There was a silence in Burrowdeep that only came once in a generation — not the quiet of peace, but the stillness before a quake. The kind of silence that made the youngest kits curl tighter in their mossbeds and sent older warriors sharpening their claws without knowing why.
Marex felt it in his tail.
He stood outside the Archive Burrow, fur bristling, as Greth the Inkseer slowly pulled back the scroll marked with the golden glyph. Dust spilled from the parchment's edge, whispering the scent of forgotten days: ash, old oils, and something deeper — like burnt fur and bone.
Greth's claw traced the glyph as if caressing a long-dead friend.
"The last time this scroll was opened, your ancestors betrayed a Queen," she rasped. "And the tunnels drank blood for forty days."
Marex stared. "Then it's true? The Singing Pipe marks the return?"
"The return… or the reckoning," Greth replied. "Only one other species ever heard the Pipe sing — and they broke the pact."
She did not say it, but Marex knew. She meant the humans.
---
Far above the dirt-veiled ceilings of the rat realms, the city of Elarion bustled unaware. Traders hawked spice-rubbed meats, artificers tinkered with cog-lamps and rune-powered wagons, and nobles draped in gem-thread silk sneered at both alike.
Yet deep in Magistrate Orlen's house, a different rhythm pulsed — a girl's heartbeat, racing.
Elira sat on the edge of her attic cot, eyes wide, ears twitching.
There it was again.
The sound that wasn't a sound.
A melody too ancient to belong to instruments, yet sharp enough to carve its shape into her mind. She scribbled notes, symbols, trying to translate something untranslatable.
She didn't know what it meant.
Only that it was calling her.
That night, as torches dimmed across the city, she took her satchel, filled it with chalk, an old flint-knife, and a map of the lower canals.
And then she ran.
---
Back beneath, Marex followed Greth into the deeper chambers of the Archive — places where even the oldest rats feared to tread.
Here the air was thick with memory, and walls pulsed with glyphs powered by the residue of dead stars. Strange energies flickered as they passed runes older than kingdoms.
In the heart of the chamber stood a pillar. Upon it, a carving:
Two races. One song. One betrayal.
Marex's breath caught.
"I thought the humans never knew about the pact," he whispered.
Greth tapped the pillar. "They did. They chose to forget."
---
In the southern district of the rat realms, Clan Daggerback stirred restlessly. Known for their cruel claws and venomous politics, they'd long envied the Hollowtail line's reign. Their chieftain, Lord Scarn, an enormous brown rat with a scar from jaw to flank, slammed a goblet to the stone table.
"The Pipe sings," he growled to his inner circle. "And Serecta will use it to tighten her reign."
His second-in-command, a sleek albino named Veela, purred with dangerous amusement. "Unless we claim it first. There's power in that note — ancient power. If the humans hear it too... we can reopen the Forgotten Gate."
Scarn's whiskers twitched.
"The Gate... or the Grave."
"Isn't it always both?"
They toasted in silence.
---
At the Queen's Burrow, Serecta stood atop her dais as the Burrow Court assembled — warriors of iron whiskers, scholars cloaked in leaf-inked scrolls, and emissaries from the distant clans.
Her voice echoed cold and sharp:
"The Pipe has sung."
A shiver rippled through the crowd.
"Send word to the Guild of Crawlers. To the Redroot Apothecaries. Summon the Seers of Furreach. The Pact was not just myth — and if it stirs again, so too does war."
One advisor dared to step forward.
"But… Your Majesty… the humans have long moved on. They buried our kind in legend."
Serecta's eyes narrowed. "And yet, we hear their machines hum above our dens. We see their trash flow into our homes. And their children… some of them still hear us."
---
In a forgotten tunnel not far from the surface, Elira stumbled through a rusted grate, dropping into a stream of warm air. She coughed, gagged on the scent — mold, copper, and something strangely sweet.
"Where… am I?"
Footsteps scurried nearby.
Not human.
She turned, heart pounding.
A voice — impossibly clear — echoed in the dark.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Elira gasped.
Out of the shadows stepped a rat — taller than any she'd seen, with eyes like twin knives.
It was Marex.
And he was not alone.
Ten other rats, cloaked in tattered leather and steel-threaded fur, emerged around him. Warriors. Sentinels.
"Can… can you understand me?" Elira whispered.
Marex tilted his head. "You hear the Pipe."
She nodded.
"Then everything changes, starting now."