Chapter 7 Rathok
SEVEN
RATHOK
THE CITY BELOW
The desecrated temple swallows us like a throat.
I lead Ivalys through the shattered doorway, past broken pews scattered like bones after a feast. The nave stretches ahead, hollow and stripped, everything of value torn away generations ago.
Whatever god once lived here, they’ve been dead a long time.
The smell hits next. Old incense competing with fresh decay, the particular sweetness of flesh left too long without burial. Somewhere ahead, water drips in a rhythm that sounds wrong. Too deliberate. Too patient.
Behind me, Ivalys moves in careful silence. I don’t need to look back to know she’s there—I feel her presence like heat against my spine, can smell the sharp tang of her fear beneath the determination she wears like armor.
She’s afraid. Good. Fear keeps you alive down there.
I stop at the altar. The stone surface is stained with substances I don’t examine—old blood or worse, offerings to gods who stopped answering prayers before Gravebind had a name. Behind it, a spiral staircase descends into absolute darkness.
The Debt Crypts. The tunnels where debtors flee to die.
“Wait.” I reach into my belt, pull out two small vials. The liquid inside glows faint blue—a bioluminescent compound I’ve carried for decades. “Drink this.”
Ivalys takes the vial. Studies it with those calculating eyes, the gold flecks catching what little light filters through the temple’s cracked windows.
“What is it?”
“Night-sight. The tunnels are dark. Torches burn poorly—the air doesn’t support flame well. This will let you see enough for a short time to survive.”
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t demand explanations. Just uncorks the vial and drinks, grimacing at the taste. I do the same, feeling the familiar cold spread behind my eyes as the compound takes hold.
The darkness shifts. Gains depth. What was black becomes shades of gray and blue, the shadows separating into shapes I can navigate.
“Stay behind me.” I draw my axes. The weight of them fills my hands with familiar comfort.
Something flickers in her expression.
“I won’t let you handle any of this without me.”
I’ve fought alone for so long that the concept of someone staying seems foreign. Impossible.
Dangerous.
“The contract—”
“Says I obey your commands.” She cuts me off, chin lifting in that stubborn way I’m learning to recognize. “You haven’t commanded me to abandon you.”
“Then don’t make me.”
We descend.
? ? ?
The spiral stairs wind down and down and down. The temple’s foundations give way to older stone, then to something that isn’t stone at all. Bone.
The walls of the Debt Crypts are made of the recently dead.
Skulls stare from every surface—human, orc, things I can’t identify.
Eye sockets track our movement without seeing.
The floor is uneven, scattered with the possessions of those who fled here: dropped coins green with age, torn clothing, a child’s doll with its face worn smooth by hands long rotted to dust.
Ivalys makes a sound behind me. Not quite a gasp. The sharp intake of someone confronting something they knew existed but never truly believed.
“Mass graves,” I say quietly. “When Gravebind was founded, wars raged across this land. The dead were buried here by the thousands. The city grew up over them, around them.” I gesture at the walls. “This is what lies beneath everything we’ve built.”
“They’re watching us.”
Not a question. She can feel it too—that prickle of awareness that comes from being observed by eyes that shouldn’t exist.
“The dead remember. They can’t act—not yet—but they see. They wait.” I adjust my grip on my axes. “The wraiths are different. The wraiths are the ones who died owing. They’re bound to the Ledger even in death, and they hunger for one thing.”
“What?”
“To add new names to the tally. To drag the living down so they won’t be alone in their suffering.”
The tunnel branches ahead. Left, right, straight ahead. I know these tunnels—decades of enforcement have burned their general shape into my memory—but knowledge means nothing in the crypts.
I close my eyes. Breathe deep. Let the shadow-curse in my blood do what it was made for.
The smells separate. Old bone. Stale air. The rot of decay so ancient, it’s become part of the stone itself. And beneath it—
There.
Fresh blood. Human. Male. Young.
Gror.
“This way.” I move left, following the scent. It’s faint—hours old at least—but distinct enough to track. “He came through here. Recently.”
Ivalys’s breath quickens. Hope and fear tangling in the sound.
“How recently?”
“Before the archiving.” I keep my voice flat. Clinical. “This trail is what the Ledger Master wants us to find. What he wants us to follow.”
“A trap.”
“Maybe. Probably.” I glance back at her. The night-sight has painted her in shades of blue and gray, softened the sharp angles of her face, and made her look almost otherworldly. “But it’s the only trail we have. And we need to know what he wants us to see.”
We move deeper. The tunnels narrow, widen, twist in ways that make no sense. Time loses meaning down here—there’s no sun, no sky, just the endless bone corridors and the growing weight of the dead pressing against my skull.
I find the first sign fifty paces in.
A scrap of cloth snagged on a jutting rib. I recognize the fabric—common stuff, the kind a working-class debtor would wear. I hold it up, let Ivalys see.
Her jaw sets. Recognition flashing in those amber-flecked depths.
“His shirt. That’s his shirt.”
Another twenty paces. A smear of blood on the wall. Still tacky. More recent than it should be if the archiving happened hours ago.
Planted. The realization settles like ice in my gut. Someone placed this trail. Made it fresh. Made it feel like hope when hope is the last thing we should be feeling.
I open my mouth to warn her—
The screaming starts.