It became a rhythm.

  Move. Step. Turn. Strike. Move.

  The blade stayed low and ready, its flame shrinking with every new stretch of tunnel. I could feel time slipping through my fingers as clearly as the heat bleeding out of the sword. Each step mattered.

  The air changed as we went. A thin breeze brushed my face, cold and welcome, carrying a new scent. Somewhere ahead, there was fresh air breathing through the tunnels. I took the air in my lungs, feeling hope for the first time.

  A crack, maybe… An opening? Something close to a way out?

  The hope urged me faster.

  The farther I went, the more spriggans appeared.

  Most were small. Barely more than scuttling shapes at my feet. They crunched under my boots without effort. Others were larger, harder to bring down, but nothing like the cluster I had faced earlier. The cave-in must have scattered them. Left them broken and searching.

  I hoped Rob and Amelia were doing better than this.

  I was somehow doing better than I had any right to. My arms burned, my leg still ached, but I was upright. Moving. Alive.

  Since the spriggan with the medallion and ring, there had been no more items. No metal dragging across stone. Just wood, stone, claws and clicking teeth.

  Some of them tried to run.

  I didn’t let them.

  They were not fleeing to survive. They fled to warn. To swarm. I saw it happen when a small one broke away and vanished around a bend. I followed just in time to see it scramble behind a larger spriggan. It pointed at me with frantic jerks, clicking sharp and fast, urging the other forward.

  I didn’t give them time to decide.

  Both fell before the blade.

  I kept moving.

  The first fights down here had nearly broken me.

  Now, with these runes etched into the blade, I could feel a difference. Not confidence exactly. More like momentum. I moved easier now. Each strike landed cleanly. I knew better than to think it was my own skill or speed.

  It came from the sword.

  It fed off my curse and in return it pushed me forward. The thought should have unsettled me more than it did.

  But right now, the arrangement worked.

  More spriggans fell as I moved. Smaller ones. Scattered. Easy. The flame along the blade had dwindled to a weak glow by then, barely enough to paint the stone at my feet. After one last strike, fire leapt from the edge and caught a fleeing spriggan. It ran shrieking down the tunnel ahead, a living torch, and I followed.

  I let it lead me.

  When it finally collapsed, the flame died with it. The light vanished all at once, leaving the tunnel swallowed in black. The sword at my side, once bright enough to guide me, offered nothing.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “I can’t see shit…”

  I slowed immediately. Each step became careful, deliberate. My boot struck loose stone more than once, the sound sharp and loud in the dark. Ahead, the faint whistle of wind still carried through the tunnel. Thin. Steady. A lifeline.

  I asked the blade, knowing it was pointless.

  It answered with its low hum.

  I clenched my teeth and kept going. Step after step. Feeling my way forward. Time stretched and thinned in the darkness until it lost meaning altogether. When the tunnel fell silent, I sank down against the stone.

  Just a minute, I told the sword.

  It didn’t respond.

  In the dark, I checked myself by touch. My head still throbbed faintly, but the sticky warmth of blood was gone, replaced by tight, cracked skin. Other scrapes had closed too, shallow scabs rough beneath my fingers. The bruises still ached, deep and dull, but the sharp pain was fading.

  My stomach twisted with hunger. Or maybe the time. I wondered if dawn had already come. If Rob and Amelia had made it out. Knowing Amelia, she would be running for help by now.

  The thought lingered.

  Maybe I should have stayed near the collapse.

  I rested the blade across my chest, fingers brushing the small ridges where the runes lay etched into the metal.

  No. This was the right choice.

  At least, that was what I told myself. I will find a way out. I just needed to rest.

  “Hey,” I whispered, feeling foolish even saying it. “Can you wake me if anything comes?”

  The blade hummed softly in my hands.

  I did not know what that meant.

  I was too tired to care.

  I closed my eyes and let my limbs go slack, breath slowing as the stone pressed in around me. The ache in my body dulled. Darkness softened. Sleep crept in.

  Something else followed it.

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  When they opened again, the darkness was gone, yet I knew I was still asleep. Light flooded my senses, sharp and sudden. Too bright. It burned behind my eyes and I squeezed them shut, though the body I wore did it for me.

  Another memory?

  I stood in a wide, circular chamber washed in white. Marble walls rose around me, polished smooth, reflecting the glare back into the room. Men moved through the space in loose clusters, their voices a constant murmur. All wore pale togas, most white, some edged in blue or red. The colours marked rank. I understood that without knowing how.

  My hand lifted and closed around the arm of the man beside me.

  “Well done, Ones,” a voice said.

  I turned to see light settled on the man’s face. It was Lord Belcus.

  “You made it,” he said, as if my presence had never been in doubt.

  My mouth opened.

  “Sir.”

  The word came easily. Too easily.

  Belcus studied me for a moment, then gestured toward the far end of the chamber. “Will you testify on behalf of the accused?”

  My head dipped in agreement before I could resist. The motion pulled at something inside me, tight and unpleasant. I felt myself speak again.

  “I hardly think they will take my word seriously.”

  Belcus smiled and laid a hand on my shoulder. The touch was light.

  “Nonsense, my lad,” he said. “You have a reputation here.”

  My brows lifted. I felt the flicker of doubt stir beneath the obedience, faint but present.

  “Alright,” I heard myself say. “Tell me where to stand. Tell me what to say.”

  Belcus guided me forward. We moved through the chamber together, his pace unhurried, practiced.

  I was placed among the onlookers. The air around me buzzed with noise and movement. Faces turned as we passed, some curious, others hard with contempt.

  A chorus of voices began to shout.

  Chains rattled as a man was led into the room.

  He was tall, broad shouldered, his back straight despite the many weights dragging at his wrists. Long white hair fell loose down his back, stark against the iron collars around his neck and torso. Soldiers flanked him on all sides pulling chains. I counted them without meaning to. Too many. Thirty in total.

  They guided him toward a raised stone disc at the centre of the round courthouse. As he stepped onto it, the men in togas peeled away from the soldiers and took their places along the walls, settling into carved alcoves of white marble. Each movement felt rehearsed.

  I glanced up for a heartbeat.

  The dome soared above us, its inner surface crowded with stone figures locked in motion. Gods carved larger than life stared down from the curve of the ceiling, muscles tense, faces cold. Victors. Judges. Monsters. The sight pressed down on the room, heavy and inescapable.

  A voice cut through the noise.

  “Order in the chamber. Silence.”

  The crowd stilled.

  A grey-haired man stood alone near the front; his expression carved from something sharp and unforgiving. His robe was black, thicker than any other in the room. When he spoke again, it carried without effort.

  “All rise for the Emperor.”

  The body I wore flinched as the room surged to its feet. Benches scraped stone in unison. I stepped back instinctively, heart hammering, waiting for the ruler himself to enter.

  He never did.

  Instead, a small procession advanced down the central aisle. Men carried a tall frame of polished gold, a great eagle spreading its wings at the top. A strip of purple cloth hung from the pole beneath it, rich and unmistakable.

  The emperor had arrived.

  In symbol only.

  The standard was set upon a raised marble platform at the highest point of the chamber. Once it was secured, the room settled again, every man lowering himself back into place without a word.

  The trial had begun.

  “Now,” said the man in black. His voice carried without effort. “How many charges stand against the accused?”

  A man in red robes stepped forward, scroll clutched tight in his hands. “Seventy eight, Itchcus.”

  A murmur rippled through the chamber.

  “Seventy eight,” Itchcus repeated. He did not sound shocked. Only tired. His fingers tapped once against the arm of his chair. “Very well. Present the first charge.”

  Time blurred after that.

  Names. Places. Dates. Each accusation was spoken clearly and laid at the man’s feet like another stone added to the pile. The words washed over me until they lost shape and weight. Forty minutes passed, perhaps more. I couldn’t tell.

  The accused did not react.

  He stood there in chains, head high, eyes moving slowly through the crowd. Not searching. Measuring. When his gaze crossed mine, it lingered for a breath too long before sliding on.

  A chill settled in my chest.

  What was he looking for?

  “Charge thirty-seven,” the reader called out. “The murder and desecration of the northern town of Nivora.”

  Belcus’s hand pressed briefly into my ribs.

  “This,” he murmured, low and intent, “is our moment.”

  Before I could form a thought, he stepped forward.

  “I denounce that charge,” Belcus called across the chamber.

  The room shifted at once. Heads turned. The steady rhythm of accusation broke. I felt the pull again, that tight tug behind my eyes, and waited.

  Belcus launched into his account, voice steady as he spoke of his mission, of pursuit, of a cursed man wielding a crimson dagger. The words came fast, rehearsed, as if he had been waiting to loose them.

  Itchcus raised a hand.

  “Your service is noted, Lord Belcus,” he said. “But within these walls, your rank carries no authority. Your word does not sway this court.”

  Belcus did not hesitate.

  “I have a witness.”

  Every eye in the chamber shifted.

  And something inside me went very still.

  “Of course you do,” Itchcus said, his tone flat. “And as I have already told you, the word of a soldier carries no weight here.”

  Belcus smiled.

  “That,” he said lightly, “is why I did not bring a soldier.”

  He thrust his thumb in my direction.

  Itchcus’s gaze snapped to me, sharp and assessing. His lip curled.

  “A slave?” he said. The word cracked like a whip.

  The chamber erupted. Voices rose all at once. Some shouted in outrage, others in disbelief. A few near Belcus shifted as if to block the worst of it, but the noise kept swelling. Whatever Belcus had planned, it was teetering.

  I looked back at him.

  His smile had not moved.

  Itchcus saw it too.

  “He is Veratii,” Belcus called out.

  The word spread through the room in a rush of breath and whispers. The noise faltered. Arguments died mid-sentence. Even those who had been shouting fell quiet, eyes turning, measuring.

  Belcus nudged my ribs again. Firmer this time.

  “Now.”

  I stepped forward.

  The sound drained from the chamber until all that remained was the echo of my footsteps and the slow pull of my breath. Hundreds of eyes fixed on me. I felt them weigh me, strip me down to what I was.

  I stopped where I had been placed and bowed my head.

  When I spoke, I followed the form Belcus had drilled into me. Slow. Careful. Each word chosen. I named my place. I acknowledged those above me. Every lord. Every judge. Every man with the right to pass sentence.

  I was nothing here.

  And because of that, every word mattered.

  Each careful phrase cut at him, stripping him down piece by piece, and he did it without hesitation. No pause. No resistance. The words came smoothly, practiced, as if he had learned long ago how to make himself small.

  When the formalities were done, I spoke of the village. Of Nivora. Of the accused. Of the crimson blade.

  The chamber listened.

  Itchcus’s expression tightened as my account unfolded. His mouth drew thin, his fingers curling against the arm of his chair, but he did not interrupt. He waited. Poised. Certain he would dismantle it once I finished.

  I did not rush.

  I spoke as a slave was expected to speak. Plain. Direct. Every detail laid out without flourish. No accusation. No judgement. Just what I had seen. What had happened.

  Somehow, no one jeered.

  Men far above my station leaned forward instead. The hall remained quiet except for my voice echoing off marble.

  When I finished, the silence shattered.

  Shouts rang out across the chamber, this time not aimed at the accused. Faces turned toward Itchcus. Accusations flew. Demands followed. The man in black rose to his feet, face flushed dark with fury, and stabbed a finger toward the chained figure as he shouted over the noise.

  The sensation hit me without warning.

  A deep vibration rolled through my chest and the world tore away. The white marble vanished. Light collapsed inward. I was blind again, swallowed by pitch black stone.

  The tunnel closed around me.

  I lay there, breath shallow, unsure how much time had passed. Then I heard it.

  Scratching.

  Close.