It’s not a roar or crash. A low, scraping, like stone being dragged across stone somewhere outside. The sound threads into my bones, subtle enough that for a heartbeat I wonder if I imagined it.
Then Rverre stirs.
Her wings twitch sharply, a reflex she doesn’t fully suppress even in sleep. Illadon murmurs something unintelligible and tightens his arm around her without waking. I push myself upright, pain flaring hot in my ankle before I clamp down on it.
“Korr,” I whisper.
He’s already moving. Shifting position with the fluid economy of someone who doesn’t waste motion, placing himself where he can see the stairwell, the fractured ceiling, the doorway all at once. His hand rests near his weapon, not drawing it. Waiting.
The sound comes again. Closer.
Rverre’s eyes snap open.
She doesn’t sit up. She freezes, breath shallow, gaze unfocused in that way I’ve learned to recognize. Listening not with ears, but with something deeper.
“It’s not coming in,” she whispers. “It’s… adjusting.”
My stomach drops. “Adjusting how?”
She swallows. “Like it’s making room.”
Korr’s jaw tightens. “For what?”
Rverre shakes her head, a small, frightened motion. “I don’t know.”
Illadon wakes fully, senses snapping sharp. He doesn’t ask questions. He shifts, placing himself half in front of her, half angled toward the dark. Brave. Too brave for his age. My chest tightens.
The city settles again, a long exhale that rattles dust loose from the ceiling. Fine grains drift down through firelight like ash. Somewhere far below, something heavy completes a movement and becomes still.
Silence follows.
Korr doesn’t relax. He scans slowly, methodically, recalibrating his mental map with every breath.
“Something knows we’re here,” Illadon says quietly.
“Yes,” Korr replies. “But it isn’t hostile.”
“That’s not comforting,” I mutter.
“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”
Rverre presses her palm to the stone beside her, eyes fluttering shut. When she speaks again, her voice is steadier. Older.
“It’s like the ground earlier,” she says. “When you stopped fighting it.”
I flinch despite myself. Korr looks at me. The firelight catches the planes of his face, carving something solemn and resolved out of shadow.
“We don’t move tonight,” he says. “We don’t provoke. We don’t pretend this place is empty.”
“And tomorrow?” I ask.
He holds my gaze. Doesn’t soften the truth.
“Tomorrow we enter,” he says. “On its terms.”
The weight of that settles over us, heavy and inevitable.
The fire burns lower. Rverre eases back against Illadon, exhaustion reclaiming her now that the immediate pressure has passed. Illadon doesn’t sleep again. Neither does Korr.
