CHAPTER 678: THE GOLD BEHIND THE DUST (1)

Rodion’s projection spun above the stone, a faint dome of cold light, almost like frost trying to become a shape. To most eyes it would be a winter‑breath trick, but through Mikhailis’s calibrated lenses it became a map with bones and lungs and memories. The Whiteways breathed in its own way; even the walls rose and fell in a slow rhythm. The model showed that breathing—corridors flexing on the beat, small pulses where ley ran thicker, ghost‑dots drifting where feet had been.

He planted his boots, hands on hips, and leaned so close the light brushed his nose.

If this thing starts showing pop‑up ads I’m uninstalling you, he thought, and the corner of his mouth tugged.

The hologram made the corridors look like veins. Some ran clean and straight like proud arteries. Some split and curled back on themselves like a scared animal. Three places glowed deeper—slow throbs that did not match the inhale‑exhale of the Whiteways. Enemy muster. Ley fork. Maybe both. The information arrived like a smell, and he let it sit before forcing it into a plan.

Cold sweat tasted like iron and mold in this place.

His eyes left the map and found the wall. A seam lived there that the projection ignored, not because it wasn’t real, but because it wasn’t a path in the Whiteways’ language. He stepped closer. The stink of rot faded a little, as if this part of stone had forgotten to decay. Curves cut the surface, too smooth for Blight tools, too patient for human hands. He brushed his gloved knuckles and a thin film of dust lifted, not gray, but soft gold that clung like pollen.

Leaves ran along the seam. Not random. Not from someone who only loved the idea of a forest. The angles were right; the veins sat where sap would want to flow.

"Elvish," he murmured, almost a courtesy, like the hall might hide if he were rude.

Rune filigree match at ninety‑three percent. Pre‑Blight Elvish origin likely. Surrounding conversion rate makes this an anomaly.

He pressed the side of his head to the wall and closed his eyes. The hum inside had a hitch, an arrhythmia. Not steady siphon. Sip. Pause. Sip. Gulp. Like someone taking care not to choke.

"Limiter," he breathed. "Or a careful thief."

He tapped with two knuckles. The sound came back tight, like hollowness, but not empty. Not a cavity. A vessel.

"So an elvish lounge in the middle of a rotting throat," he said. "Nothing suspicious."

From a pouch he took a pinch of pale powder—mint and old paper on the nose—and blew it soft over the seam. Where powder touched Blight, it turned gray. Where it touched ward, it glowed faint moss‑green, like moon on lichen. The seam pulsed once, and the green ran like a thin stream down and right before fading.

"Tracked," he breathed. "You still carry your river."

Footsteps stopped behind him. Thalatha had that quiet presence, boots that respected rooms. She did not speak. She knew sometimes words break the thing you are listening for. He liked that about her, and feared it a little; silence lets his own head speak too much.

He set two fingers on the filigree and let the tremor run into bone for Rodion to read.

Energy siphon confirmed. Irregular interval. Suggests containment integrity... fluctuating.

"Caretaker," he said, "or a prison guard with a conscience."

He scraped the gold dust from his glove and rubbed it on his wrist like perfume. Silly. Grounding anyway.

If there are elves inside—Elowen will want proof, not rumor. He pictured how the queen listened, hands still, eyes sharp. Not cruel. Careful. She held many threads and tried not to drop any.

The projection drew a light thread along the wall, ran it behind a collapsed rib, and into map‑solid stone. Another thread, one of the heavy enemy throbs, drifted toward the same nowhere. The map tried to make them pass like strangers. He knew they were shaking hands.

He stepped back and something crunched. A handful of black moths, dry and dead, wings like shut fans. Not crypt moths. Bodies too long. Finer antennae. He turned one with a nail. No rot. Not hunger. They lay in a dark ring, like where a bowl once sat.

"Old bait," he said. "Moth‑lure varnish. The wards used insect husk for the lacquer. Still sweet to their kind."

Pleased, in another life he would have smiled more. Here, the delight made a small sharp point in his chest.

"Someone maintained this after the Blight," he said. "And someone stopped."

He listened again. The sip‑pause had human impatience now that he knew to hear it. Like a sigh not allowed to be loud.

Thalatha let out a slow breath, almost a soldier’s prayer. She still didn’t push him. She was measuring his ethics more than his courage.

I can hold for eight,

he told himself.

Rude.

He touched the seam once more and pinched the map down until it sat mean and small in his palm. The cold light settled in lines easy to carry in his head. His fingers checked belt vials and a coil of silk he had braided during a long night beside a longer woman.

"What’s the chance this is a vault, not a prison?" he asked under his breath.

Non‑zero before the test. Lower now. The Whiteways enjoy lying with straight faces.

So like politics. Elowen’s fine mouth came to mind. Don’t make promises you can’t carry back.

The air smelled cleaner at the seam, despite the dust. His shoulders remembered how to loosen.

"Rodion," he said softly. "If we follow the gold thread?"

Convergence three passages over, behind a collapsed rib. The map claims no door. The map is likely a liar.

He looked up at the ceiling where lamps pulsed with the Whiteways’ breath. Take the neat hallway to daylight, lover boy. Be responsible. Report. Request a proper team with proper papers. Be boring.

Something in his ribs tugged the opposite way.

The pause came. He held his own breath for superstition. The wall went quiet, a full beat and a half of real silence. Underneath, a soft sigh. Not air. Not stone. A living thing remembering.

Confirm faint motion. Not mechanical, not pure mana. Two to five sources. Error large.

Not zero, he thought, and his throat caught.

You make me sound noble.

Charming. He wiped the gold smear on his coat. "We can’t cut here without breaking everything. If there’s a door, it’s where the river bends."

He turned the projection until the gold line lay like string across Rodion’s pulse marks. He drew three tiny symbols in the air—maybe, trap, don’t be stupid—and gave the last one a twin.

"Thalatha," he said without turning. "If there were people in a box, not ours yet, wrapped in something we don’t understand, while we stand inside somebody’s throat—what do you do?"

"Press two fingers on the pulse," she said after a beat, "and keep the knife ready in the other hand."

"Yes. That." He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, twice, until his throat stopped being a fist.

"Change of plans," he said. "We’re going sightseeing."

They set to work before glory. The Myco‑Archivist sorted the last fight’s cores into two neat piles on the stone—pure and tainted. Its gills opened and closed like fans as it tasted each, its tiny tool giving a dry tok for no, two soft taps for yes. The pure had a clean glow under their shell, like pearls held to sun. The tainted bled thin green at the seam when tilted. Sour even at a distance.

The liches stood like dark statues, crowns dimmed to worklight. Mikhailis raised a hand. "One drink. Small. No names." He didn’t need to shout. The rule had become a rhythm.

They invested with librarian patience, coaxing obedient drift rather than dragging up people. It still felt strange—the way a shin knows how to be a shin after forgetting a leg, the way ribs find their curve like a hand remembering a tool. Bone storms swirled and settled into elbows, jaws, kneecaps. New skeletons stood with quiet ease, as if rain had filled a bucket.

Shield rims kissed shield rims just so. Spear butts thudded, measured. Bows creaked once, like old doors proving hinge. The lines swelled. Their number slipped toward a hundred and fifty—shield wall, spear block, archer line.

He walked the front not as a general, but as a fussy cook before service. A tower shield sat a finger low; he knocked the bracer and lifted it. A spear point held too proud; he pushed the haft down so the bite would find seam, not slide off plate. A bow knot annoyed the string; he twisted and retied it until the whisper became a clean thrum. The archer’s skull tilted, as if approving without eyes.

Thalatha moved a pace behind, correcting the way she breathed—two fingers here, a palm there. She didn’t bark. She placed. She was buying in, but she would never say it. He liked her for that too.

"Keep to your rule," she said after a time. Not compliment. Measurement.

"I keep the rules that make sense," he answered.

"What shape is this one?" She looked at a lich whose hands moved like a careful clerk.

"No names," he said. "No plates. No plaques. Drift only. We do not raise a person. We raise the job they left. If a memory tries the ladder, we kick it down. If a crown swells like greed, I break it."

Her mouth changed weather, not a smile. "I will watch."