The Drowned Quay lived up to its name—a skeletal pier jutting into a black estuary, its pilings crusted with barnacles and rot. Mist coiled off the water like spectral serpents, swallowing the glow of Seth's mana-lantern as his team picked their way past gutted fishing boats and heaps of salt-crusted netting. Somewhere in the fog, unseen things slithered, their wet whispers harmonizing with the Spire's distant hum in Astris's bones.
Jack Kaufmann awaited them in a ramshackle boathouse, its walls sagging under the weight of decades of seaweed and graft. He lounged at a warped table, a goblet of wine in hand, flanked by two mercenaries whose faces were hidden behind enchanted iron masks. The air reeked of brine, bile, and betrayal.
"Punctual as ever, Guilladot," Kaufmann drawled. "A shame your decorum outweighs your sense. This place is filthy."
Seth slammed the dossier onto the table, scattering dead crabs and salt. "Spare me the theatrics. You've got two choices: sign the dissolution of your coalition and return the stolen conduits, or I feed your empire to the temples. Starting with this." He flipped open the dossier, revealing sketches of the Shattered Spire's corrupted cores, their locations circled in venom-red ink.
Kaufmann's smile didn't waver. He sipped his wine. "Ah, the Spire. Such a fertile topic. But before we negotiate…" He snapped his fingers.
The boathouse door creaked open. A figure stepped inside—haggard, hollow-eyed, his hands bound by mana-cuffs. Noah.
Lucy lurched forward, a vial of acid glowing in her palm. "You slimy—"
"Ah-ah!" Kaufmann tutted. "Harm me, and your little truth-seeker becomes a very enthusiastic guest of the river." Behind him, the estuary bubbled, something massive breaching the surface before vanishing with a guttural croak.
Seth's knuckles whitened. "You're bluffing."
"Am I?" Kaufmann leaned back. "Your boy's been chatty. Did you know he's been skimming temple tithes to fund his sister's hospital? A noble cause. Tragically illegal."
Noah flinched, his gaze darting to Seth. "I didn't— It wasn't—"
"Silence," Seth growled, but the damage was done. Kaufmann had fractured their unity with a single move.
Evelyn stepped forward, her rainbow quill poised. "The financial trails still condemn you. The temples will disavow you."
Kaufmann laughed. "The temples endorse me. Why do you think the High Priest gifted me these?" He tossed a velvet pouch onto the table. Out spilled a dozen aetherium shards, their golden veins pulsing in sync with the one hidden in Astris's pocket. "A token of gratitude. For streamlining their divine work."
Astris's breath hitched. He's harvesting the Spire for them.
Harvey slid his infernal contract across the table. "Sign. Or I'll ensure your soul spends eternity reviewing tax codes."
Kaufmann plucked the quill, his grin feral. "Gladly." He signed—and the parchment erupted in green flame, disintegrating to ash. "Infernal ink? Cute. But I've a better lawyer."
The iron-masked mercenaries drew jagged blades dripping with dungeon venom. The boathouse shuddered as the estuary outside churned, tentacles slick with bioluminescent slime rising from the depths.
"Time to choose, Guilladot," Kaufmann purred. "Die here, or kneel and watch me remake this city."
Seth's team tensed, weapons raised, but the trap was sprung. The Quay's shadows thickened, the Spire's song swelled to a scream, and Astris's shard burned like a star in her grip—begging to be used.
But Seth, for the first time in his career, stepped back. "We're done."
Kaufmann raised his goblet in mock salute as they retreated, Noah stumbling between them. "Until next time. Do bring better wine!"
The fog swallowed the Quay behind them, but its laughter lingered.
Dampness clung to them like a curse as Seth's team staggered away from the Drowned Quay, their boots slipping on algae-slick stones. Noah hunched between Harvy and Lucy, his wrists still raw from the mana-cuffs, his voice frayed. "I didn't skim the tithes—I rerouted them. The hospital's foundation was collapsing. Kaufmann's spies must've tracked the transfers—"
Lucy whirled, her dagger pressing to his throat. "You rerouted? You handed Kaufmann a knife and told him where to stab us!"
"Enough," Seth growled, shoving her blade aside. His coat was spattered with bioluminescent slime from the estuary's tentacled horrors, glowing faintly in the gloom. "Save the theatrics for someone who cares."
Noah flinched but pressed on. "The High Priest's cousin approached me. Said the temples would overlook the 'borrowing' if we fast-tracked their dungeon permits. I thought—gods, I thought it was a win."
Evelyn scoffed, her rainbow quill flickering like a dying star. "A win? Kaufmann's been laundering temple mana through the Spire for months. You just gave him receipts."
The group reached the edge of the mist, where the city's familiar stench of smoke and spices replaced the Quay's rot. Ally tilted her head, looking with a side eye, her usual cheer extinguished. "Kaufmann owns the temples, the Spire, half the parliament—"
Harvy cut her off, his infernal contracts smoldering in his grip. "We dismantle him. Burn his allies, freeze his assets, bury him in paperwork until he chokes."
"With what?" Lucy snapped. "He's got the High Priest's blessing and a pet leviathan. We've got nothing."
"We've got this."
All eyes turned to Astris. She held up the aetherium shard, its golden veins pulsing in time with the distant Spire's hum. "Kaufmann's stockpiling these. The temples want them. Let's see how loyal they are when their vaults go dark."
For a moment, hope flickered—cold, sharp, and fragile. Then Seth snarled, "Enough. All of you. Go home. Sleep. Or drink. Or scream at a wall. We're done tonight."
Lucy opened her mouth to argue, but Seth's glare silenced her. "Now, Lucy. Before I let the rosemary plant finish what Kaufmann started."
The team dispersed into the shadows, their unity fractured. Harvy vanished into an alley, muttering about "revisions." Evelyn stormed toward the archives, her quill sparking. Ally lingered, offering Noah a caramel-glazed muffin from her pocket before trudging away.
Seth stood alone on the bridge overlooking the dam, its waterfalls roaring into the void. The shard's hum echoed in his skull, a taunt and a promise. Somewhere downstream, the Spire's song swelled, dissonant and hungry.
Tomorrow, they would regroup. Tomorrow, they would fight.
But tonight, the city's heartbeat belonged to Kaufmann.
The dam's roar faded behind Astris as she slipped into the labyrinth of Lismore's midnight streets, her boots echoing on cobblestones still slick with the evening's mist. The city breathed around her—a living, feral thing. Taverns spewed pockets of raucous laughter into alleys where beggars huddled over trash fires, their faces lit by the greenish glow of dungeon moss sold in cracked jars. A patrol of Royal Guards marched past, their mana-lanterns swinging, and she pressed herself into the shadow of a boarded-up alchemy shop, the aetherium shard in her pocket pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Kaufmann's victory tonight was a distraction, she told herself. A gambit. But every gambit leaves a weakness.
Her mind raced, dissecting the meeting at the Quay. Kaufmann's alliance with the temples, the High Priest's aetherium bribes, the Spire's corrupted cores—it all circled back to the same truth: power in Lismore was a game of leeches. The temples drained the dungeons, Kaufmann drained the temples, and the people paid in blood and light. But to cut the head off the hydra, she'd need a blade sharp enough to kill gods.
Her apartment loomed ahead, a crooked silhouette above Briar & Bane Apothecary. The potion maker's shutters were closed, but the reek of sulfur and wilted fever-root seeped through the cracks. She climbed the stairs, each creaking a familiar echo of her isolation, and shouldered open the door.
The single room was a cathedral of chaos. Parchment avalanches buried her narrow bed, quills bristled from mugs like skeletal flowers, and a cracked mirror reflected fragments of a woman she barely recognized—pale, sharp-eyed, her fingers stained with ink and the faintest shimmer of aetherium dust. She lit a candle with a flick of her Phoenix Quill, its flame casting clawed shadows on the walls, and knelt beside the loose floorboard beneath her desk.
The grimoire waited, as it always did.
She hauled it out, its wyvern-leather cover cold and supple, and laid it beside the aetherium shard. The book's pages whispered as she turned them, glyphs squirming under her gaze like caged insects. Mana Siphon: The Art of Life-Force Crystallization. Diagrams of soul anchors, rituals for binding dungeon cores, warnings scrawled in dead tongues: "The Voidwell hungers. It cannot be tamed."
Her hands trembled. She'd stolen this text from the university's black archives three years ago, after her mother's funeral. After the priests had called her mother's death a "sacrifice to Cybele's grace" and sealed her corpse in a crystal tomb. After Astris had learned that grace came with a price.
"The body is a vessel," her notes in the margins read. "But the soul is a currency."
The shard hummed, its golden threads brightening as if fed by the grimoire's proximity. She traced the Spire's map spread across her desk, her finger lingering on the labyrinth's heart—the Voidwell, a fabled pit where the dungeon's sentience pooled. Kaufmann's miners hadn't reached it yet. But she could.
If I harvest its energy, I could burn his empire to ash.
The thought slithered through her, equal parts terror and exhilaration. She'd sworn never to cross this line, to stay bound by the laws she wielded like a shield. But Kaufmann had weaponized the law itself. The temples had sanctified greed. And Seth's retreat tonight proved that even storms could be leashed.
She unbuttoned her collar and stared at the faint scar beneath her clavicle—a relic of her first and only experiment with soul-siphoning. A drop of blood, a wisp of mana, a scream that still echoed in her dreams. It had failed. But the scar throbbed now, a phantom itch.
What if I didn't stop at a drop?
The candle guttered. Somewhere in the walls, rats scratched. Astris closed the grimoire, its secrets searing her palms, and slid the shard into a hidden compartment in her boot. Dawn was hours away, but sleep was a luxury for the guiltless.
The office smelled of burnt parchment and regret. Pale morning light strained through grime-caked windows, casting jagged shadows over desks cluttered with quills, inkpots, and towers of scrolls sealed in wax the color of dried blood. Astris Doran sat stiffly at her station, the grimoire's secrets still prickling beneath her skin like shards of ice. Across the room, Harvy muttered over a contract, his dragon-scale quill scratching furiously. The rats in the walls had gone quiet, as if even they sensed the air thick with unspoken failures—failures that began and ended with Kaufman's name.
Seth Guilladot stormed in late, his charcoal-gray coat trailing the scent of rain and impatience. The door slammed shut behind him, rattling a framed map of Lismore's mana-crystal trade routes. "Meeting. Now," he barked, though no one moved. His gaze swept the room, lingering on Astris a beat too long. She tensed, her truth-detection pendant humming faintly against her collarbone.
Gretchen Bloom, perched at her receptionist's desk amid a jungle of judgmental rosemary and self-watering ink ferns, cleared her throat. "The marriage contract revisions for Prince Zaiden and Princess Cassis are due at noon. Parliament requires a drafter." She twirled a songbird-feather quill, its tip glowing with Farspeak magic. "Preferably one who hasn't botched a trade pact this week."
Seth's jaw tightened. "Harvy. You're up."
"Hell no." Harvy didn't look up from his work. "I don't do relationships. Or revisions. Or royals who think 'dowry' includes semi-sentient dungeon cores." He jabbed his quill at Astris. "Send the newbie. Let her earn her ink."
Astris' stomach dropped. She'd drafted supply treaties, border accords, even a ceasefire with a goblin warlord—but a marriage contract? The kind that bound not just lands, but lineages? She opened her mouth to protest, but Seth was already nodding.
"Fine. Doran, you go." He tossed her a phoenix quill, its barbed tip shimmering with heat. "Try not to set the palace on fire."
The Leclair Palace loomed ahead, its spires clawing at a sky choked with mist. Astris crossed the Bridge of Echoes, its glass panels singing beneath her boots with the whispers of long-dead diplomats. To her left, the royal dam's waterfalls thundered, their torrents magically slowed to a trickle—a concession to the morning's negotiations, perhaps. The Outer Court bustled with silk-clad merchants and adventurers hauling dungeon-mined mana crystals, their glow muted in the fog.
A steward in a nipped-waist coat escorted her through the Inner Court's labyrinthine corridors. The walls here were carved with leering gargoyles and Cybele's lion-headed devotees, their gemstone eyes tracking Astris as she passed. She gripped her briefcase tighter, the phoenix quill inside searing its disapproval.
The designated chamber was a vault of cold elegance. Frosted mana-crystal chandeliers cast blue light over a table of polished onyx, behind which sat two figures:
First Prince Zaiden Leclair looked carved from storm clouds—all sharp angles and restless energy. His raven hair was tousled, his collar undone, as if he'd wrestled his way out of formal attire. A wolf pendant, Celestaviel's betrothal token, gleamed at his throat. His fingers drummed a staccato rhythm on the table, the sound echoing like distant war drums.
Princess Cassis Voclain of Celestaviel was his opposite: stillness incarnate. Her gown, tea-length and tea-stain brown, was embroidered with silver wyverns in flight. A jade pendant shaped like a dragon nestled at her collarbone, its eyes flickering faintly—alive, or enchanted. She offered Astris a nod, her gaze lingering on the phoenix quill with wary curiosity.
"The Royal Legal Office sends a novice?" Zaiden's voice was a blade wrapped in velvet. "How… economical."
Astris stiffened. "I assure you, Your Highness, my inexperience is outweighed by my inability to be bribed." She unclasped her briefcase, the grimoire's hidden shard burning in her boot.
Cassis leaned forward. "We require amendments to Clause 17-D. The dowry's dungeon-core allotment." Her voice was soft but precise, a surgeon's scalpel. "Celestaviel cannot accept cores harvested from the Emerald Labyrinth. They're… unstable."
Zaiden snorted. "Unstable? Or inconvenient?"
As Astris unrolled the contract, the parchment hissed, its ink writhing like serpents. Magically binding clauses glowed gold, each a chain waiting to be tightened. She selected the phoenix quill, its heat purifying the air of deceit. But as she reached for Clause 17-D, the pendant at her throat flared—lie.
Not just the cores. There was something else.
Zaiden's boot brushed hers beneath the table. A flicker of warmth, a spark of… Echohold magic? She recoiled, but not before catching the echo—a shadowy fragment of his consciousness, clinging to her like smoke.
"Don't trust the dragon," it whispered.
Astris froze. The prince's face betrayed nothing, but his reflection in the onyx table mouthed the words again.
"She's hiding a vault. Beneath the palace."
Cassis tilted her head, her wyvern pendant flaring. "Is there a problem, Miss Doran?"
Astris dipped her quill, the phoenix flame melting the unstable ink. "No, Princess. Let's… clarify terms."
But as she scratched revisions into the parchment, she couldn't shake the prince's warning—or the grimoire's shard, now pulsing in rhythm with the palace's hidden heart.
The phoenix quill hovered above the parchment, its flame-tipped barb casting flickering shadows over the clause in question. Astris Doran did not rush. She traced each syllable of the contract with deliberate slowness, her truth-detection pendant a cold weight against her skin. The air thickened with the scent of singed ink and unspoken schemes.
"Clause 17-D stipulates three Emerald Labyrinth cores," she said, tilting the document toward the chandelier's mana-light. "Yet Appendix Six, subsection eleven, references a prior treaty barring Celestaviel from accepting 'volatile or sentient dungeon artifacts.'" She glanced up, eyebrow arched. "Volatility is inherent to the Emerald cores. Was this discrepancy… intentional?"
Zaiden's fingers stilled mid-drum against the onyx table. Across from him, Cassis's wyvern pendant twitched, its jade eyes narrowing to slits.
"An oversight," the princess said coolly, though her knuckles whitened around her teacup. "Our scribes must have relied on outdated precedents."
"Outdated." Astris echoed the word as if tasting its bitterness. She flipped to another page, the parchment crackling like kindling. "Then perhaps Clause 9-G is similarly obsolete? The 'joint military oversight' of the Argent Fissure dungeon?" She leaned forward, the phoenix quill's heat warping the air. "Given Celestaviel's recent… incursions into that territory, should 'oversight' be redefined as 'occupation'?"
Zaiden barked a laugh, sharp and mirthless. "Careful, drafter. Your questions border on accusation."
"Clarity prevents war, Your Highness." Astris met his gaze, the grimoire's shard in her boot throbbing in time with the distant drip of dammed waterfalls. "Shall we discuss the betrothal timeline? Appendix Three demands the union be finalized before the Frostbane Festival. Yet the logistics here—" She tapped a column of cramped script. "—suggest Parliament expects a nine-month delay. A contradiction that either invalidates the deadline… or the marriage itself."
Cassis set her cup down with a porcelain clink. "You overreach."
"I annotate." Astris dipped her quill, and the phoenix flame purged a line of ink, leaving a smoldering gap in the parchment. "Unless Her Highness prefers ambiguity? I'm told goblin warlords find such loopholes… entertaining."
The prince and princess exchanged a glance—a flicker of something taut and silent passing between them. Zaiden's jaw tightened; Cassis's breath hitched, a nearly imperceptible catch. Relief, Astris realized. Masked as irritation.
"Enough." Zaiden shoved back his chair, its legs screeching against the floor. "This is absurd. You'd dissect a coronation oath to count its syllables."
"And you'd bind kingdoms with riddles." Astris set the quill aside, her voice glacial. "The contract is a tinderbox. Sign it as is, and you risk more than embarrassment."
Cassis rose, her wyvern pendant hissing. "Then you will revise it. Thoroughly."
"Parliament assigned me to amend, not rewrite—"
"You unearthed these… oversights." The princess's smile was a blade. "Who better to mend them?"
Zaiden smirked, adjusting his wolf pendant. "Consider it a compliment, drafter. Few have the stomach to disappoint both our courts in one sitting."
Astris's eye twitched. The shard in her boot pulsed hotter, its rhythm syncing with the low, reverberating growl of the palace's foundations—the dungeons, shifting restlessly below.
"Very well." She rolled the scorched contract into a tight cylinder, binding it with a ribbon of enchanted silk. "But revisions require access to Celestaviel's dungeon tax archives. And Lismore's military ledgers from the last five years."
Zaiden's smirk vanished. "Five years?"
"Clarity," she said sweetly, "is detailed."
They left in a sweep of feigned outrage, Cassis's gown hissing like a wyvern's wings, Zaiden's boots striking the marble as though it had personally affronted him. Only when the doors slammed did their masks crack—voices fading down the hall in a chorus of relieved sighs and muffled laughter.
Astris slumped into her chair, massaging her temples. The phoenix quill lay dormant, its flame reduced to embers. Outside, the dam's waterfalls roared back to full force, their fury shaking the windows.
But beneath it all, deeper, darker—the dungeons breathed.
And the shard in her boot breathed with them.