The rhythm of the cistern was shattered by the sound of frantic, scrabbling footsteps echoing from a side tunnel. Every head turned. Wisp materialized near the main fire, his small form trembling, his face pale with terror. He wasn't just faded; he was barely holding himself together.
Morwen was on her feet in an instant, her usual stoicism replaced by sharp alarm. "Wisp? Report."
"The… the Hounds," the boy gasped, pointing a shaking finger back the way he'd come. "Not in the Gutterway. Closer. In the old ironworks conduit. They're… they're methodical. They have a Gevurah. I felt the earth… humming."
A cold fist clenched in Kaelen's chest. They were a week ahead of schedule.
Bramble cursed, grabbing his hatchet. "How many?"
"Four that I saw," Wisp stammered. "The Gevurah, two with air aspects—scouts—and one… one I couldn't see clearly. He felt… cold. Wrong."
Thorn was already moving, her thorned fingers selecting several sharpened bone darts from a pouch at her belt. Her face was a mask of cold fury. "They've bypassed the main collapses. They're using the old freight routes. They know the layout."
"They have a map," Morwen stated, her voice grim. "Or a guide." Her eyes swept the cistern, a silent, terrible accusation hanging in the air. Had someone talked? Had the bounty finally tempted one of their own?
There was no time for suspicion. "We can't let them pinpoint this location," Bramble growled. "We lead them away. Hit them hard and fade."
A plan formed with the swift, brutal efficiency of the hunted. Bramble and Thorn would create a diversion at a junction two tunnels back, a choke point. They would be the anvil. Morwen, with her knowledge of the labyrinth, would guide Kaelen and Wisp to a higher vantage point. Kaelen was the hammer. His job was simple and terrifying: when the Hounds were engaged, he was to collapse the tunnel roof on them.
It was a desperate gambit. They were outmatched and outnumbered.
They moved quickly, slipping into the oppressive darkness of the tunnels. The air grew colder, the only sounds the drip of water and their own hurried breaths. Morwen led them up a narrow, crumbling service ladder into a gallery that overlooked the junction—a large, circular chamber where several tunnels met.
Below, they could see the flickering glow of elemental light—a soft, earthen radiance from the Gevurah and the shimmer of condensed air around the two scouts. The fourth Hound, the one Wisp had called 'wrong,' was a tall, lean figure shrouded in a dark cloak, standing slightly apart. He held no obvious light, but the air around him seemed to swallow the illumination from the others, creating a pocket of deeper shadow.
Bramble and Thorn didn't wait. With a roar, Bramble charged from a side tunnel, a glob of corrosive acid already flying from his palm. It sizzled against the Gevurah's stone-armored shoulder. Thorn moved like a phantom, her darts whistling through the air, forcing the air scouts to deflect with gusts of wind.
The fight was immediate and brutal. The Gevurah was a powerhouse, shattering the ground under Bramble's feet. The air scouts were swift, their attacks like invisible blades. But Bramble and Thorn were fighting on their home ground, using the terrain, their desperation making them fierce.
"Now, boy," Morwen whispered, her voice tight. "The central pillar. Weaken the base."
Kaelen's heart was a drum solo in his ears. This was different from a practice wall. Below him, people were trying to kill his friends. He focused on the thick, central column of rock that supported the chamber's ceiling. He reached for the void, trying to find the calm precision Morwen had taught him.
But the chaos below was a vortex of fear. He saw Thorn cry out as a whip of compressed air sliced her arm. He saw Bramble take a stone fist to the chest that sent him stumbling back.
His control shattered. The void didn't respond to a gentle suggestion; it erupted in a wave of panicked negation. Instead of a targeted weakening, a wave of grey decay spread from his hands, washing over the pillar and the surrounding ceiling.
The effect was catastrophic, but not what he'd intended. The pillar didn't neatly collapse. The entire section of the ceiling above the chamber began to groan and sag, cracking like a rotten eggshell. Large chunks of rock started to break away, plummeting down indiscriminately.
"Too much!" Morwen hissed, pulling him back from the edge as debris rained around them.
Below, the battle stopped. The Hounds and the Unattuned alike scrambled for cover from the unexpected cave-in. The chamber was filling with dust and falling stone.
It was in that moment of chaotic suspension that the fourth Hound acted.
He moved without a sound. While the Gevurah was shielding himself with a wall of earth and the scouts were dodging rubble, the cloaked figure glided through the chaos. He ignored Bramble and Thorn. His focus was singular.
He looked up, directly at the gallery where Kaelen stood. From within the shadows of his hood, Kaelen felt a gaze so cold it seemed to still the air in his lungs. The Hound raised a hand, not in an attack, but in a gesture. A simple, beckoning curl of his fingers.
A sensation unlike any he had ever felt seized Kaelen. It wasn't the hungry cold of his own power. This was an invasive, soul-deep chill. It felt like his very will was being leeched away, replaced by a compelling, empty need to obey, to go to the beckoning hand.
He took a stumbling step forward, towards the ladder down.
"Kaelen, no!" Wisp screamed, his voice shrill with panic.
The boy didn't fade. Instead, he did something Kaelen had never seen. He focused, his small face contorted with effort, and then he shouted. It wasn't a loud sound but a concentrated cone of pure, disorienting vibration that shot from his mouth towards the cloaked Hound.
The effect was instantaneous. The Hound flinched, the beckoning gesture breaking as he clutched his hooded head. The compulsion gripping Kaelen vanished, leaving him gasping and disoriented.
The moment of distraction was all Bramble and Thorn needed. Seizing the opportunity, they broke contact, melting back into the tunnels from which they'd come. The cave-in had achieved its goal, even if by accident. The passage was blocked. The Hounds were halted.
Morwen dragged a shaking Kaelen away from the gallery, back into the deeper darkness. They retreated in silence, the only sound Wisp's ragged breathing.
They had survived. But they had learned a terrible new truth. The Hounds weren't just brutes. Among them was something far worse—a Hound who didn't hunt the body but the mind. And he had looked right at Kaelen.
He had been seen. Not just as a heretic, but as a specific target. The hunt had just become personal.