The Witch of Fading Echoes A Fading Witch. Four Fallen Gods. One Deadly Bargain. #7
Before Selene could answer, bells rang.
Not above them.
Inside the library.
The doors at the far end of the chamber burst open.
Figures in white robes descended between the shelves, silver masks shining beneath the bone ceiling. Rain dripped from their hems though they had come from underground. Each carried a bell made from human ribs, and each bell rang without being touched.
The Choir of Hollow Saints had found them.
Ronan shoved Selene behind him.
Dorian moved left, blade raised.
Lucien flicked his wrist, and green-gold light cracked through three locks at once, sending chains whipping across the floor.
Elias closed the Index.
“Do not cast,” Ronan said.
The masked saints began to sing.
The sound slid into Selene’s bones.
Her lost taste pulsed like a phantom. Her lost smell ached in the hollow behind her nose. The song wrapped around her ribs and pulled.
She saw the nearest saint raise a rib-bell toward Ronan’s back.
She saw the white light gathering.
She saw, with horrible clarity, the blow meant to tear him open.
Selene moved before fear could stop her.
She lifted both hands.
“Selene,” Ronan snarled.
Too late.
She cast.
Not a large spell. Not even words. Just an old Ashwick ward thrown from instinct: a crescent of blue-black force that burst between Ronan and the saint.
The rib-bell shattered.
The saint screamed.
The ward expanded, hurling three masked figures into the shelves. Books shrieked. Chains snapped. Ink exploded across the floor.
For one heartbeat, Selene felt triumphant.
Then touch vanished.
It did not fade.
It was cut.
The world dropped away from her skin.
She saw Ronan turn. Saw him grab her hand. Saw his fingers close around hers so tightly his knuckles went pale.
She felt nothing.
No pressure.
No warmth.
No skin.
Her own hand might have belonged to someone else.
Ronan’s mouth formed her name.
She heard it, but the sound reached her from far away.
Selene.
She stared at his hand around hers and broke in a place no one could see.
No taste. No smell. No touch.
The world was leaving her one door at a time.
The Choir closed in beneath the ceiling of hanging bones.
Then their leader stepped forward.
Mother Seraphine Vale wore white robes embroidered with silver thorns. Her mask was shaped like a saint’s face, serene and eyeless. Slowly, with ritual grace, she removed it.
She was beautiful in the way knives were beautiful. Cold. Polished. Made for worship and damage.
Her smile rested on Selene.
“My dear,” Mother Seraphine said, “those men did not fall from heaven.”
She lifted one pale hand and pointed to Ronan, Lucien, Dorian, and Elias.
“They were thrown down for loving a mortal witch before you.”
Selene turned toward them, numb hand trapped in Ronan’s.
Lucien’s face had gone bloodless.
Dorian looked ready to tear the library apart.
Elias closed his eyes for half a second, as if the name of an old wound had just been spoken aloud.
Lucien whispered, “We need to leave. Now.”
The library doors slammed shut.
Every book in the chamber began to scream.
The Gods Beneath Blackwater
The library screamed.
Every chained book, every stitched portrait, every scroll in its iron cage opened a mouth it should not have possessed and shrieked as the doors slammed shut. The sound tore through the chamber beneath the ceiling of hanging bones, sharp enough to make Selene’s teeth ache.
She still had hearing.
For now.
Ronan’s hand was locked around hers.
She knew because she could see it.
His fingers wrapped around her numb hand, scarred knuckles pale, grip hard enough that it should have hurt. It should have warmed her skin. It should have grounded her.
It did nothing.
No pressure. No heat. No touch.
Just the sight of being held.
That nearly undid her more than the Choir.
Mother Seraphine Vale stood between the shelves in her white robes, silver mask dangling from one hand. Her smile remained soft, almost tender, as if the screaming library, the rib-bells, and the armed saints behind her were all part of a holy domestic scene.
“My dear,” she said, voice carrying easily through the chaos, “you should ask them what happened to Isolde Ravencross before you let them put their hands on your life.”
Lucien went still beside the ash fountain.
For once, he had no clever answer.
Dorian’s blade lowered half an inch, not in surrender, but in recognition. Elias looked at Selene with an expression so quiet and sorrowful that anger rose in her before fear could.
Ronan’s grip tightened.
She felt none of it.
But she saw it.
And she hated him for being careful too late.
“Move,” Ronan said.
The word was not for Selene.
Dorian turned and drove his blade into the floor.
Black light cracked outward. The marble split beneath them, cutting a jagged line through the reading chamber.
Shelves lurched. Books screamed louder. Three masked saints lunged, rib-bells raised, but Lucien flicked both hands and green-gold locks snapped around their throats, yanking them backward into the shelves.
“Secret passage?” Selene demanded.
“Improvised exit,” Lucien said.
The floor gave way.
Ronan pulled Selene against him as the chamber dropped out from beneath her feet.
She fell through darkness in the circle of his arm, hearing the library howl above them, seeing flashes of bone, black stone, white robes, Dorian’s blade, Elias’s pale hand carving symbols into the air.
Then cold swallowed them.
Black water closed over Selene’s head.
She could not feel it.
That was the first horror.
She saw the water rush across her vision. Saw bubbles spill from her mouth. Saw Ronan’s arm around her waist. Saw his hair drifting dark in the current.
But there was no cold shock.
No wetness.
No pressure against her skin.
She was drowning in something she could not feel.
Panic tore through her.
Ronan’s mouth moved beneath the water.
Do not fight me.
She could not hear him clearly through the flood, but she understood the shape of it. His arm tightened. His boots struck stone. He dragged her upward through the black.
They broke the surface in a narrow canal beneath Bellgrave.
Selene gasped, but her breath came wrong, thin and shaking. The water streamed from her hair and coat, though her skin registered none of it. She clutched at Ronan’s shoulder, trying to feel fabric beneath her fingers, muscle, bone, anything.
Nothing.
He hauled her onto a stone ledge.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She did.
His face was inches from hers, soaked, severe, eyes burning with controlled violence and something worse beneath it.
“Breathe,” he said.
“I am breathing.”
“Again.”
“I can’t feel the water.”
“I know.”
“I can’t feel your hand.”
“I know.”
The words came rougher the second time.
Behind him, Lucien pulled himself from the canal with less grace than usual, coughing black water and cursing in a language Selene’s magic recognized as older than Bellgrave.
Dorian emerged silently, blade still in hand.
Elias climbed onto the ledge last, one palm pressed to the stone, silver lines of probability flickering beneath his skin.
Above them, the crack in the library ceiling sealed with a thunderous boom.
The screaming became muffled.
Then vanished.
Selene looked around.
They were no longer in the library.
They stood in the drowned city beneath Bellgrave.
Black water filled streets that had not seen sun in centuries.
Broken rooftops jutted from the flood. Arched bridges crossed canals that vanished into darkness.
Ghost-lanterns drifted over submerged alleys, their blue light wavering over stone walls carved with prayers to gods whose names had been chiseled away.
Statues rose from the water on both sides of the canal.
Some were kneeling.
Some reaching.
All had their faces destroyed.
Selene inhaled by instinct.
The city should have smelled of rot, wet stone, old bones, stagnant water, bell-metal, and death.
It smelled of nothing.
That absence made the drowned streets feel unreal, like a memory she had entered by mistake.
Something floated beneath the surface near the ledge.
Selene leaned before she could stop herself.
A dead saint stared up at her from under the black water, mouth sewn shut with silver wire. Its eyes opened.
Dorian seized the corpse by the throat before it surfaced.
He lifted it from the water with one hand.
It thrashed, dripping, robes clinging to a body that had been drowned for hundreds of years. A rib-bell had been stitched into its chest. Its sewn mouth strained against wire.
Dorian broke its neck.
The sound cracked through the tunnel.
The drowned saint fell limp. Dorian threw it back into the canal, then looked at Selene.
Not triumphant.
Checking.
She had not cast.
That realization landed inside her with awful warmth. He was not looking for gratitude. Not approval.
Just proof she had not lost more of herself.
Lucien’s voice came softly from her other side. “We should move before the rest remember they’re offended.”
His humor was there, but careful now. Not bright enough to cut. Not sharp enough to hide everything.
Ronan stood and offered Selene his hand.
She looked at it.
Then at him.
“I won’t feel it.”
“I know.”
“Then why offer?”
“So you can see I am.”
She hated that answer.
She took his hand anyway.
They moved along the narrow ledge above the canal.
The path was barely wide enough for one person in places, forcing them into an intimate line: Dorian first, blade drawn; Lucien behind him, murmuring to old locks and hidden wards; Selene in the middle, with Ronan at her back and Elias close enough that his hand hovered near her spine without touching.
When the ledge dipped into broken steps, Ronan spoke in her ear.
“Three steps down. My hand is at your waist. Lean left. Do not fight me.”
She saw his hand settle at her waist.
Felt nothing.
The absence became its own kind of touch, a negative shape where sensation should have been. She wanted to scream. Instead, she obeyed, because the drop beside her vanished into black water and things with sewn mouths drifted below.
Lucien glanced back. “You’re doing well.”
“I’m walking.”