Ka'thar no longer merely breathed; it inhaled them.
Every footfall rang like a struck bell inside a hollow ribcage. Shards stitched through the broken walls pulsed in slow, deliberate waves (crimson, violet, sickly gold), syncing to a heartbeat none of the Five could hear yet somehow felt in their teeth. The air tasted of scorched metal and old blood, thick enough to chew.
Law stopped at a crooked intersection where three streets bled into one. Dust drifted in perfect stillness, as though the wind itself had been told to wait.
"It's gone quiet," he said, voice low. "Too quiet for something that's listening so hard."
Liora brushed the nearest wall. Silver threads leapt from her fingertips, racing along the masonry like startled fish. The shards answered with a shiver that crawled up her arm and into her spine.
"It isn't just alive," she whispered. "It's remembering our names."
Laura's pendant gave one slow, deliberate pulse (exactly in time with the wall).
"Not remembering," she corrected. "Rehearsing."
Nysera's ears flattened. She pressed a palm to the ground.
"It's speaking," she growled. "In a tongue made of footsteps."
Zero's silhouette flickered against a leaning pillar.
"Or it's learning how loud we scream."
They moved.
Reflections in the cracked street-shards lagged half a heartbeat behind them, as though the city were trying on their faces and deciding which ones fit best.
Law knelt, swept rubble aside, and uncovered a shard the color of warm honey. It thrummed against his skin like a trapped moth.
"Residual memory," he said. "No source. Ka'thar keeps ghosts the way other cities keep rats."
Liora crouched beside him.
"Ghosts of who walked here," she murmured, "or of what died screaming."
The hum beneath them died so completely the silence cut.
Nysera's head snapped left.
"Three heartbeats. Light steps. Coming closer."
Zero was already gone, a ripple of shadow sliding along the wall.
They stepped into a sunken courtyard ringed by collapsed arches. Three Beastkin scouts waited (fur mottled with faint shardlight, eyes wide, hands empty and open).
The tallest one spoke first, voice rough as broken glass.
"We're not here to bleed you. The city listens through you now."
Law's staff stayed level.
"Through us?"
The scout pointed at the faint glow threading Law's knuckles where the honey-colored shard had touched him.
"Since you came, safe corners rot overnight. Shards that used to sleep now dream with open eyes. Your rhythm steadies them… and wakes the rest."
Laura's pendant pulsed again, brighter.
"So we're both lullaby and alarm bell."
The scout gave a tired nod. "Your light walks like something it lost a long time ago."
Zero reappeared behind the scouts, knives sheathed.
"Then let's teach it what happens when it reaches for the wrong memory."
The scout's gaze drifted to a black archway yawning at the courtyard's far end. Shardlight inside it moved wrong (rippling upward, like flames drowning).
"Beyond that is the Reflection Pit. The hum is strongest there. We stopped going weeks ago. Too many walked in. None walked out the same."
Law was already moving.
"Then that's exactly where we're going."
"You can't—"
"We're not asking permission," Law said. "If Ka'thar wants to look at us, it's time we looked back."
They crossed the courtyard. Every shard in the walls flared in greeting, recognition, hunger.
Laura felt time fold a millimetre closer to her skin, the way a tongue tests a sore tooth. She drew one slow breath and tasted the future on it.
"It's not just remembering us anymore," she said, so quietly only the city heard. "It's learning how we die."
The archway swallowed them.
Behind them, the courtyard shards dimmed, as though the city had turned its full attention inward.
Ka'thar exhaled, long and patient, and the darkness ahead answered with a heartbeat that belonged to no living thing.