The stair turns and turns like a throat that doesn't want to swallow.
A faint glow waits far below—soft, not holy, not cruel. Morning remembered by stone.
Kirella's hand is in mine. We move together. One step, one breath, one whisper of leather on rock. Above us, the bathhouse is quiet again, but quiet here means nothing. Quiet can hide a knife.
The air warms. The glow brightens. The stair opens into a narrow hall cut from black rock, the walls rubbed smooth by many hands. Carved lines loop across the stone like vines. I touch one and feel a hum—a low, kind note, the opposite of the glass-light sting upstairs.
"The old ones made this," Kirella says softly.
"Or people like us," I say. "Tired of locks."
The hall ends in a round door with three shallow niches. Symbols are carved above each: a coin, a knife, an open hand. Between them, words scratched in a script I half-know from market stalls and prayer banners. The letters are crooked, but the meaning is straight:
HAPPINESS IS NOT BOUGHT. HAPPINESS IS NOT BLOOD. HAPPINESS IS A PROMISE KEPT.
"Three offerings," Kirella murmurs. "Or three choices."
I slide my fingers over the coin mark. Stone warm from the glow beneath. "They'll ask for what we carry," I say. "And what we don't."
Boots whisper behind us. Far, but not far enough. Patient.
Kirella puts himself between me and the dark. "No priest-speeches," he says. "We choose."
I take the pouch from my corset seam and count by feel: three gold, a bite of silver, a scatter of copper. Ten quiet years if I stretch them thin and learn to be small. Ten quiet years is a dream, not a door.
I press one gold into the coin niche. The metal clicks and holds. The door hums, a breath deeper.
"Your turn," I say.
He studies the knife. His jaw tightens. He draws his short blade, weighs it like a habit, then sets it into the knife niche hilt-first. Not the killing end—the holding end.
The hum deepens.
"Last one," he says.
The hand waits. My palm still remembers his heat. I press it to the stone. It doesn't take blood. Only weight and skin and a choice.
"Speak," says a voice—not a voice, but a shape of sound like an old woman smiling.
"What do I say?"
"Truth," the not-voice answers. "A promise not for you alone."
I look at Kirella. He doesn't look away.
"I won't spend my freedom alone," I say. "If I escape, I'll pull others through the door behind me—monsters, humans, anyone the Light taught you to laugh at while they died."
Stone warms under my hand. The hum turns to a low chord that trembles in my bones.
Kirella sets his palm beside mine. "I won't leave her," he says. "Not for safety. Not for coin. Not for orders. Not for fear."
The chord brightens. Gold, steel, skin flare once, and light runs the seams of the round door. A click. A shift.
The door rolls aside.
Warm air rushes out—citrus, dust, something like bread. A small, round room lined with glass shelves. Some jars hold stones that shine like captured dawn. Some hold paper folded like birds. Some hold only air with tiny lights inside, fireflies that forgot how to fly.
At the center stands a pedestal and a bowl of frosted glass. Inside, a lantern the size of my two hands rests on its side, as if it fell asleep mid-story. Blackened metal; panels that glow dim, then steady, like a heart deciding to keep beating.
"The Lantern House," I breathe.
Kirella doesn't move. His eyes are careful. "Traps?"
"Tests," I say.
"Same thing," he answers gently.
We step in together.
The room's hum brightens under our feet. The lantern brightens too, then dips as if sniffing the air. Tiny scratch-marks along the handle read: FOR TWO HANDS, FOR TWO LIVES.
I reach. The glass warms without burning. I lift; it wakes more. Kirella slides his hand under mine, steadying the base.
The glow swells.
Not temple glass. Not a cruel light that wants applause. The kind kitchens make before breakfast, windows make after storms. It hurts my chest in a good way.
"Is it the Happiness Light?" Kirella asks.
"A piece of it," I say. "Enough to open one door. Maybe two. Enough to make liars uncomfortable."
He almost smiles. "Then we—"
A soft, polite clap from the hall.
We turn.
The man with the key leans in the doorway, thumbs hooked in his belt, pleased like a patron who arrived when the music got good.
"I told you," he says. "I have all year."
No soldiers. He either came alone, or he left them to circle like dogs while we did the hard part.
Kirella angles his shoulder toward me—not to hide me, to mark his place.
"No need to run," the man says, stepping over the threshold to breathe deep. "Ah. I see why they call it happiness. Smells like memory."
"Leave," Kirella says. His voice is level, but the blade in the niche has already called to his muscles. I feel the string before it snaps.
"Of course," the man says, as if agreeing to tea. "After I take what belongs upstairs."
His gaze flicks to my hand on the lantern. "Two hands, two lives," he reads. "Poetic."
He shows me the ribbon. The old key swings like a charm—grim metal, tiny teeth that glint like little smiles.
"You don't belong here," I tell him.
"No one belongs anywhere," he says, amused. "We make do. We make markets."
The lantern brightens. He flinches, then laughs at himself.
"Tell you what," he says. "Give me the gold you tucked away. Give me the guard. Keep the toy. Fair price."
He says guard like it sours his tongue; toy like it's true.
"No," I say.
Kirella watches the man's feet, not his hands. Feet tell truth; hands tell stories.
"Neither," the man mimics, almost fond. "You do love that word."
He steps inside.
The shelves answer. Light slides the glass like tide-pool fish. Papers lift. A jar hums; air inside whirls into a tiny storm. The room does not want him. He smiles at that, too.
"Old doors," he says. "Old habits."
He draws a small mirror and angles it to bounce the lantern's glow back at us. The reflected light hits my cheek. Not temple glass, but even kindness hurts doubled. My head swims.
Kirella feels me sway and moves closer, solid as a wall.
"Drop it," the man says lightly. "Or your vampire sleeps."
He thinks that's clever. He doesn't know I can sleep and still fight.
Think fast. The room opened for truth. Brightened for two. Hummed for mercy. Not a temple—more kitchen with a lock, library with a pulse.
"Kirella," I whisper. "Back wall. Sun tile."
He doesn't ask why when time is small. He edges left, keeping me and the lantern in his periphery. The man watches the light, not the wall—good. He thinks like a buyer.
Kirella's shoulder brushes a faint sun cut into stone. He presses his palm.
A door rolls—not the one we came through. A second, hidden between shelves. Behind it: water. Not black canal; clear and lit from below. A channel cut for secrets.
The man turns his head, curious.
I lift the lantern high. Glow spills across symbols above the shelves—coins, knives, hands—and a fourth I missed: a small boat.
"Two hands, two lives," I say. "Two ways out."
I take Kirella's hand and sprint for the new door.
The man moves faster, lazy-quick, like a cat bored with a mouse. His key comes up.
Kirella snaps a small iron key from his belt and whips it. It cracks the man's wrist. The mirror wobbles; the reflected beam skitters to a shelf of paper birds.
They ignite—not with flame but with light. The birds flare and burst into sparks that sting like angry bees. He swears and swats.
We slip past into the low channel. A narrow boat waits, tied with a knotted rope. Water shines like the inside of a shell. The tunnel bends away from the bathhouse toward the city's outer veins.
"Go," Kirella says.
I jump in and set the lantern in the little stand at the prow. Its glow pours forward; the water wakes, ripples racing down the tunnel. Kirella cuts the rope in one clean draw and shoves off.
The boat moves.
Behind us the key-man steps to the mouth and laughs, truly pleased now. "Run in circles," he calls. "Or draw me a straight line. Either way, I'll find the end."
He lifts the old key. A click echoes—ancient, patient.
Water surges—not forward, but back. A gate ahead lowers, stone sliding into the channel like a heavy lid.
"Faster," I say.
"I'm trying," Kirella answers, driving the pole hard. The boat leaps.
The gate keeps falling.
The lantern brightens, as if it understands. Glow presses the water, a warm wind under the surface. We slide another hand's width, then another.
The gap shrinks.
"Hold on," Kirella says.
We shoot under with a hair of space between the lantern's handle and the stone. Metal scrapes. Sparks. Hot iron.
We clear it.
The gate slams behind with a final, heavy sound.
For three heartbeats: only water's hush and our slow breath.
Ahead, another glow wakes—daylight, thin and real, dripping from a grate high above. The channel forks left and right beneath it.
"Which way?" Kirella asks.
The lantern's light leans left, as if the bowl remembers a path.
We turn left.
Behind us, in the dark we escaped, a second click whispers. The old key turns another old lock.
Water begins to rise.
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