5. Aradya
FIVE
ARADYA
Irun until I can’t.
My lungs burn. My legs ache. I know I should stop the bleeding, should take precautions, should do any number of sensible things that might keep me alive.
The tunnels branch and fork, splitting into passages that lead to safe houses and dead ends and forgotten chambers where the bones of the city’s original builders still lie undisturbed.
I take turns at random, letting instinct guide me, putting as much distance between myself and the Mourning Crypts as the labyrinth will allow.
Ira Genn’s screams echo in my skull. The wet snap of bone. The terrible rending of flesh. The gurgling silence that followed.
I killed her. I killed her. I killed her.
The thought loops endlessly, a mantra of guilt that pounds in time with my footsteps.
I stumble over a raised stone and nearly go down. My hand catches the wall, fingernails scraping against rough rock, and I force myself to slow. To breathe. To think past the panic that wants to consume me.
I need a safe house. Shelter while I figure out what I’ve awakened and how to stop it. A place the city guard won’t find me, won’t drag me to the Ash Pits and burn me before I can explain what really happened in that chamber.
Not that anyone would believe me. A mourning witch claiming a dead boy’s corpse was possessed by an ancient presence? They’d laugh before they lit the pyre.
I navigate by witch-light—pale, cold flames that hover at irregular intervals along the main passages, maintained by generations of practitioners who needed to move through the Undercroft without being seen.
The light is barely enough to see by, casting more shadows than illumination, but I’ve learned to read the darkness down here.
The way certain tunnels smell of older stone.
The way sound carries differently near collapsed sections.
The way the air moves—or doesn’t—depending on whether a passage leads anywhere or ends in rubble.
I find a safe house in the seventh branch off the main corridor.
A hidden chamber behind a false wall, marked with a symbol only practitioners recognize—three circles interlocked, representing the living, the dead, and the whispers that bridge them.
I press my palm against the symbol and speak the word of passage.
The wall swings inward.
The space beyond is cramped and dark, barely large enough for two people to stand without touching.
A single candle sits in a wall niche, unlit.
A narrow cot is pushed against one wall, its blankets thin and musty.
A small trunk in the corner holds emergency supplies—dried food, water, bandages, the basic necessities for a witch in hiding.
It’s empty. That’s all I need.
I seal the wall behind me and collapse against it, sliding down until I’m sitting on the packed-earth floor. The shaking starts again—worse now that I’ve stopped moving, worse now that there’s nothing to distract me from what I’ve done.
I press my hands against my face and try to breathe.
The blood from my nose has mostly stopped, but my fingers come away red when I touch my upper lip. I wipe them on my dress—already ruined, already stained with the evidence of tonight’s disaster—and force myself to take stock.
I’m exhausted. Drained from channeling power I was never meant to touch. My head pounds with every heartbeat, and my magic feels thin and distant, stretched too far to be reliable. If I had to perform a rite right now, I’d probably pass out before I finished the first invocation.
I need rest. Food. Water. Time to recover before I try to figure out what happened in that chamber.
I drag myself to the supply trunk and dig through its contents. Stale bread. A waterskin that’s been refilled so many times the leather has gone soft. A few strips of dried meat that might have been venison once, before months of storage turned them to jerky.
I eat anyway. Force myself to chew and swallow, even though every bite tastes like ash in my mouth. My body needs fuel, even if my mind is screaming that I don’t deserve it.
Ira Genn is dead because of me.
I set the food aside, suddenly nauseous, and wrap my arms around my bent legs. The candle in the wall niche remains unlit. I should light it—the darkness down here is oppressive, pressing against my awareness—but I can’t seem to make my hands cooperate.
They won’t stop shaking.
Pull yourself together. You’ve survived worse.
Have I, though? I’ve survived close calls with the Council.
Survived rites that went sideways, spirits that didn’t want to cooperate, families who blamed me for the truths their dead revealed.
But I have never survived anything like this: a death I caused, a presence I awakened, a force that spoke through me with a voice made of a thousand grieving souls.
Find the Ashwalker. Tell him the dead remember.
The words rise unbidden, echoing in my skull with harmonics that make my teeth ache. The presence that spoke through me is gone—I can sense its absence, the void where it pressed against my consciousness—but its message remains. Burned into my memory. Impossible to forget.
The Ashwalker. Drokhar Stoneveil.
I know the name now. Everyone in Blackreach knows it, even if they’ve never heard it spoken aloud.
And now the dead want me to find him. To deliver a message from the thing that used Kellan Venn as a doorway.
Fuck that.
I’m not going anywhere near the Ashwalker. He’d burn me on sight. Every mourning witch in Blackreach knows the stories—the practitioners he’s dragged to the Ash Pits, the rites he’s interrupted, the closure he’s denied to grieving families who wanted one more moment with their dead.
He’s a monster. A weapon the Council points at people like me.
I’m still telling myself that when the door opens.
No warning. No knock. No sound of approach. The false wall swings inward and a shape fills the frame, blocking the faint witch-light from the corridor beyond.
I scramble to my feet, backing against the far wall, my hand reaching for a knife that isn’t there. I left it in the chamber. Left it beside Ira Genn’s body, covered in her blood.
Stupid. Careless. Dead.
An orc. A death warden.
The death warden.
Broader than any human I’ve ever seen, wearing the gray leathers and iron-banded armor of his office. A curved blade hangs at his hip, its edge stained with residue I don’t want to examine too closely. The smell of smoke and ash clings to him, strong enough to taste.
The Ashwalker. In the flesh.
My heart slams against my ribs. My hands curl into fists at my sides, fingernails biting into my palms. Every instinct screams at me to run, to fight, to do anything except stand here and wait for him to drag me to the pyres.
But I can’t run. There’s nowhere to go. And I can’t fight—I’m drained, weaponless, facing a man who has killed more than I can count.
So I stand my ground. Meet his gaze. Refuse to look away, even though everything in me wants to.
His eyes are the color of cold ash. Gray so dark it borders on black, holding none of the amber fire I’ve seen in other orcs. They sweep over me—assessing, cataloging, measuring—and I feel myself being weighed. Judged. Found wanting or worthwhile, I can’t tell which.
I expected to see cruelty in those eyes. Satisfaction at having cornered his prey.
I don’t.
What I see is exhaustion. The same bone-deep weariness I feel in myself, reflected back at me from a face that has witnessed too many endings. The same burden of accumulated sorrow, pressing down on shoulders broad enough to carry the world.
He’s tired. The realization strikes with unexpected force. He’s as tired as I am.
“You’re the mourning witch.” His voice is a rumble, deep and graveled, carrying the resonance of years spent breathing ash. “The one from the crypts.”
Not a question. A statement of fact.
“I didn’t raise him.” The words come out sharper than I intend, defensive and desperate. “I don’t raise the dead. I let them speak—”
“A presence spoke.” He takes a step into the room.
I take a step back, pressing myself against the wall.
“A presence that knew my name. A presence that’s been whispering through half the corpses in my pits since dawn.
” Another step. The space between us shrinks, filling with the smell of smoke and steel and the undercurrent of death magic that clings to everything he touches. “A presence that told me to find you.”
My breath catches. The corpses in his pits. Whispering his name.
The presence hasn’t stopped. It’s still speaking. Still spreading. Still using the dead as channels to reach the living world.
“I don’t control what they say.” My voice is steadier now, though my heart still pounds. “I open a door. I give them a chance to speak. What comes through—”
“What came through killed a woman.” A muscle flexes in his cheek. “Tore her throat out. Used her son’s bones to do it.”
I flinch. Can’t help it. The memory of Ira’s screams slices through me, fresh and raw.
“I know.” The words are barely a whisper. “I was there. I tried to stop it.”
“Then control it now.” He stops an arm’s length away, close enough that I can see the individual scars on his hands, the lines of old burns that map his skin.
Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body, sharp contrast to the cold of the underground chamber.
“Tell me what’s happening. Tell me why the dead are screaming my name.
Tell me—” His hands curl into fists. The words seem to cost him. “Tell me what they want.”