such place, boy. Now buy something or move on."
He received the same answer from everyone he asked. Most laughed. One man threatened him for wasting his time. Dejection was setting in when a quiet, gravelly voice spoke from behind him.
"Most folks have the sense to stop chasing fairy tales."
James turned to see a wiry old man sitting on a crate, meticulously cleaning a set of gears with a small, oil-stained rag. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, and his eyes, sharp and intelligent, seemed to see more than just a scared boy with a sick sister.
"You're new down here," the man stated. "Topsider. On the run, by the looks of it."
James clutched Sophia tighter. "I just need to find the Grades."
The old man, who the others called Silas, let out a dry chuckle. "The Grades aren't a place you find. They're a place you fall into when you've got nowhere else to go. Information like that isn't free. What do you have to trade?"
"Nothing," James admitted, his hope crumbling. "I have nothing."
Silas's gaze hardened. "Then you have nothing to learn. Go back to your hiding place, boy."
As James turned to leave, a desperate idea sparked in his mind. He looked at the pile of scavenged junk beside Silas—a hopelessly jammed gear-press, its metal parts fused together by rust and time.
"I have a skill," James said, his voice shaking slightly.
Silas raised a skeptical eyebrow. "A Weaver? Your kind aren't welcome—"
"Not a Weaver." James focused on the rusted machine, letting his strange sense wash over him. The Pattern of the device was a mess, clogged with the thick, stubborn Threads of [Oxidation] and [Fusion]. But it was a simple, non-magical mess. He found the central knot holding the rust-threads together and, with a deep breath, he pulled.
There was no sound, but the effect was dramatic. The thick, orange rust covering the gear-press instantly dissolved into a fine brown powder. With a loud CLANK, the fused gears separated and fell loose, clean metal gleaming underneath. It wasn't repaired, but it was perfectly disassembled.
Silas stared, his mouth agape. He looked from the pile of clean parts to James, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and fear.
"By the Founders…" he breathed. "That's not Weaving. That's… Un-making."
The old man's demeanor changed entirely. He quickly stood and ushered James away from the market, down a narrow corridor to a cluttered workshop. He understood immediately that James's ability was something to be hidden, something valuable and incredibly dangerous.
"The Sinking Grades are real," Silas said, his voice low and urgent. "They're what's left of the old city before the Great Pattern was fully stabilized. A place where the rules of magic are… frayed."
He rummaged through a chest of ancient artifacts and pulled out a bronze object that looked like a compass with a cracked crystal face. A single, needle-thin shard of obsidian floated within it.
"You won't find the Grades on any map. They exist on a different level, deeper down where the city's foundations are weakest. This," he said, handing the device to James, "doesn't point North. It points to magical nulls. To the weakest spots in the Pattern."
The obsidian needle quivered, then slowly spun to point towards a dark, gaping tunnel at the far end of the workshop.
"Follow it down," Silas instructed. "Through the old conduits, past the forgotten sectors. The path is not stable. But if you survive, it will lead you to them."
James took the strange compass, his heart pounding with a mix of gratitude and dread. He had a path.
"Be warned, boy," Silas added, his voice dropping to a grim whisper. "The Regulators aren't the only things that hunt in the deep dark. The Pattern holds reality together. The things that live where it frays… they don't follow the rules either."
Holding the compass, James looked at the twitching needle pointing into the abyss. With his sleeping sister in his arms, he knew he had no choice but to descend into an even greater darkness to find their sliver of light.