CHAPTER 675: THE RIVER YOU STILL CARRY (4)

"Alright," he said. "Listen to your feet."

Rodion laid blue pulse lines along the stone, waist-high and soft—more metronome than fence. They pulsed in time with the Whiteways’ sigh. It made the room behave. It made men remember they had an inside.

"Front line holds," he said. "Second sees over shoulders, not around. Third is for bite, not for theater. Archers, you loft when the lights lift. If you can’t see the lift, watch Thalatha’s hand. She is your sky."

At that, Thalatha’s chin tipped a hair. She did not look at him. She did not need to.

A faint clatter sounded in the corridor to their left. Not a rush. A test. Mikhailis turned his head the way cats do, not with fear but with the desire to understand. A pair of Bone-Gnats scuttled around the corner like thieves with tiny bells in their bones. Behind them, a Gaunt—long limbs, shoulder blades like wings under skin that had forgotten to belong to anyone.

"Perfect," he said. "Practice."

He didn’t raise a hand. He didn’t need to. The front shield slid an inch, letting the Gnats see a hole that wasn’t there. One Gnat leaped for it. A Tanglebeetle’s line snapped out—polite lightning, blue and straight—and caught the little thing mid-air, stretching just enough to be rude. The line sang on the return, and the Gnat smacked neatly into a waiting cone that fell from nowhere. Silk set. Frost kissed. Ember tapped. The cone went hard with a crk that sounded satisfied.

The Gaunt tried to use the moment to run the rim. A spear point came up from the second rank like a remark inserted at the right time in a conversation. It didn’t stab. It pressed. The Gaunt’s knee faltered. A Scurabon’s sickle flicked—tap at the wrist, tap at the knee—and the thing folded in on itself like a badly made chair.

Two archers lofted at the crest of the lamp’s swell—two clean arcs. One arrow landed not on the Gaunt but behind it, where the floor sloped. The thing tried to jump forward, thought better of it, and then took the second arrow in the scapula because hesitation is expensive. It crumbled without a speech.

The liches did not hurry. They stepped in with their worklight crowns and lifted the clean hearts with fingers like tweezers. The Myco-Archivist sniffed, tapped twice, and each heart went to the right place. No one snatched. No one bragged. A small squad of archers rose obediently from the sweepings—a quiet dividend.

Mikhailis realized his shoulders had climbed again. He made them go down. See? he told the part of himself that loved the train wreck. It doesn’t have to be a calamity every five minutes. We can have competence. We can have boring.

He turned his head and found Thalatha watching his hands, not his face. She was cataloguing where he put his attention, where he didn’t. He spread his fingers once and shook them out, a habit he’d picked up from a surgeon, and then tucked them back against his belt so they’d stop confessing.

"Again," he said, because practice was a prayer.

Another pair of Gnats came. This time the archers waited a heartbeat longer. The cones fell not where the Gnats were, but where they would land if they were greedy. The Gnats were, in fact, greedy. They leaped into their own prisons with tiny offended clicks. The Crymber Twins sealed them with almost lazy grace—no smoke, no show.

He nodded. "Good." He let himself breathe.

He could feel the formation tighten into itself—not in fear, but in trust. Each lane knew who would be there when the wind shifted. You could hear it in how weapons settled, how silk stopped buzzing and started humming, how even the liches’ crowns held a steady, dull library glow.

He lifted his chin. "We move on my hand."

He raised it, palm out. The blue lines pulsed in sync. He felt the map in his bones, not in the light anymore. He felt the way the Whiteways’ breath would try to trip ankles at the third step after the turn, and he planned to insult it by not falling.

"Keep your manners," he said, because drilled courtesy felt like armor. "No one show off. Do your job."

Thalatha took two steps along the line, nudging a shield here, a spear tip there. She didn’t look at him, but she gave the tiniest nod as if to say, they will do as you ask if you keep asking like that.

He let himself like that.

He drew a breath, held it, and then let it go.

They stepped.

They advanced in lanes, Rodion’s blue pulse lines keeping every step in time. Scattered undead broke against them like waves against a seawall—ants flanking with quick stabs, skeleton shields locking, liches slipping in to collect cores and leave only quiet behind.

_____

The air shifted before the architecture did. The light went softer, like someone had pulled gauze across the lamps. It breathed with a gentler rhythm too, less of the Whiteways’ wheeze and more like a patient who is finally sleeping.

When they stepped through the archway, the smell changed. The rot retreated a step. In its place came a dry sweetness, like a chest made of cedar left closed for a century and then opened.

Living-wood columns grew in slow spirals, then froze mid-turn, petrified while still trying to be alive. If you leaned close you could see faint rings, a ghost of sap-paths, a memory of growth that never finished. The ceiling rose like a forest crown, ribs arcing from trunk to trunk. On those high curves, murals lingered—green washed thin to moss, gold faded to straw. Canopy cities. Bridges spun from light. Little brushstrokes of people with baskets, a bright bird tucked under a leaf-eave.

Mikhailis whistled low, a sound swallowed by the room and given back softer.

"Now this is pretty," he said. "Still creepy, but pretty."

He softened his footfall without thinking. Loud boots felt rude in here. The chamber seemed to approve; the light settled into an even breath.

At the far end, a gate waited, more grown than built. Its lock was a tangle of runes that had taught themselves how to be vines. Letters curled into leaf tips; stems bent around stems. The whole thing glowed on the inhale and dimmed on the exhale, dew-bright, then dusk.

Around the room lay relic cases, most of them cracked and empty. Their broken mouths had spat dust in long tongues, and you could read small histories in those smears: the drag of something heavy, a boot’s twist when someone stumbled, a burned crescent where a careless spill had eaten into the stone. But a handful of plinths stood unharmed, each crowned by a smoked-glass bell. Across those bells, ward threads clung like spider silk—fine, stubborn, and likely to sting if you brushed them.

Mikhailis crouched beside a shattered case. With two fingers he brushed dust aside and found the shape of a leaf etched in the base. He rubbed his glove on his coat out of habit. The action left a pale print that looked like pollen.

Rodion’s Scan: probable contents—rare botanical alchemy reagents, mana-infused insect husks, preserved elvish records.

He grinned despite the caution gnawing the back of his neck. "Oh, you’re just trying to tempt me now."

Noted. Also: bio-signatures increasing in resolution. They align with the sealed gate’s coordinates.

He stood and walked toward the gate, slow enough that wards would not think he was a thief. The pulse behind the lock reached his bones before it reached his ears. It was uneven. Not the steady beat of a strong heart. More like a sleeper who has learned to breathe shallow and save their strength. It stuttered sometimes, then smoothed, as if a hand pressed down and a rule was obeyed.

Thalatha’s gaze was already there. She did not look at the pretty lines. She studied floor, angles, places where an ambush could kiss you on the ankle. "We open it, we risk being trapped deeper," she said. Her voice was level. She set facts down the way she set shields—square, no drama.

"We leave it, we risk letting someone die in a box."

The words came out flat. He did not make them noble. He didn’t dare.

He held his palm near the lock without touching. Heat bloomed in certain curls, cold in others. He blew gently across the runes to see where the air pooled. The breath rose, eddied, then slid toward two knots at the top left—cold. A second pull drew down and right—warm. Layers. Detection. Deterrent. A decoy dressing itself as kindness.

He took a copper strip from his belt and balanced it by one end. The free tip trembled, then turned to the warm knot. He rotated his wrist; the copper followed a path in the air that his eyes couldn’t see until it traced it. The lock had a throat. If you opened it wrong, it would swallow.

At the base of the gate, by the seam, he found tiny black triangles mixed with dust. He pinched one up. A moth’s wing tip, lacquered. Still faintly sweet if you have the right nose. Bait for a ward hungry for certain insects.

"Someone fed these," he said. "For a while."

Thalatha leaned just close enough to see, not close enough to be pulled. "Not anymore."

"Not anymore," he echoed.

He crouched lower, put his fingers near the seam at the foot. Warmth bled there, not ward-warmth. Body warmth. Not much. Enough to feel like a truth.

There’s a back pressed here, counting breaths, he thought, and his throat tightened. Or I’m imagining it because I want a reason to break rules.

"Rodion," he murmured. "Confirm the rhythm."

Sampling. A beat of silence. Affirmative. Irregular living signatures. Two to four. Spiking on siphon pauses. Not mechanical. Not merely residual mana.

He shut his eyes for a second, then opened them before hope could become a stupid promise.

Thalatha did not move. "If we touch this wrong, we fight the room and the lock and whoever is listening through the walls."

"And if we do nothing, we leave people in a glass throat." He stared at the vines of script until the strokes crawled on him. "I can maybe pick it. But ’maybe’ is a bad friend in this kind of story."

He stepped back, forced his hand to drop to his side.

He studied the murals instead. In the high painting, a small figure stood on a bridge of light holding out an arm. A blackbird perched on the wrist. The painter had loved lines more than faces. The hand had more personality than the person. He liked that. He let himself imagine Elowen standing under this ceiling when it was new, saying the lock’s true name and watching it open like a cat’s eye.

Don’t make that a vow, he warned himself. Bring proof. Not fantasy.

He circled the plinths once. One smoked bell had a hairline crack running from base to shoulder. He almost lifted a hand. He did not. He bent instead and sniffed the ward threads without touching. Bitter. Clean. Old. Time had made them thin, not kind.

He straightened and set a tiny listening burr against the stone near the leak. It blinked green once, then went to sleep, storing the rhythm of the gate’s breath for his return. He brushed dust over it with the side of his hand until even he couldn’t see it.

"We can come back," he said, quieter now. "With help. With tools. Not during a parade."

Thalatha’s jaw flexed once. "And if the box is empty when we do?"

"Then I will apologize to a room," he said. "And then I will break the lock anyway and steal the hinge for a paperweight."

A breath that might have been a laugh threatened her mouth and died as a tap of boot on stone echoed from the corridor. Not their boots. Others.

He glanced at the plinths one last time. He allowed himself exactly two seconds to feel the greed twitch under his skin for the insect husks and the old recipes. Two. Then he shut the door on that hunger.

Before the argument could tip, Rodion’s voice cut across his thoughts, stripped of any flourish.

Hostile mass forming two corridors back. Mixed composition—Wight pairs, probable Shardstorm Wight, two Resin Hounds. ETA less than a minute if they choose a rush. Breaching now would trap us in mid-cycle. Recommendation: disengage and relocate.

The room listened with them. The murals held their breath.