Violet warmed against his wrist.

  ANCHOR SIGNATURE: LOCATED

  Aydin’s head turned a fraction.

  Located where.

  A beat, then the answer came back cold and exact.

  CORE CRYSTAL CHAMBER: PROBABLE

  PATH CONFIDENCE: 81%

  His pulse jumped.

  So you actually found it.

  AFFIRMATIVE

  Aydin waited until the corridor narrowed and the others had no choice but to listen to him or step somewhere stupid.

  The walls here had once been dressed stone, clean-cut and deliberate, but the dungeon had folded them inward until one side leaned over the other at a bad angle. Crystal runoff had sealed half an old arch and bubbled around a row of iron pipe couplings. Sand had collected in the seams, enough for Aydin to feel the faint pull of it at his cuffs.

  He stopped and held up one hand.

  Lys stopped with him, crossbow already half-raised. Rand nearly walked into both of them and caught himself with a muttered curse. Khalen did not say anything. Therrin just looked from Aydin to the walls and waited.

  Aydin cleared his throat.

  “I think I can get us there.”

  Rand blinked. “To where.”

  “The core,” Aydin said.

  Four sets of eyes settled on him.

  Aydin kept his eyes on the sand along the wall while he talked, because if he looked directly at Khalen he was going to sound guilty, and if he sounded guilty the whole thing would get harder.

  “Three days down here with nothing but sand and bad decisions,” he said, “I started noticing the sand carries. Not everything, not cleanly. But enough. Where the routes thin. Where movement keeps feeding through. Where the busy paths keep coming from. I can’t see the whole place, but I think I can trace where the center sits.”

  Violet warmed against his wrist.

  PARTIAL TRUTH DEPLOYED

  DECEPTION RISK: ACCEPTABLE

  Aydin resisted the urge to sigh.

  Rand stared at him. “You learned to do all that in three days.”

  “I learned to not die in three days,” Aydin said. “This came with it.”

  Lys’s eyes stayed on him a beat longer than usual, measuring whether this was confidence or fever.

  Therrin tipped his head. “You can feel traffic through the sand.”

  “Something like that.”

  Khalen raised one eyebrow. His mouth opened a fraction like he was about to ask the real question, the one sitting underneath all of it. Then he closed it again. The corner of his mouth twitched.

  “Well then,” he said, stepping a half pace aside with a small, almost mocking bow. “Lead the way.”

  Rand made a face. “That’s it. We’re trusting sand religion now.”

  “We were already trusting you,” Lys said.

  Rand looked offended. “That is different.”

  “Why.”

  “Because I’m a person.”

  Aydin pointed down the corridor. “Then try acting like one and stay quiet.”

  Rand snorted, but he shut up, which counted as growth.

  Aydin moved.

  He kept one palm low near the wall and let the sand answer in tiny ways, not enough to show, just enough to feel. Violet’s map sat behind his eyes like a pressure sketch, never complete, always updating. He still hated how useful she was.

  The route bent through an old service street that had once carried something heavier than feet. The floor kept changing under them, from cobble to poured stone to iron plate half-swallowed by crystal. Pipes ran through the walls in grouped lines, some burst open and fossilized in yellow-white bloom, some still intact and humming faintly with old pressure. Twice Aydin shifted them off the cleaner lane and into narrower cuts that looked worse but felt safer.

  Rand noticed the second time.

  “That one was faster.”

  “It was louder,” Aydin said.

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  “To who.”

  Aydin did not bother looking back. “The things trying to eat us.”

  Therrin, a few steps behind, touched the wall in passing. “He’s right. That pipe seam carries.”

  Rand muttered something rude under his breath and kept coming.

  The first fight found them at a split where the street folded into itself.

  One route opened broad and inviting under a cracked balcony fused to the ceiling. The other narrowed between a fallen pillar and a line of boiler plates riveted into masonry. Aydin felt the wrongness in the open lane first, the way the sand lay too undisturbed, like something had not crossed there in a while.

  “Not left,” he said.

  Lys had already clocked it. “Right choke.”

  Khalen nodded once. “Take it.”

  The first Jawglass hit the open lane a heartbeat later, low and fast, glass-mandibled and long-backed, its claws skittering over stone with a sound like cutlery dumped on tile. Then a second shape broke above them off the fused balcony, and a third came in from behind through the broad lane they had just refused.

  Security behavior. Not hunting. Cutting exits.

  “Rear,” Lys snapped.

  Rand moved first. The shield came off his belt-handle in a crisp mechanical fan, plates locking into that broad curved face with ruby lines trapped under the surface. He braced just as the rear Jawglass lunged. The hit rang through the corridor. Rand swore, dug in, and let the beast spend itself on his frame instead of anyone softer.

  Khalen turned on the second one without drama. Two fingers, quick flick, fire compressed tight instead of blooming wide. The burst hit the creature at the shoulder seam and forced it sideways into the wall, not dead, just badly placed.

  “Lys.”

  The crossbow kicked once. Sapphire flashed. The shot hit low in front of the creature’s forelimbs and turned the floor slick for half a breath. It lost its feet, smashed its face into the pipework, and screamed glass.

  The first Jawglass came through the choke anyway.

  Aydin did not think. He pulled.

  Sand rose from the floor seams in a crude slab and hit the creature across the chest, not strong enough to stop it clean, but enough to break its line. He stepped in on the angle and drove a sand spear up from the floor, fast and ugly and good enough.

  The spear punched through the lower jaw seam and pinned the head back just long enough for the body’s weight to do the rest. The creature jerked once, claws scraping sparks off stone, and went heavy around the spear.

  Aydin stared at it for one beat, surprised that had actually worked.

  Rand shouted from the rear, “A little help would be inspiring.”

  The third Jawglass had learned too quickly. It was not battering the shield anymore. It was trying to reach around it, split-jawed face probing for angle and flesh. Rand blocked the bite, but the thing’s wire-tail kept lashing for his legs.

  Aydin snapped his hand down and sent a low wedge of sand under its forelimbs. The footing went ugly. Rand saw it instantly, roared something incoherent, and shoulder-checked forward with the full shield-face. The Jawglass slipped, hit the narrowed wall, and Lys’s next shot, emerald this time, cracked the stone lip above it. Broken masonry came down and buried the thing to the neck. Khalen finished it with a tight fireburst to the exposed jaw.

  Silence came back in hard breaths.

  Rand lowered the shield and looked from the dead thing to Aydin’s sand spear.

  “You can do that now.”

  Aydin swallowed. “Apparently.”

  Lys reloaded without comment, but when they started moving again she left him half a step more room than before, enough to use his hands without hitting her.

  Therrin crouched by the first kill and looked at the pinned jaw seam. “Ugly,” he murmured.

  Aydin winced. “Thanks.”

  “No,” Therrin said, standing. “I mean effective.”

  Rand pointed at the spear. “You’ve become very unpleasant in a short amount of time.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Aydin said.

  Rand looked offended. “I have said many nicer things.”

  “No,” Lys said.

  They moved deeper.

  The corridor narrowed, then opened again into another bent stretch of dead street, half masonry, half pressure-line, all of it carrying that same wrong hum through the walls. Aydin kept pace beside Lys and tried not to think too hard about the spear he had just made, because if he started thinking too hard about the spear he was going to have to start thinking too hard about everything else too.

  He walked three more steps before the next thought got away from him.

  Do other people have stats.

  Violet answered immediately.

  AFFIRMATIVE

  Aydin blinked once.

  Really.

  YES

  He glanced ahead at Rand’s broad back and the way the shield shifted against his arm as he walked, all bulk, noise, and more confidence than sense.

  What about him.

  Violet pulsed.

  RAND

  STR: 8

  DEX: 3

  INT: 4

  Aydin had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud.

  I guess that suits him.

  ACCURATE

  Aydin looked past Rand to Lys, moving smooth and quiet at the front, every step placed carefully, like the floor had to be answered correctly.

  Lys.

  LYS

  STR: 5

  DEX: 10

  INT: 7

  That one felt unfair in a completely different direction.

  Yeah, that tracks.

  He already knew his own, but the comparison made him ask anyway.

  Me.

  AYDIN

  STR: 3

  DEX: 5

  INT: 10

  Aydin blinked.

  Wait.

  He looked down at the bracelet.

  I was two, five, nine.

  UPDATED

  When.

  GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT DETECTED

  Aydin made a face.

  You did not tell me I leveled.

  You requested notification of important changes only.

  That stopped him for half a step.

  This is important.

  NEGATIVE

  Aydin nearly choked on his own disbelief.

  I gained two stat points.

  Two minor increases.

  He stared at the amethyst face.

  That is not minor.

  You are much weaker than him.

  Aydin’s mouth shut.

  Well. Fine.

  His eyes lifted to Khalen.

  The captain was a few steps ahead now, coat hem brushing crystal sand, one hand loose near his side, posture almost relaxed if you did not know how much danger could hide inside “almost.” He moved like someone saving energy on purpose.

  Aydin hesitated.

  Then asked.

  Khalen.

  There was a pause this time.

  Long enough that the back of his neck went cold.

  SCANNING

  SCANNING

  SCANNING FAILED

  Aydin’s mouth dried out.

  Failed how.

  READING OBSTRUCTED

  By what.

  POWER DIFFERENTIAL

  He stared at the back of Khalen’s head.

  You’re saying he’s stronger than I can read.

  YES

  How much stronger.

  UNKNOWN

  Violet warmed again, but there was nothing friendly in it.

  BE WARY OF HIM

  Aydin frowned.

  That feels a little rich coming from the voice in my wrist.

  HE IS KEEPING SECRETS

  Aydin looked down at the bracelet for half a second, then back up at Khalen.

  So are we.

  The answer came at once.

  NOT FROM ME

  Aydin’s steps almost hitched.

  They kept moving. Pipe hum in the walls, sand underfoot, the others breathing and shifting in front of him, and that line still sitting colder than the dungeon air.

  Not from me.

  He looked at Violet’s amethyst face and felt a cold little shiver move up his spine.

  Ahead, Khalen slowed just enough to glance back over one shoulder.

  “You coming,” he asked.

  Aydin blinked and dragged his eyes off the bracelet.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just thinking.”

  Rand snorted without turning around. “That explains the face.”

  Aydin almost answered. Didn’t.

  Violet pulsed once more.

  DISCRETION RECOMMENDED

  Aydin exhaled through his nose and kept walking, suddenly much more aware of the weight on his wrist.