Archive of Our Own ^beta

The scaffolding is stained with blood.  Sticky, dark maroon blood that reeks of rusted iron, coating the floor in a slick, glistening sheen. Some stains are fresh, others old, blood from children and adults alike. It’s never been cleaned completely. Only the center is wiped down between executions, just enough for the next body to kneel.

The executioners don’t bother with Kindness. They let the blood build, layer by layer, until the scaffolding tells a silent story, each dark splotch a ghost, each smear a record of another lamb led to slaughter.

This is the place where heroes and traitors of the church alike die, kneeling in the center of the stage for everyone to see. Their hands are bound behind their back. Blindfolds were tied over their eyes so there is no comfort they can seek from the shining sun or dying sky. It's a quiet, anxiety-ridden end, no hope for resurrection as the head is severed from the body. No hope to be found when you walk across that stage. Your fate has already been sealed by those who walked before you and met their end in the same bloody way. 

THUD

It is not a kind death either, Tayla thinks, watching the executioner fail to sever the young boy's head fully, A scream echoes from him like that of a banshee praying for the dead as the the executioner watches with cold apathy raising his axe to finish the boy off,  but not before letting him suffer for a few seconds more. 

It’s ironic in a sense that the church calls this mercy, and perhaps once upon a time it was. Possibly, if done quickly enough, deception feels like the pinch of a needle and then nothing. But for all the church claims to be merciful and forgiving, they are not.

They are monsters wearing lies spun into cloaks and wearing trickery like a mask. They claim what they are doing is for peace, for kindness, for hope, for all those who lost their lives and livelihood to the gods. They rewrite history and say they were right all along. They say what the church offers is salvation and a chance to save their souls from the gods. They say they are kind, while painting themself in the blood of children and the spinal fluid of worshippers. They say they are holy and pure, and that if you repent, you will be too.

THUD

Bullshit.

What complete and utter bullshit, Tayla thinks, digging her nails into the hem of her dress to keep from screaming. The axe misses again, this time sinking into the boy’s back.

She hears the crunch of bone. A sound like twigs snapping underfoot. Tayla prays, not to gods, but to pain itself, that the blade found an artery, that it severed something critical.

That way, he won’t hear the cheers. He won’t know the crowd is applauding his death, blindfolded, broken, and still breathing.

Cheering on the murder of a child.

But that hope is quickly diminished as the boy screams out again like that of a dying fox, the blindfold has slipped off, and now hangs around his neck like a noose. His eyes are shut in pain as blood spills from the wound. Thick cascades of red spilling from his neck and back, falling onto the ground to join the other stains of those who dared defy the church and died for it.

The crowd is alive around her, grins stretching across their faces, as some cheer as the boy collapses in pain. Tayla can see how some of them enjoy this. They believe that the death of this boy is for the greater good, how a boy, no older than sixteen, brought this upon himself by turning away from peace, away from the light. 

Others looked disconcerted. To them, it is something that has to be done. Maybe not right, but necessary. Because sometimes, the right thing is the hardest to do. They believe this is mercy that this is salvation.

Not wicked at heart. Just faithful. Just afraid.

( Someone is praying, praying for the boy, praying that the Heavenly Peace will show him mercy because after all, he's just a boy .

Just a boy. 

Just a child )

THUD

The boy's head is sliced off with a grand swing of the axe.  It falls to the ground with a splat. Rolling across the stage, leaving a trail of blood and fluid, it spins.  There is no basket for it to fall into. In the eyes of the church, Heretics are not deserving of such kindness, 

 The executioner steps on the head to keep it from rolling off the scaffolding, like how children stop balls in the streets. He grins, sheathing his axe, and picks up the boy's head, showing it off to the crowd like it’s a trophy. 

The boy's eyes are shut tight, and his mouth is pried open in a scream; even in death, the boy is in agony. Tayla watches from underneath the hood of her cloak as the executioner throws the head into the cart with the others.

( A tiefling girl with fiery skin and words that were filled with anger, a goblin man that did not beg nor cry, only faced his fate with a cold indifference, and the boy who apologized to the executioner when he stepped on his foot. ) 

There were three executions today. In twenty-one hours, there will be one more.

In twenty-one hours, Sable Thornvar will walk the blood-stained stage just like the rest, he will kneel like he’s praying, and wait for the axe to fall.

A rebel. A heretic. A traitor. The Church will make a warning out of him.

His death will be a display. The square will fill with people, cheering like it’s the finale of a play.

His name will echo in whispered rumors, in children’s songs and playground dares.

“The rebel leader will burn.”

“The heretic dies at dawn.”

“Sable Thornvar will finally pay.”

And yet, here’s the thing:

None of it is true.

Well, some of it might be. Sable is, after all, against the Church. But he is not the one they wanted.

He was never the man they were hunting, but the Church doesn’t care.

They needed a scapegoat.  A body to break. A name to burn. Someone to lift their power high before the masses, bloody, trembling, obedient.

And Sable?

Sable was the one they found. Wrong place, wrong time.

And Sable will die for it.

Just like Anna, Estalda, Everin, Ivara, Emilia, and Vance, and so many others.

Sable will die. And Tayla will watch, again.

Bound to witness the people she loves die, again and again and again.

With no way of ever giving them a proper burial. No way to save them, only mourn them. Their fates are written in the stars, and maybe if Tayla were good, she would let the stars cut their strings and let the Golden Key do their job.  Let them worry about getting Sable out and continue to protect their own.

But Tayla is not good. 

Never has it been. Never will be. She’s made of sharp teeth and ravenous fury, stitched into the shape of a girl. A wolf in wool. A liar in silk.

And Tayla Everglade will not let the stars write another obituary.

That is why she is here, in the heart of Santics, Valnaris’s capital. Walking among soldiers and guardians, Inquisitors and priests. Every breath is borrowed. Every step is a risk. 

Tayla has doomed herself by walking into the city., 

She knows this. Corey and Am knew it too, when they caught her sneaking out of Drearwater, chasing the ghost of a chance to save Sable. The Golden Key knows it. That’s why they didn’t tell her where he was being held. The chances of success aren’t just slim, they’re microscopic. She has no time, no resources, and even less hope.

The odds aren’t in her favor.

Hell, they aren’t even odds. They’re a suicide.

But Tayla doesn’t plan to die quietly.

If she goes down, she’ll go down loud, with fire in her veins and a smile carved on her lips. If she’s fated to die here, in this holy city soaked in blood, then she’ll make it something worth remembering.

Let it be a story. Let it be a goddamn show.

(I’d like to cast Mage Hand.)

Tayla watches as the boy’s body is loaded into the cart, the crowd already beginning to drift away. She slips her fingers into the folds of her dress, hiding the subtle gestures of her spell .

(Make a Stealth check.)

She nods to pedestrians as she walks along the streets, staying within the depths of the crowd. Acting like she has always been here.  A ghost among tides and cloaks.

Her mage hand slips a pair of keys off a guard's belt. 

( Make a flat sleight of hand check)  

There's a moment for one terrible second where she thinks the guard might have caught on.

But another guard calls his name, and his attention is quickly diverted once more. 

Tayla breathes a sigh of relief, buries her face in her hair to keep from grinning, as she maneuvers the keys through the crowd and into her pocket.

She ducks out of the square with 21 hours on the line, a plan held together with thin stitching, twine, hope, and the vicious determination of someone who never knew just how to quit. 

( Here's a joke for you: a heretic walks into the middle of a church-run city in the middle of holy week unarmed and alone. How long does it take for her to be discovered and killed? ) 

***

When asked, the Church of Unified Peace will say they are strongly against the torture of religious and political prisoners.

Unfortunately, the Church of Unified Peace, when asked, lies about most things.

Sable doesn't know how long they have kept him underneath the winding halls of the crypts. 

It could be weeks or days. His internal clock is off, and there is no light so deep underground for him to attempt to make sense of time or day.

His hands are chained to the wall, thick silver cuffs that are engraved with arcane runes that spark with white light every time he attempts to move more than a few feet, sending painful shocks through his body. His arms ache, his shoulder screams, and his hands tremble.

Guards stand like statues at the end of the hallway. Perfectly silent and still. They only move when they rotate shirts or when they bow to the inquisitors who come in to “question him,” their plate armor clanking as they move.  

Sable knows the rhythm now. Guards swap out at odd intervals, deliberately inconsistent, just enough to disorient. Food and water arrive on no schedule. Sometimes, too much. Sometimes none.  If he eats too slowly, they take it away. If he’s too weak to stand, they leave him on the floor and laugh.

And the inquisitors always return. With knives. With spells.  With questions he refuses to answer.

He has to hand it to them, they've mastered the art of being absolute bastards.

He can imagine Corey laughing at the absurdity of it all, telling Sable a joke about how they must have a manual on how to be evil that every member of the church gets the first time they join.  Something about a “How-To” guide handed out during orientation: “How to Be a Sadistic Holy Shitbag: Volume One.”

Sable almost smiles.

He thinks of Corey with his roguish charm and fast-moving hands, Tayla with her clever mind and mischievous smile.  Partners in crime. He can imagine Am rolling her eyes as they come back from a mission, black and blue but with matching grins. Shaking her head and patching them up while they explain whatever antics they pulled. While Sable makes a cup of tea and tries not to let the fondness show on his face. 

The sound of heels on the linoleum floors tears him out of his thoughts, and he is back in his cramped cell smelling of mildew and metal. A pair of black boots pauses outside of his cell, and he looks up at the figure in front of him. 

“Heretic,” the voice greets. “You're still alive.” 

“Zealot,” he replies, voice hoarse but steady, “You haven't killed me yet.” 

Illian Thornshard raises an eyebrow, unimpressed as she sticks the key into the lock and the door swings open, stepping inside the modest cell, caution thrown to the wind. There's no need to be cautious; escape is impossible. 

Sable has gone over the possibility of escape a hundred times at this point, and yet there is still no way to get out with his hands and legs changed to the walls.

“You're worth more alive than dead,” She says flippantly, leaning lightly against the bars. “But it seems your value has expired  .”

She watches him with feigned indifference, but Sable’s been here long enough to see the truth.

There’s a gleam in her beetle-black eyes. A curl of enjoyment at the corner of her mouth.

She likes this.

“It's a shame, really,” She continues when he doesn't say anything, “we could have used your skills. Word has it you know your way around an old storm or two. You could have been a great asset to the church.”

Sable doesn't say anything; he simply raises an eyebrow. She likes to talk,  Sable has learned. Long, winding tales about the greatness of the church or the opportunities it offers.  

It is as impressive as it is annoying that she doesn't run out of things to say. 

But this time, she stays quiet; she lets the silence sit between them for several seconds. The only sound is Sable's labored breathing and the dripping of rainwater. 

His limbs ache from the way the chain digs into them, wrapped tight enough to make sure he keeps his limbs but also feels every second of pain. His fingers have turned red and puffy from being broken and reset too early. His ribs ache with every breath, and he tastes blood from his missing molar

She looks at him for a long moment, staring at his bloody skin and bruised limbs. His cut lip and blackened eyes

“I can make this stop,” She says in a sickly sweet voice, like rotting sugar. “Just tell me the names of the others, the ones you work for. The ones you worship with. Pledge your loyalty to the church. Repent and you can be saved. This can all end”

( Can I make an insight check?)  

She stares at him with pitying eyes and a mocking, sweet smile as if the choice is obvious. All he has to do is accept her offer. As if she isn't a knife dressed in velvet.

She thinks he is breaking. This is her moment.

Maybe, if he were a weaker man, he might break. Might finally give up after the weeks of torture. Broken and malleable after they pulled his molars and fingernails out. After they set his skin on fire and flayed his back. After they used magic to make him forget his name, he screamed until his throat was filled with blood.

Maybe if Sable were a different man, he would give in. Maybe he would have begged, surrounded. Maybe he would have finally given up the sea,

But Sable is not that kind of man. 

He thinks of Am and her sharp tongue and grief-stricken eyes. Her hands were calloused and covered in the blood of those she could not save. 

He thinks of Tayla, shoulders heavy, shouldering the weight of the sky. Her skin burned and blistered from spells gone wrong, 

He thinks of Corey, Fearless and reckless with his fox-like grin, mocking inquisitors and clerics alike with no fear of death. The first to laugh, the last to run

He thinks of Talverse, Eyes haunted, hands covered in blood he did not choose to spill. Praying for death, with a voice that does not work.

He thinks of his crew, Soulless eyes, burned and bludgeoned skin, bloody bones, and water-filled lungs as they drift through the unforgiving sea. The Harpy sinking, broken and burned, beneath their feet. 

He thinks of Mavilkea and wonders how disappointed he would have been.

He thinks of the people of Drearwater and their bruised yet unbroken spirits. Standing against the church with only each other to hold onto. 

He thinks of his home, his friends, and family, and all that they have lost. All they mourn and carry. 

He thinks of everything he's lost and of everything he still has to protect.  

And then he does only things he can think of doing in this situation.

He laughs.

It's loud and rough. The sound grates on his ears, and blood bubbles up into his throat. It's an awful sounding thing, a sound that makes dogs whine and children wince.

But it pisses her off.

“You're full of shit” He laughs, tasting metal in his mouth. He grins sharply and deadly, the smile of a pirate, a captain, a mutineer.  “You’re so full of shit, I’m amazed your boots haven’t burst.”

( roll for intimidation )

Ilian's eyes darkened, and her face turned a bright red. She glares at him, and he keeps grinning. Even as she stomps into the cell, she draws a knife from her thigh holster and shoves it against the throat. Her eyes burned holes in his. 

“You think you're funny?” She spits in her face, her knife digging into Adam's apple. He doesn't flinch. 

Illian leans in close. Too close. Her breath smells like cloves and copper.

“You think you’re allowed to mock Peace ?” she growls. “You think this blasphemy comes without cost?”

The knife presses harder.

Sable feels the sting, sharp and hot, just beneath his jaw. A thin line of blood slips down his neck, joining the old wounds, the crusted cuts.

“I think Peace died a long time ago,” he says, voice like gravel and rust. “You’re just dragging its corpse around to keep the stink off your lies.”

She snaps. 

She slams him into the wall. Shoving her knife deeper into his neck. Sable's breath catches for a second as thick rivers of blood dribble down his neck.

“How dare you?”  Illian's voice is trembling now, not from fear, but fury. That kind of fury that comes when someone slips through your fingers. When control shatters like glass.

Sable’s lips twitch. Not in fear.

In amusement.

“You’re going to die,” she spits, and it sounds more like a wish than a statement now. “Alone. In front of everyone. And I will rejoice .”

Sable doesn’t blink.

He leans into the blade.

And smiles.

“As will I.”

Illian seethes, the knife carves a deeper path, and for a heartbeat, pain sears through every nerve. But Sable doesn’t scream.

He just stares.

Right into her eyes.

Illian freezes.

For a long moment, neither of them moves. Her hand grips the knife like a lifeline. His face is still, calm, eyes glinting like broken glass in moonlight.

There is no fear in them.

No submission.

Only something that terrifies her far more.

Defiance

She yanks the blade away with a snarl, leaving behind a deeper cut and a streak of hot blood. It slides down his chest like a red ribbon.

She backs toward the door, breathing hard.

“You’re a fool,” she says again, her voice shaking now.

“Better a fool than a pawn,” Sable replies, voice ragged, but steady.

She looks at him, fury etched into her face. She's looking for fear, for regrets. 

She can look all she wants , He thinks. She won't find any .

Silence encapsulates them. Illian stares at him. Her composer has cracked like china, and Sable watches her anger spill from her like blood from an arrow wound. There is nothing left of the sugar-rotting women he saw earlier. As much as she had tried to break him, he thinks he might have broken her a little too.

Her fingers fumble at the door latch, fury crackling beneath her skin. She looks back one last time., Her knuckles are white. 

“I hope it hurts,” she snaps.

Then she slams the door and makes her way out of this holy prison built on the bones of peace. 

He waits until her footsteps disappear down the corridor before letting his head drop back against the wall. The cold stone steals some of the heat from the fresh wound at his throat. The fight drains out of him, and he lets his eyes slip shut.. His body aches. His arms burn. His hands tremble 

And yet the thought of death comforts him. Perhaps there he will finally be able to put his old bones to rest. Maybe he will even get to see Mavilkea once more., Before he is dragged into hell. Maybe he'll get to say sorry.

( Here's a joke for you: an apostate sits in the belly of a church for several weeks. Tortured and severely injured. How long does it take for them to break him?)

(Answer: Depends on who's foolish enough to try )

***

The keys are cold in her pocket.

She can feel their weight with every step she takes through the crowd, like anchors tied to her ribs. Head down, cloak pulled tight against the wind, she moves through the city like a ghost wrapped in wool. Around her, Santics hum with the rhythm of Holy Week: banners of white and gold flutter from balconies, children chant hymns in high, clear voices, and merchants hawk “ sacred relics ” carved from polished bone and painted ivory.

To the Church, this is a sacred day.

To Tayla, it’s a ticking time bomb.

Each second drags Sable Thornvar closer to the chopping block. She has fifteen hours left. Less, if the executioner gets impatient. Her odds are shrinking like candle wax in firelight, and still, she presses forward. Every instinct screams to turn back, but her hands are steady. Her mind is sharp. She did not miscalculate the risk. She knew what she was walking into.

And yet, the closer she gets to the Tenth Hell, the place they hold Sable, the more terrified she becomes.

It’s the same kind of terror she felt at eleven, standing barefoot and bleeding on the deck of the Sweetbriar during a storm that split the sea in half. Waves taller than temples had hammered the hull until it broke open like a ribcage. The undertow dragged her crewmates under and left her gasping for breath, clinging to a mast that had already given up.

She breathes harshly through her nose, the way Am taught her.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Keep your hands loose. Keep your thoughts sharper than your fear.

She is not eleven anymore.

She is twenty. She is wildfire and saltwater. She is ash and brass and bone.

She has a friend to save. A spell theory to test. A town to return to.  A candy debt to collect from Am. A prank war to win against Corey.  A family to come back to.

She—

She remembers the scent of saltwater and blood. Remembers being seventeen, surrounded by Inquisitors with radiant blades and silver-tipped arrows aimed at her throat and heart.

And she remembers him , Sable, grinning like a man with nothing left to lose and still pretending he hasn’t noticed the tide’s about to turn. Crooked and reckless, like a lighthouse keeper daring a storm to come closer.

That smile. The kind you only see on men who have lost too much to the sea, and still keep going back to it.

He’d put a hand on her shoulder. Held his greatsword in the other hand.

“Trust me,” he’d said.

And she did.

Even then, when she was seventeen, fresh in the Golden Key and expecting betrayal in every handshake, every sentence, she trusted him. Sable Thornvar, with his broken compass heart and bone-deep loyalty.

She still trusts him.

She just hopes, God, that he trusts her too.

Because the keys are cold in her pocket, and the gates to the Tenth Hell are just ahead.

And Tayla Everglade never did know how to quit.

(Here’s a joke for you: A heretic has a speed of 30 feet. Guess how far she gets before she is caught and killed?)

***

(Make a stealth check.)

He counted five guards.
Three visible. Two hidden. One opening in the east wing.

In ten minutes, the shift will change.

It will be sudden.
It will not be consistent.

Thirteen minutes after that, the second shift will arrive.
Seven minutes later, the lost rotation will enter.
Adding a final layer of confusion.

That rotation stays for four hours: watching, waiting.

Until they’re replaced again in six minutes.
Then, twenty-one minutes.
Then seventeen.
The next rotation holds for two hours and eighteen minutes.

It’s maddening, a labyrinth of minutes and movement.
The inconsistency is the point.
It’s not meant to make sense, not to the prisoners, not even to the guards.

They only get their shift schedule the day of.
No one knows the pattern except the highest-ranking clergy.
And they even rewrite it constantly.

No one has broken into the Tenth Hell and lived.

But Talveres knows the church.
He was a weapon of Peace, once.

He knows how they move.
How they think.
How they break you down and build you into something worse.

He knows how long it takes to make someone forget their name.

And he knows the gap: That brief 7-minute shift.
Where one set of guards grows bored, and the next shift hasn't yet arrived.

 Only seven minutes of overlap.

Seven minutes where vigilance goes dim.
Seven minutes where guards look the other way.

That’s when he’ll make his move.

In twenty-three minutes, he’ll slip past the armor and steel.
He’ll become a ghost, a rumor moving through holy fire.
He’ll find Sable’s cell and pull him out.

Then he’ll go back to the Golden Key.
Try not to break every mirror he sees.

Try not to scream when the dreams come.

Try to feel like a person-

Even though he isn’t, because..

He’s eighteen.
He’s seven.
He’s one hundred and forty-five.
He’s dead. He’s a vessel.
He’s a weapon.
He’s a boy.

He is haunted and holy.

He’s a thousand contradictions stitched together and called a person.

But he is not good.

Never was. Never will be.

There’s too much blood on his hands for that.
He wasn’t made for peace.
He was made to kill.
To maim.
To break.

But if he can’t be good, he can be useful 

He can pay back his debts and try to wash the blood from his hands. 

So Talveres slips his hood tighter over his head as the ten-minute shift begins.
Armor chimes like a funeral bell. Steel glints like moonlight. The previous shift leaves stretching their sore muscles and grumbling to each other. 

Talveres watches them stand as boredom takes over, like drowsiness. He waits patiently, like a cat stalking its prey.

Hand on dagger, he watches the 13-minute shift come in and smiles softly to himself. 

And when boredom takes over, he'll move. 

Like a ghost

Like a monster

Like A weapon

Like the Hollow One

(Here's a joke for you: If a Ghost breaks into a prison and no one sees him, is he even really there?)

***

She slips through the east wing, quiet as guilt and fast as a thought.

Honestly, it was easier than expected to get in. The first key on the ring worked like a charm, slid in like butter. The door swung open soundlessly and unguarded.

The hallway beyond is dim, lit only by the soft flicker of dying candles. The air reeks of mildew and old blood.

Something feels wrong. Maybe it's because the Tenth Hell isn’t just a prison.
It’s a tomb.

A tomb where rebels, heretics, children, and defilers spend their final hours. A tomb with listening walls and patrolling guards. A tomb with no exits, only graves.

Tayla pulls her hood lower, shoulders tense, focusing on keeping the invisibility spell intact. She moves deeper into the belly of the prison, the place where people enter, but never return.

It’s eerily silent. Not even the rats that feast on corpses dare to scurry here. Tayla’s been in prisons before, dark, grim, and suffocating, but none of them like this.

Here, dread clings to the walls like mold. Thick. Wet. Smothering. Like fog rolling in off the ocean at dawn.

And the deeper she descends, the harder it is to breathe.

Metal clanks. Footsteps echo. Guards patrol with sharp eyes and sharper blades.

(Make a Stealth check with advantage.)

Sometimes she’s sure the spell isn’t enough. That their hawk-eyes can pierce through illusion. But either they’re overconfident, or she’s doing better than she thinks.

She slips past like a shadow. Like a secret. Back pressed to damp stone, the scent of rust and rot burns in her nose. The guards speak rarely. When they do, it’s clipped. Coded. The language of wolves keeps the sheep penned.

Shift changes come fast. Too fast. Too chaotic to track. A labyrinth made of lies and trickery. 

There’s no map of the Tenth Hell. No clear layout. Its structure exists only in the minds of the high clergy, and even they rewrite it.

Some say the Tenth Hell is alive. That it breathes. That it shifts. That it feeds .

Feeds on the screams of prisoners. The blood of heretics.  Sucks the bone marrow from rebels like vampires. 

They say that’s why the halls are always changing, why the structure is never the same two days in a row.  Because it’s not stone. It’s flesh, growing, changing. Making more room for the damned.

Tayla is walking blind. No map. No guide. No guarantee. All she has to go on is the sound of dripping water, her arcane eye, her familiar, common sense-

-and hope.

Stupid, fragile hope. Not the kind that heals. The kind that burns .

The kind that keeps you walking into fire long after your shoes have melted. That kind of gives her just enough motivation to keep going.

(What's your passive Perception? ) 

The corridor turns sharply. 

Then again.

Then the descent stops abruptly.

The hallway levels out, wider now. Smooth stone. Silent as a tomb.
She smells nothing, no blood, no rot. Just cold air and something too clean to be natural.

That was her first sign that something was wrong

The second is when the door to the belly of the Tenth Hell opens silently and smoothly. No key needed to unlock it

The third was the cell itself. 

No blood. No rot. 

No chains. No Prisoner. No locks

No Sable. 

Just a single iron chair. 

Sitting perfectly in the middle of the cell, underneath flickering lights.. 

( Make a constitution saving throw to see if you maintain concentration.)  

Tayla's breath catches in her throat. She feels her invisibility waver, her fingers aching towards her wand. The realization of what happened settled upon her shoulders like the ocean, the deeper you go.

The path should’ve been harder. There should’ve been locked doors, chains, and alarms. But the keys worked. The guards didn’t look her way. The shadows welcomed her. 

It was a trap. 

It was all a trap all along, and Tayla fell for it. 

She played right into their hands. 

The candle in the room flickers unnaturally, and she feels the presence before she sees it. 

A man. No taller than a dogwood. Hair balding at the top. His clergy robes hang loosely around his frame as if he has lost weight recently. 

On the surface, he looks welcoming and kind. Wearing the face of a fatherly man. But his eyes are as cold as ice. Tayla has seen the look in the eyes of men before. 

It always ends the same way,

“You're later than we thought you would be,” his voice is smooth like glass, “But we do still have a bit of time before sunset, yes?”

( Here's a joke for you: 

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

The inquisitor.

The inquisitor wh—

Exactly. )

***

Sable remembers the ocean the way a ghost remembers its body. With longing. And rage.

Longing for something that’s right there and yet just out of reach. He yearns for the salt in his hair, the cry of gulls as The Harpy makes landfall.  He misses the laughter of his crew as they pass around saltwater rum, voices rising in half-drunk sea shanties under moonlight.

He longs for the open ocean. The feel of the waves rocking the ship like a cradle. The freedom. The sky. The endless horizon.

And yet, for all the longing, there is rage.

Rage at the Church for taking his first crew.
Rage at the captain who sold children for being born heretics.
Rage at the man who killed Mavilkea.
Rage at the sea for letting him live when everyone else died.
Rage at the chains that keep him from dying the way he wants—
Beneath stars, with salt in his hair, and the sea at his back.

Sable doesn’t sail anymore. Not after Mavilkea. Not after the mutiny that cost him everything.

But he belongs to the sea. Always has. Always will. He has sand in his bones and salt in his veins. He was born at sea, and he wants to die with it.

But he can’t. Because for all the longing, there’s the rage.

Because Sable survived. And they didn’t.

“You’re doing it again.”

He smells the sea before he sees it. Tastes the salt on his tongue. Feels the phantom waves lap against his skin.

“Ignoring me isn’t going to change anything.”

He blinks. Hard. His eyes sting.

Sitting across from him, calm as a tidepool, mischievous as a dolphin, is Mavilkea.

He looks just the same as the day Sable lost him. Wind-tossed curls. Sleeves rolled to the elbows.
That old captain’s coat, half off his shoulder. Calloused hands, with rings on every finger, rested on his knees. Blood crusted at his temple. Salt is still in his hair.

“You’re dead,” Sable whispers, brittle as dying rope.

Mavilkea grins. Sharp and warm, like a knife used to slice fresh bread.

“Clearly.”

 “I buried you,” Sable says, remembering the way the blood stained his hands

 “You did.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because you are.”

Sable says nothing. Just watches.

Mavilkea leans against the cell wall, watching back with those soft, too-alive brown eyes that donrt belong on a dead man.

“We’re pirates, Sab. We go down with the ship. With our captain.”

“I’m not your captain.” Sable’s voice is cracked. “Not anymore.”

Mavilkea tilts his head. Boyish. Sunlit. Soft.

“You’ll always be my captain.”

Sable shakes his head. It hurts. Blood from his latest beating drips down his temple. None of this is real. It cant be real.

“You’re not real. I’ve lost my mind.”

“You lost your mind years ago, Cap,” Mavilkea laughs. Bright. Loud. Alive.

Sable wants to laugh. Or cry. Or scream. He does none of those things.

He just stares.

Mavilkea stares back. And Sable drinks him in.  The mole under his left eye. His sun-warmed skin.  That smile that used to outshine the morning. His dimples. The salt in his curls. The sound of his laugh.

“They’re gonna kill you, you know.”

“I know.”

“And still, you’re fighting.”

“You think I should give up?”

Mavilkea grins. It reminds Sable of Corey, reckless and defiant.

“What I think and what you’ll do are two very different things, Captain.”

Then Mavilkea stands. Knees crack. He walks with the slight limp he got jumping from the crow’s nest during that ambush on Shorefang Isle.

He kneels, just like he did when Sable took a blade to the ribs at twenty-six.

His fingers brush Sable’s knee. There’s no real touch, just the memory of it.  But it aches.

“You need to let go.” His voice is solemn and sad, so unlike the friend he lost. 

“Of what?”

“Of me. Jesse. Tara. The guilt. The mutiny.

 “ I was the mutiny.”

“And we were your crew,” Mavilkea says gently. “We would’ve followed you anywhere.”

“You followed me to your deaths.”

Sable wants to grab him. Shake him. Yell like he used to when Mavilkea made a reckless call and laughed it off later.

But Mavilkea only smiles.

“And we don’t regret it, Captain.”

“You should ,” Sable whispers. Raw. Hollow. Older than Mavilkea ever got to be.

Mavilkea is forever thirty-five. Sable is forty-six. It’s cruel to be older than your oldest friend.

“Too bad,” Mavilkea shrugs. “That’s not your call.”

“Then what is my call?” He demands, his voice hard. Anger brews beneath his skin

“Whether you fight… or die.”

His face flickers.

Blood drips from his lips.

And still, he smiles.

“Make the call, Captain. Just whatever it is.. Don't regret it.”

Sable closes his eyes. Just for a second. Let it all hang over him. 

He thinks of gulls. Of Am and her dry wit. Corey’s gambling grin. Tayla’s impossible spells. Talveres whispering to wild animals. He thinks of Drearwater. Of his mother. Of Tara and Jesse and Mavilkea.

Of laughter. Of Home. Of family

When he opens his eyes, Mavilkea is gone.

All that remains is the cold.
The chains.
The blood. 

And the longing for the sea.

(Here’s a joke for you: They say no one can hear you scream beneath the temple.)

(Answer: That’s not true.  You hear yourself just fine. )

***

The candle flickers. Just once, as the Inquisitor steps into the room.

His shadow stretches impossibly long across the stone in the candlelight. He takes in the space like he’s seen it a hundred times. Maybe he has. Granite walls press in like a tomb. A single iron chair sits in the center, perfectly placed. A monument. A message.

He does not look surprised.

Tayla wondered where he was hiding. Or if he simply stepped in from somewhere else. Somewhere worse.

Her invisibility is gone, flickered out like a dying flame. No point keeping it up. Some things aren’t worth the energy.

He shuts the door behind him with a soft click.

She doesn’t flinch. She lets the silence settle over them like dust on a grave.

He doesn’t approach. Just leans against the wall closest to the door, hands folded in front of him like he's about to offer her tea. A peace offering. A lie.

“I didn’t think anyone would be brave enough to enter the Tenth Hell,” he says, mildly, almost gently. Like a mother comforting a child after a thunderstorm.

It makes her skin crawl.

“But here you are. And a mage, no less.” His eyes gleam. Power and control glint in those black irises. He runs a crooked hand over his robes, adjusting the tasseled collar. Perfect. Precise.  “And an unregistered one at that.”

Tayla doesn’t answer. Her hand stays on her wand. She forces her shoulders to relax. She will not show fear.

She knows what they do to the frightened in this place.

The Tenth Hall feeds on fear. Like crows on corpses.

“I see you got your hands on a set of keys.” He almost sounds proud. As if this is all just a game.

“That part wasn’t planned,” he admits with a careless shrug. “But improvisation is the soul of strategy, don’t you think?”

She stares at him. Her mouth is dry. Her pulse is a drumline in her chest. The air smells wrong, too clean. Sanitized, sacred in the way only the Church knows how to make things feel holy and cruel.

“Ah, forgive me,” he says lightly, as if she hadn’t just broken into a high-security prison. “I’ve been terribly rude.”

He doesn’t stop smiling. Like they’re old friends catching up.

“I’m Corvus.” A beat.  “Father Corvus, to be exact.”

She purses her lips. Glares.

“If this is the part where you start monologuing, stop. I’ve heard better threats from drunken sailors.”

“No threats,” he hums. “Just conversation.”

(Make an Insight Check.)

The walls are too clean. No chains. No blood.  Just incense, rain-slick stone, and a chair set with surgical intent.

This isn’t a cell. It’s a stage.

“He’s not here,” Tayla mutters. Cold. Certain. “Never was.”

Corvus grins.

“Clever girl.”

“Where is he?”

“Classified,” he replies smoothly.

Tayla rolls her eyes.

“But,” he muses, as if the idea just wandered into his head,  “I suppose I could tell you… for a price.”

“Save your spiel.” Her voice is ice on seawater. “I don’t want it.”

Corvus sighs. Disappointed. Petulant. “You heretics are so quick to reject us.”

He studies her, quiet now. Calculating. Searching her face like it holds a confession she hasn’t spoken yet.

And then he smiles.

Too wide. Too sharp.

Like a wolf that's finally cornered the deer.

“Your friend was like that.”

Tayla’s heart plunges. Her breath falters.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“He was a fighter—a wall. But even walls crack. Hit them hard enough... they always break.”

He leans forward, voice honeyed with cruelty. “Tell me, clever girl. Do you think he’d trade places with you?”

She doesn’t ask who he's talking about. They both know.

Sable.

With his sea-glass heart and storm-wrecked loyalty. With the scars he never speaks of, and the kindness he doesn't know how to stop giving.

She thinks of his hand steadying hers after a fight. 

Of how he carried Corey home after a close call. Steadying and safe.
Of how the kettle always whistles for Am.
Of all the ways he says I care without ever needing to say it.

“If Sable Thornvar knew you were here, that you walked into the Tenth Hall, a trap, do you think he’d be proud?” Corvus tilts his head. Voice gentle.  “Or furious?”

Something inside her breaks. Not like glass.  Like a wave.

The ocean doesn’t bow. It doesn’t surrender. And neither does Tayla Everglade. 

“He’d say I’m a fool.” Her voice is drawn tight, like a pulled wire. But she smiles.

Corvus raises a brow.

“And are you?”

“Of course.” Her grin is jagged and holy. A pirate’s grin. A priestess. A survivor. A girl.  “Only a fool walks into Hell for love.”

And she moves.

Fast as a whip. Sharp as glass.

Tayla draws her wand and fires.

(Make a melee spell attack.)

Arcane light slams into the stone. Corvus dodges, just barely.

His smile vanishes. The warmth peels back. What’s left is blood and knives. Rage and ruin.

“Foolish girl,” he snarls, drawing his blade. “We were only interested in Thornvar. But now… now we’ll have to save you, too.”

She braces against the wall as he lunges. His sword gleams. Radiant. Blinding.

“I don’t need your saving,” she spits, venom sharp in her voice.

Corvus grins. A mouth full of needles. Eyes like shattered glass.

And then—

He drops.

Like a puppet with its strings cut.

A figure steps from the shadow.

Eyes as black as the midnight sky on cloudy nights. He looks ethereal standing there, power and precision wrapped into the form of a man. Long black hair hanging limply down his shoulders. A dagger is held tightly in his hand, and Tayla can see that it's no ordinary dagger from the way it glimmers in the candlelight. Casting a pale white glow on the stone floor, blood coating its point. 

She stares at him, and he stares at her, and her breath catches in her throat. 

He’s beautiful.  

He looks like a myth.

Like a ghost. Like a god. 

He’s also in her goddam way. 

She curls a finger around the rock she picked up earlier, and does the only reasonable thing:

She throws it at his elegant, stupid face.

(Make an improvised weapon attack. Dex modifier.)

He doesn’t dodge.

It hits squarely, just above his left eye.

The rock falls with a dull thunk.

The figure stares at it. Then at her. Then back at the rock. Like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

The room seemed to hold its breath.

Tayla’s fingers tightened around her wand.

The stranger’s eyes narrowed, unreadable.

For a heartbeat, everything hung on a knife’s edge, then it shattered.

(Here’s a joke for you: Three people walk into the Tenth Hell. One drops, one prays, and one kills. Guess who survives?

(Answer: The Tenth Hell )

***

It is laughable, in some ways, that the Tenth Hell—an intricate, expensive, impossible prison, built by some of the most brilliant minds ever to exist—can begin to fall apart in a matter of seconds.

The moment the rock drops, the prison comes alive.

Violent. Loud. Horrifying.

Screams and shouts ricochet off stone walls.

Boots slam into the ground, pounding closer.

Voices howl through the labyrinth.

The door bursts open. Splinters fly, sharp as glass, cutting into her face and hands.

Guards pour in. Bolts of holy fire and silver-tipped arrows scream through the air before Tayla even has time to think. They shout orders and commands. Indistinguishable from each other. 

“Heretics! Seal the wing!”

“Intruders!”

“Kill them!”

“Don’t let them reach the gate!”

Tayla’s body moves before her mind catches up. She’s running, bolting down the corridor.  The figure is right behind her.

“Move!” the figure hisses, sharp, lethal. He whips a dagger from his belt and flings it.

She doesn’t look,, doesn't need to.

She hears the wet sound of blade meeting flesh, then the dull thud of a body collapsing behind her.

She sprints down the corridor, past flickering torchlight and the scent of singed stone and smoke. Her boots slam against marble. Her lungs are already burning.

Behind them, another spell fires.

It hits her.

Not clean. Just a graze—

But gods, it hurts.

She stumbles. Her shoulder clips the wall hard, and her vision blurs. She tastes blood.

Then—

A warm, steady hand grabs her wrist and yanks her forward.

The figure doesn’t stop. Just pulls her back into motion, dragging her toward the exit.

“You’re lucky,” he murmurs as they run. His voice is low, almost lost in the chaos.  “That one missed. The next one won’t.”

She laughs, dry, bitter. It tastes like blood. like desperation. “You have terrible bedside manners.”

He glances at her. Brief.  Then exhales. Not quite a laugh, but not not one either.

A crash rings out behind them.  Stone explodes. Fire howls. The corridor shakes like it’s about to come down on their heads.

Tayla ducks as another bolt of holy fire rips past her, close enough to sear her hood.

“Left!” the figure barks, already turning.

They dive into a narrower hallway. Darker here. The torches flicker blue instead of gold.  This part of the prison feels older. Quieter. Forgotten.

Tayla doesn’t trust it.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” she pants.

“Down.”

That’s all he says.

Another thunderous crash splits the air behind them. Stone groans. Something collapses with a roar. The Tenth Hell is coming down, and it will take them down with it. 

Tayla ducks as another blast scorches the air past her cheek.  The heat is a kiss of flame, the smell of ozone and burning skin sharp in her nose.

“Right!” the figure snarls, already veering off.

She skids into the turn. The floor is slick, water up to her ankles,, icy and foul.

The corridor tightens.

The torch light is dimmer, flickering, like it’s afraid of this place, too.

Every sound echoes:  Dripping water. Distant screams. The furious pounding of boots behind them.

The hallway narrows again. Barely enough space for them both.

The candles flicker as they pass. Blue flames stutter, then pulse violet for a heartbeat, and then flicker back.

The corridor closes in, uneven brick scraping at their clothes, jagged stone tearing skin.

The guards are closing in. Tayla hears them, footsteps pounding like drums. Voices rebounding off the walls. Metal striking stone.

They know these halls. She doesn’t.

And still, they aren’t rushing to catch them.

They're chasing them, but it's a slow chase. 

The kind you use to tire. 

And something clicked in her brain.

They’ll catch them at the exit.

It’s a smart plan.

Make them run.

Bleed.

Burnout.

Too tired to fight when it counts.

Like wolves hunting deer. Tire them out. Pounce for the kill. 

They know the tenth hall. It's their domain. 

Tayla and the Figure are simply invasive vermin.

“They’re trying to cut us off,” Tayla mutters. Her side burns where the spell clipped her, raw, blistered.  It feels like acid licking her ribs with every breath.

‘That's what they think,” The figure whispers, amused, alive, “This way”

and Tayla does not have time to ask what he means before their race deeper into the Tenth Hell.

They descend deeper beneath the stone. Passing old cells, filled with decaying skeletons and rat-infested corpses. 

They pass, old guard outpost and blood-stained walls. 

The corridor twists again and then stops.

A wall.

Solid stone.

A Dead end.

Tayla skids to a halt, her boots splashing in ankle-deep water. Her breath catches. “No. No, no, no—”

Behind them, the boots are getting louder. Shouting echoes through the corridors. Holy fire illuminates the path they came.

She spins on the figure, panic cutting through her pain. “You said it down ! Not a wall! ”

But he doesn’t answer.

He’s already moving.

Hands brushing along the stone, fingers feeling along the cracks with the calm of someone who’s done this before.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tayla mutters.

There’s a sudden click .

The figure presses both palms flat against a section of the wall, and a faint trickle of blood flows freely from his palms. Staining the stone red. 

And then he shoves

The wall splits

The stone groans, ancient hinges shrieking in protest as a narrow opening creaks inward. The air that spills out is stale, cold, and smells faintly of sulfur and rot.

Tayla blinks. “What the hell is that?”

“Old escape route,” he says simply, already ducking inside. “Only a few know of it.”

“How do you know about it?”

“Secret.”

Tayla huffs but relents. It's this or death, and she does not plan to die here.

She slips inside after him. The uneven stone scraped against her injured side. She bites back a scream of pain and continues in. 

The wall closes behind them, trapping them. Its ancient hinges screaming once more before falling into silence. 

Darkness covers them like a cloak, and Tayla pulls a light from her satchel. 

Behind the sound of thundering boots comes to a stop. Confused voices echo faintly from the other side. 

They've found the dead end.

“Sucks to be them,” Tayla mutters. A bloodied grin pulls at her lips as she steps deeper into the tunnel.

The passage curves downward. The walls are arched, carved from bedrock, laced with cobwebs. Old bones litter the floor, a femur here, a shattered pelvis there. A skull grinning up from the dark.

“Be careful,” the figure mutters beside her. “It’s a long way down.”

(Here's a joke for you: The Tenth Hell spent a hundred years building the perfect prison.

Turns out, it forgot to lock the back door. )

***

He dreams of home.

The Red Lantern Tavern, late at night, is alive with laughter and warmth. The fire crackles low in the hearth, casting a soft, amber glow across the room.

Corey’s got a mug of ale in his hand, swinging it back and forth as he excitedly reenacts his day. He talks about an inquisitive ring he stole, a fight with a seagull, and the disastrous fall he took into the sea.

Tayla laughs, poking fun at him, and Corey pokes right back. Their bickering is like the playful brawl of siblings, soft, loud, cruel, warm, and full of life.

Am smirked into her glass, pretending not to find the whole scene amusing. She leans casually against him at the bar.

“Troublemakers, the lot of them,” she mutters, her lips twitching up at the corners.

He laughs, rough and alive. “Like you ain’t one of them.”

Am’s grin widens, mischievous. Even at fifty-something, Am’s wit has never dulled. “I’ve got an image to maintain.”

He rolls his eyes, sinking back into the warmth of the room. The sea breeze coming through the open window, the taste of dry rum on his tongue, and the sound of Corey and Tayla’s laughter filling the air.

“Sure you do,” he says, taking another swig.

Raising an eyebrow, she adds, “Are you insinuating something, Thornvar?”

He grins back, sharp and full of mischief. “I don’t know… am I?”

She narrows her eyes, a playful glint in them. “Keep talking like that, and I’ll poison your tea.”

“You love me too much to do that.”

She had laughed, and somehow Corey and Tayla had ended up on the floor, wide-eyed and breathless with laughter. Corey’s mug of ale had spilled into his hair, and Tayla was levitating the cup above them with a smug grin and a flick of her fingers.

Sable dreams of Drearwater. Of them all.

He dreams of them, and he misses them with a fierceness that aches in his bones.

But, like most things in his life, dreams are just that: dreams.

Real in memory. Elvuise in reality. 

And Illian Thorshard makes sure it stays that way.

She wakes him in the morning of his execution with a bucket of cold water and a sadist’s grin.

The shock tears the breath from his lungs. He coughs hard, spitting water onto the stone floor, pain flaring through half-healed wounds as they stretch and pull.

The scent of sea and warmth is gone.

Replaced by rot and blood.

The weight of a glass in his hand, replaced by shackles digging into raw wrists.

The firelight, gone. Only cold stone now.

“Rough morning?” a voice says, far too cheerfully.

He looks up.

Illian Thorshard stands in the doorway, a dripping wooden bucket swinging casually from one hand. Her inquisitor uniform is freshly pressed. Her smile is razor-sharp.

“Anyone ever told you you’re a psychopath?”

She shrugs. “Once or twice. Usually after the water.”

Sable glares, shivering slightly in his soaked clothes. “You always start with a bucket? Or am I just lucky?”

“Special treatment,” Thorshard says cruelly. “We only got one execution today. Might as well make it memorable.”

She saunters closer, the heels of her boots echoing in the cell like the ticking of a clock. The click-click-click of inevitability.

Sable doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t smile either. He knows better.

Thorshard crouches beside him, just out of reach.

“You know, the funniest thing happened yesterday,” she murmurs, voice honey-sweet and venom-laced. “A mage broke into the Tenth Hell.”

Sable feels his heart stop.

“Maybe you know her? Green hair. Light blue skin. Pointed ears. A sea elf. Nineteen? Twenty?” Illian tilts her head. “Broke in last night. Made it decently far, too. Real dramatic.”

No.

No, no, no.

Please, not Tayla.

Gods, please let this be a lie.

She wouldn’t. She’s too clever. Too cautious. She wouldn’t risk everything for a broken-down, bitter sailor in a rusted cell.

His breath catches. Just for a moment. But it’s enough.

It’s like drowning without water.

And Illian sees it.

“Oh?” she purrs. “Didn’t know?”

She leans in, mock-gentle. “Someone came to rescue you last night, Thornvar.”

Her smile sharpens. Wicked. Glass-cutting. Cruel as a wrath.

“Unfortunately,” she says, rising slowly to her feet, “she didn’t make it out. She was sloppy. Desperate. And the Tenth Hell…” She shrugs. “Well. It doesn’t take kindly to heretics.”

“Liar,” He spits. Harsh like the stormy ocean. 

She raises an eyebrow, “Am I?”

(Make an opposed insight check, against her Deception or Persuasion) 

Sable doesn’t move. Not right away.

He stares at the floor, at the water pooling around the iron rings bolted into the stone. His blood, engraved deep into centuries of suffering beneath him.

There’s a rushing in his ears. Not like blood. Like waves.  Like drowning.

Tayla.

Tayla, who looked at the world and called it a game.

Tayla, who was never supposed to come for him.

Stupid, reckless girl.

His jaw tightens. Fingers curl into fists, chains rattling softly.

“She’s dead,” Thorshard says again, testing the blade with a casual cruelty. “Poor thing.”

He doesn’t answer.

Because if he does, he’ll scream. The kind of raw fury you bury for years, lock away in your bones, hide deep in your mind.  The kind pirates and sailors used to bury their dead deep beneath the ocean floor.

So instead, he swallows it down. The grief. The anger. The fury.

Illian is lying. She has to be.

Because if she’s not, if Tayla did die. Bleeding out on ancient stone. Fighting tooth and nail like he knew she would.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself.

“She fought well,” Illian says, voice almost mocking. “She gave our guards quite the scare,  but it wasn’t enough. They burned her. Turned her into ashes. I’d show you the corpse, but it’s just a pile of ash.”

She pauses, as if considering something trivial.

Sable wants to scream.

“I think they flushed her down the drain.”

Her tone is casual..

She looks back at him, grin wide and sharp.

A muscle twitches in his jaw.

Fuck being docile. 

He lunges. 

The chains burn into his skin, and scabbed wounds open up. The current of blood flows freely. 

He doesn't get far. He’s helpless

Illian just laughs at his attempt

He’s shaking. He hates that she sees it.

He hates what she did to Tayla even more.

“Don’t worry,” Illian says with cruel certainty.  “You’ll join her soon, in eight hours.

And then she gives him a mock bow. And walks away, down the hallway, and out of the crypts

(Here's a joke for you: 

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

No one.

No one who?

  .... )

***

If you’re one of the lucky few who know the layout of the Tenth Hell, you know one thing for certain: there is no passage after you turn down the Littering Hall. Escape is impossible. It’s a laughable plan to break in, let alone get out again.

But the lucky few rarely know the whole truth.

They don’t know the Tenth Hell was once a smugglers’ stronghold. That beneath the prison, old tunnels slither like veins: some flooded, some collapsed, most forgotten. The lucky few aren’t told this. Because anyone can betray you. And if heretics, rebels, or mercenaries got their hands on that knowledge...

Well. The Tenth Hell wouldn’t be so feared, would it?

Here’s the thing:

Those lucky few?

They’re not actually lucky.

Talveres knows the full truth.

And he is not lucky. 

He’s not sure when he was told. Maybe he was twelve. Or one hundred and thirty-six. Maybe no one told him, maybe he just… knew.  Time is strange for Talveres. He’s missing so much, and somehow, he has too much.

He moves like someone walking through a memory.

The tunnel is narrow, carved crudely into stone centuries ago. Water clings to the walls and drips from the ceiling in slow, steady drops that echo like heartbeats.  Behind him, Tayla breathes hard, but her steps are sure, steady, as if she’s walked these halls a hundred times.

She’s exactly as Sable described her.

Quick-witted. Sharp. A cleverness that makes Talveres’s skin crawl. A powerful mag, he figured that out fast. One arcane blast nearly took an Inquisitor’s head clean off.

She doesn’t look afraid. Just... annoyed. She wraps her cloak tightly around her bleeding side and keeps moving. Don't wait for help. Don't slow down. More annoyed she got hit than scared that they’re being hunted like rats.

Like she’s done this all before.

Talveres is almost certain they share the same goal. To find Sable.

And both of them failed.

He’s furious with himself. He should’ve known it was a trap. Of course, the Church wouldn’t make it easy. They like the game. They like the chase. The interrogation. They like breaking you.

They like making you wait. Making you suffer. They think it’s fun.

“So, you got a name, pretty boy?” Tayla calls nonchalantly. 

( Make a dexterity saving throw ) 

Talveres freezes. His boots go silent on the wet stone. He barely avoids slipping. He turns, blinking rapidly.

He’s not sure he heard her right.

“What?”

She raises an eyebrow, precise and amused. “A name. I mean, I can keep calling you ‘shadowy figure’ or ‘pretty boy’ if you prefer.”

He tilts his head. “Names are dangerous things to give.”

Tayla scoffs. “So’s breaking into the Tenth Hell. Your point?”

He huffs. “Talveres.”

Tayla’s face softens. “Old sailor’s tongue, huh?”

“Sable gave it to me,” he says quietly.

It was the first thing he was ever given after escaping the Church. He was sixteen. Or maybe one hundred and forty-three. Time blurs when you're frozen for half of it..

 Sable had found him: feral, mute, blood on his hands and desperation in his eyes. A knife in one hand. A burned sigil in the other.

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think without waiting for an order. Only knew how to obey

He remembers Sable tossing him a piece of bread.

Just... tossing it. Like Talveres was a starving kid, not something broken and dangerous. Like he wasn’t a deadly assassin. Like he wasn’t The Hollow One.

 “You look like you haven’t eaten in a century,” Sable had said. No judgment. No fear. Just that quiet gruffness, steady as the sea.

Talveres had stared at the bread like it was a spell he didn’t understand. He doesn’t remember eating it. Only that it was warm. Only that Sable hadn’t moved closer. Just sat there with his pipe.

 A lighthouse in a stormy sea.

Later, when Talveres began following him like a ghost. Sable spoke roughly but kindly:

“You need a name. I’m not calling you ‘The Hollow One.’ You ain’t a weapon. You’re a kid.”

Tayla hums, pulling him out of the memory.  “You know Sable.”

Talveres nods softly as they walk side by side.  “He saved my life.”

“Mine too.”

Her voice is gentle, like a tide pool—shallow at first glance, but hiding sharp, living things beneath the surface.  She reminds him of the sea just before a storm: deceptively calm, eyes fixed on the horizon.

( What's your passive perception? ) 

Talveres doesn’t say anything. Just walks in silence beside her.  They pass a crumpled pile of bones, half-sunken into the damp stone. Neither of them comments.

Then Tayla laughs, quietly, but with a crack running through it.  “He has a habit of collecting strays. That’s what Am always says.”

For a moment, they don’t speak. Just the slow drip of water, the shuffle of boots on stone. It isn’t heavy silence. It’s shared.

“He said I reminded him of a cat,” Talveres whispers.

Tayla blinks. Once. Twice.

Then she snorts.

It reminds him of festival bells—bright, surprising, soft. She grins at him, and he catches a glimpse of fangs gleaming in the torchlight.

 She’s pretty., He thinks, like danger dressed in salt and sunlight.

“You do have some feline tendencies,” she teases.

He tilts his head, curious. That just makes her laugh harder.

“Is that an insult?”

“Only if you want it to be.”

Talveres doesn’t answer. He lets the corner of his mouth lift, barely a smile, more like the ghost of one. But it’s enough.

They keep walking, their footsteps soft on damp stone. The silence stretches again. But this time it’s different. Not heavy. Not painful. 

Comfortable.

Then Tayla speaks, voice softer now.

“He told me I reminded him of the ocean.”

Talveres glances at her, pain flickering in his eyes.

“Loud. Violent. Likely to drown a man.” Her lip twitches into a fragile, uneven smile. “I think he meant it as a compliment.”

And then Tayla’s expression darkens, the warmth fading like a brewing storm.

“And now he’s going to die. All because I fell for their stupid tricks.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He whispers. His voice aches. 

She shoots him a skeptical look.

“You seem sure.”

A bitter knot twists in his gut, coiling tighter with every breath, constricting like a snake wrapped around his lungs. He thinks it’s an emotion, maybe guilt, maybe regret.

“I fell for it, too.”

The words taste like dry ash on his tongue.

“And I should’ve known better.”

He presses his finger into his palm, watching tiny crescent wounds bloom, barely a sting, but there. Pain had long since lost its meaning. The Church had trained him to ignore it, but years later, the numbness still clung like a second skin.

Tayla’s hand lands on his shoulder, warm and steady, a fragile anchor in the dark. “I guess we have that in common, yeah?”

He swallows hard, voice barely above a whisper. “Yeah.”

He keeps walking, silent, soft, an assassin molded by shadows and silence.

(Make a survival check, with advantage)  

The tunnel narrows ahead, walls inching closer like the Church’s grip tightening around his throat.
Water drips from the jagged ceiling, the sound sharp and lonely, each drop a cold reminder that time is slipping away, fast.

Talveres steps carefully, boots muffled on slick stone. Puddles scatter the path—some deeper than they look—half-buried relics of the past: rusted hooks, shattered lanterns, scraps of torn cloth. His eyes flicker over them, searching for signs someone else had been here recently, an enemy or maybe a ghost.

This place once breathed with life and laughter. Now it’s deathly silent, except for their quiet breaths and the relentless drip-drip-drip of water.

They walk side by side, words trapped in the thick, stale air. Neither wants to break the silence, but neither can quite keep it.

The air sours with rot and mildew, then suddenly shifts, fresh, clean.

Tayla falls into step beside him, her cloak still wrapped tight around her injured side.

They emerge into the open.

The midday breeze rushes through their hair, sharp and biting. The scent of freshly baked bread drifts from a nearby bakery, carrying the innocent sound of children laughing in the street.

“We’re out,” Talveres mutters, voice heavy with a mix of relief and dread.

Tayla turns to him, her sea-glass eyes searching his face, looking for cracks, for doubt, for something he’s not saying.

“We don’t have much time,” she murmurs, voice low and urgent. “If Sable’s alive, he’s counting on us.”

Talveres nods, but his throat tightens. “And we don’t know where he is.”

Her eyes flash with something fierce. “But we know where he’ll be.”

He shakes his head, bitter. “It’s a trap. Too risky.”

“They won’t expect it,” she counters, voice almost defiant.

“We’d probably die.”

She meets his gaze head-on. “What’s life without risk? Without trying?”

The weight of her words hangs between them. Talveres feels the sharp stab of guilt—he’s supposed to be the calm, the plan—but inside, he’s fracturing.

Silence stretches, thick and uncomfortable, as their eyes drift upward to the sun hanging high above.

“How much time do we have?”

“Six hours, if we’re lucky.”

His jaw clenches. “Then we move. No more waiting.”

But even as he says it, a flicker of fear twists inside, fear not just for the mission, but for the friend they’re trying to save, and for the part of himself he thought he buried long ago.

(Here’s a joke for you: They made it out together.  That was the punchline.)

***

They pull him from his cell an hour before the execution.

The door grinds open, and torchlight slices into the dark like a blade. Sable squints against it, blinking away a dream he no longer remembers. The stone is cold beneath him. His body aches. His wrists are raw, chewed up by the chains, bruises carved down to memory.

Two guards enter. Their faces are hidden behind bronze masks. One carries a sword. The other, iron manacles laced with silver wire.

“Stand,” one of them orders.

Sable doesn’t move.

If they’re going to kill him, they can drag his damn body. He won’t make it easy for them.

So they haul him up instead. Their gloved hands digging into his arms.

“Remove the chain,” says the priest at the door. His voice is calm. Clean. He smells like incense and blood.

He’s tall as a dogwood tree, with a feathered, papery face, like parchment just waiting to burn. Sable wants to punch him.

The guards undo his shackles just long enough to switch them out. The new ones bite tighter. Blessed metal. Cold and burning.

Sable wonders, absently, if this is what Mavilkea felt when he died.

Not fear.

Just… acceptance.

They march him through the chapel wing.

Once, maybe, it had been full of laughter. Music. Hope. Now, it smells of smoke and wax and the dry rot of holy things left to die.

Religious paintings line the walls, saints, martyrs, and miracles. Every frame is perfectly placed. Not a speck of dust on them.

He doesn’t look at the acolytes. Doesn’t flinch when someone throws a blessing at his feet.

Instead, he counts.

He’s always been good with numbers. Distance. Timing. He hadn’t captained The Harpy because of luck. He had been the most dangerous pirate on the southern sea for no reason.

(Seventy-three steps to the outer gate.
Nine guards.
Two with crossbows.
One door with a cracked hinge.)

Not enough.

Still, he keeps counting.

Even as they drag him to the cart waiting outside.

The cart is iron-barred, the windows laced with magic. He can smell it, bitter, acrid, wrong.

Illian Thornshard waits in front, her hair twisted into an elegant knot. She looks like she’s heading to a gala.

Maybe, to her, this is one.

“Still not scared?” she asks, voice low and amused. Her smile is subdued today. Fewer teeth. But the power still lingers behind it like poison.

“You wish,” he croaks. His voice is raw. Cracked. But not broken.

No. He is not broken.

He’ll die a thousand deaths before they take that from him.

One last match between them. One final game. Neither wins. Neither loses.

They end it in a tie.

He thinks, maybe, Corey would be proud.

Illians sigh. Disappointed and long, and motioned for the guards to finish chaining him up.

They shackle him to the bench inside the cart, slam the doors shut, and the procession begins. Inquisitors. Clerics. Acolytes flanking the wheels. People fill the streets, shouting, chanting, hungry for blood.

Sable closes his eyes.

And for just a moment, it’s not the stink of incense he smells, but saltwater . Not the candlelight, but the flicker of the Red Lantern’s hearth.

Someone’s laughing, Tayla, maybe. Or Am. Or Corey.

Or someone he can’t remember anymore.

His knees ache. His hands shake.

When I die, he thinks, I’ll die like this. Not as a pawn. Not as their monster. But as a man.

And maybe, maybe, Tayla, Corey, Am, and Talveres will forgive him.

(Here’s a joke for you:  The Church says you’re free to choose between two options. The choices are: kneel or die.

(Guess which one gets picked.)

***

There’s a common proverb in Valnaris:  “Folly walks hand in hand with ambition.”

It's an old saying, said to have originated from what is now called the Shattered Plains. The original version was believed to be: “The snail and the rat never walk far from each other.”

But the Church didn’t like that.

Too strange. Too pagan. Too rooted in gods they'd rather the world forget.

So they scrubbed it clean. Change it to something more palatable.  Erased the snail and the rat— folly and ambition —and with them, the deities they once represented.

The old gods fell soon after. 

Of course, the true origin of the saying has long been forgotten by most. Buried. Banned. Lost beneath sermons and ash.

But Tayla has a fondness for knowledge that’s been forbidden. She says that’s one of her more charming traits.

Sable and Am say it’s the thing that’ll get her killed.

She says they’ll have to catch her first.

And perhaps today… they just might.

Because today, Tayla might as well be serving herself up on a silver platter. Laying her head in a wolf’s mouth and asking it not to bite.

She knows it’s foolish. Knows it deep in her bones.

She is aware of the end that awaits her if she follows through with this plan. She knows every step forward brings her closer to death.

But she won’t turn back.

Because family doesn’t leave family behind. And Sable is one of the closest things she’s had to family since her ship went down.

And hey-

Second time’s the charm, right?

“Ready?” Talveres asks beside her. His hood casts a shadow over his face. 

What a pair they make.

What a reckless, desperate pair of ghosts and survivors.

Tayla breathes in, then out. Like Am taught her. 

“Ready,” she whispers. “May the lady of the sea watch over you.”

Talveres nods and disappears into the crowd like smoke.

And Tayla?

She takes the rat in one hand and waits for the snail to catch up.

She steps deeper into the crowd. One hand on her wand.  One prayer on her tongue. One hand waiting. 

(Here's a joke for you: What’s the difference between a martyr and a fool?

(Answer:  One dies for a cause. The other just forgot to run.)

***

The Square of Saint Aria is usually quiet at this time of night; most people are home by now, having dinner or preparing for the evening.. But tonight is different.

Tonight, as Sable is marched toward the center of the scaffolding, he sees the square swarming with bodies. Not just the usual onlookers or curious wanderers, but everyone. People packed shoulder to shoulder, spilling into the streets, drawn like moths to the candlelight of impending spectacle.

Inquisitors. Acolytes. Clerics. Priests. Guards. The whole procession.

They stand above on the tiered steps, their armor catching the light as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Their masks gleam in gold and crimson, the reflective surface like halos of iron. The evening glow bathes them in an unsettling holiness. Like saints cast in metal.

The sky behind them is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Clouds streak across the heavens in soft hues of peach, rose, and tangerine. The edges flicker like candle flames, casting a golden light that dances against the deepening lilac sky.

A painter might call it divine. A poet might call it romantic.

To Sable, it’s nothing but a mockery.

But hell, if he can't have the sea in his final moments, then at least the sky will do.

His boots hit the wood of the platform with a sharp thud, rough and heavy, bloodstained, familiar. The sound echoes in the silence that falls over the crowd. He hears faint whispers, fingers point toward him, and mothers pull their children close.

A bit of discomfort flickers in the pit of his stomach, but he suppresses it. He's been through worse than a few stares. What’s one more judgment in a lifetime full of them?

Illian stands next to him, regal, proud. She does not look at him directly, but her posture is all too deliberate, the image of composure. Of mourning. But Sable can see the amusement playing in her eyes, the way she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

She enjoys this.

Of course she does.

What a bastard.

The man Sable saw earlier, the one who led the procession, steps forward. His robes flutter lightly in the summer breeze, like they have a life of their own. His balding head gleams under the setting sun, and his posture is the kind of pompous pride that only comes with the belief in one's divine right. He stands at the center of the stage, commanding the attention of the crowd. The sea of people falls silent as he moves.

The priest clears his throat. It’s the kind of sound that feels too rehearsed, too practiced. It echoes like a prelude to a grand show, a performance Sable can’t escape. The man raises his arms, as though he’s gathering the winds, the prayers, the very hearts of the people before him.

"We are gathered here today to bear witness to the death of Sable Thornvar." His voice is deep, rich, and smooth, dripping with the honeyed words of false sympathy. "Traitor. Heretic. Rebel. An enemy of peace. A villain."

Sable can feel a bitter smile tugging at his lips, though he suppresses it. He’s heard this speech a thousand times, in a thousand different ways.

The priest continues, and the crowd hangs on every word, as if it's the gospel being read aloud. “May his soul find comfort in the mercy of Peace and may his sins be washed clean in the light of righteousness.”

Sable rolls his eyes.

He doesn’t care if they see it. He doesn’t care if they take it as a sign of disrespect. Hell, they can think whatever they want. He’s going to die, and the only thing he can control now is the fact that their speeches bore him to tears. That much, at least, he can take with him into the grave.

A sharp tug on his arm. Illian. She pulls him roughly toward the center of the stage. The crowd watches them, breath held collectively.

Her hand is like iron on his arm. "You will die a heretic," she says, her voice like velvet, but with a cold edge.

“And I’ll die a prideful one,” Sable answers, his tone steady, defiant even in the face of certain death.

He can feel her hesitation, just for a moment, before she drags him the rest of the way into the spotlight. She doesn’t say anything else, but there’s something in her gaze. The faintest flicker of recognition, perhaps. She knows exactly what he means, but she would never say it aloud.

For all her power, all her smug satisfaction, Sable still holds a piece of himself they can't take away. Not today. Not in front of all these people.

He isn’t broken. Not yet.

And she failed to do the very thing she sought to do. 

“I want you to watch every moment of this.”

It’s a command. A curse. Her breath is warm on his ear.

But all Sable can do is close his eyes for a moment, feeling the warmth of the sky on his face. The sun, setting low, casts everything in a tragic beauty. It’s mocking, it’s cruel, but there’s something about it that makes his heart ache. Maybe it’s because, in his last moments, he’ll die looking at something beautiful. Maybe it’s because he won’t die the way they want him to.

Sable opens his eyes again. The sky is still stunning in its sadness. It’s the perfect backdrop for his final act. He inhales deeply, filling his lungs with the thick air, and for a moment, he lets himself remember.

He remembers the smell of saltwater on the breeze. The laughter of his friends. The days before the church and the empire took everything from him. And then he remembers them, Tayla, Talveres, Corey, Am, all of them who tried to save him. 

Am who pulled him from the wreckage and called him family. Corey, who gave him shiny dice, buttons, charms, and sea glass he found, so he could always remember him. Talveres, who fixed his things without asking, copied Sable like a little duckling, looking so proud of himself. Tayla, who had magically enchanted his compass to always point home to Drearwater. 

A thin, bitter smile curls at the corners of his lips, and his gaze finds the priest standing at the edge of the scaffold, preparing for the final act. The priest is saying something, but Sable isn’t listening. He doesn’t need to.

I regret nothing, he thinks. If I knew how it would end, I would do it again.

He hopes the priest knows that. He hopes Illian and Am, Corey, Talveres, and Tayal, he hopes they know.

He did not bow.

He did not kneel.

And he will die unbroken.

Sable feels his knees aching under him. His body is failing. His wrists burn in their chains, but that’s all they’ll ever get. His defiance. His soul. His refusal to beg.

Let them see him. Let them remember. He didn’t die begging.

He dies as himself.

And when the priest signals for the executioner, the final moment hanging in the air, Sable doesn’t look away. He doesn’t flinch.

The silence before the strike is deafening. It is everything .

For a brief moment, the world stands still, as if the universe itself is holding its breath. Then, the sound of a weapon being drawn, a whisper against the wind. The final breath before the storm.

Sable doesn’t close his eyes.

And the axe doesn't fall. 

A murmur rose from the crowd. The fear that Sable had been pushing down jolted back up into his body, and he turned his head to see what was happening. 

The axe hovers above his head, poised to strike. The executioner's arm trembles, as though held back by some unseen force. In that brief moment, Sable catches the flicker of genuine fear in the priest’s eyes and in Illian’s too, as they both begin to move.

But they are too late to stop what’s coming.

Before Sable can so much as blink, a dagger embeds into the executioner's shoulder. Perfect and precise. 

He screams, bloody and fearful. The axe drops with a thud, the executioner falls to his knees, clutching his shoulder where warm blood flows like a river. 

There is a brief moment where silence takes over. 

No one breathes, no one moves. 

It's as if they are all frozen in time.

Sable’s gaze flickers toward the crowd, but before he can even begin to process what's happening—

A wisp of seafoam mist drifts toward him. Then another. Then a third.

The fog spills over the scaffolding like a wave breaking free, curling around his feet, swallowing the stage. Within seconds, the execution platform is hidden from the view of the crowd, cloaked in a shimmering teal fog, thick with salt and magic.

The world narrows. The air tastes like the sea.

Footsteps pound across the boards, fast, urgent.

But none make it close.

A dagger whistles through the fog, striking a guard in the throat. He falls with a choking gurgle.

Another slams into the priest’s thigh. He crumples, robes soaked in sudden red.

A third finds Illian’s arm. Her scream is sharp, furious, and humiliating in every note.

The chaos shatters the stillness.

The crowd explodes into motion, a wave of panic and disbelief crashing through the square. Screams rise. People shove and scatter. Some flee. Some freeze. The sound of it all is deafening, like a city cracking open.

Sable is still on his knees when a hand seizes his arm, rough and firm.

He’s yanked to his feet.

“Move,” a voice commands beside him, soft, clipped, too calm for the madness around them.

(Make a perception check.)

Through the fog, he sees sea-glass eyes.

Tayla.

Of course, it’s Tayla.

Because who else would run straight into the heart of a Church execution armed with an illegal magic and a prayer?

“I thought you were dead.” He whispers as the Chains are pulled off his wrist. 

“Nice to see you too,” She grins mischievously and so alive

Behind them, shouting erupts as guards, inquisitors, and priests alike attempt to capture them. They never make it far. A dagger stops them in their path each time. 

Sable noy sure where they come from. Tayla dose look bothered. 

“We should get going,” She says, grabbing his arm, already moving through the fog.

Sable doesn’t have time to ask questions. His body moves on instinct, legs trembling, ribs aching, wrists still slick with blood and holy iron burns, but he runs.

( Make a dexterity saving throw ) 

The fog blurs everything to silhouettes and light. Screams echo, metal clashes. He hears the hiss of crossbows and the crack of spells behind them, the chaos of a hundred people scattering like birds in a storm.

They round the edge of the platform. A guard bursts out of the fog, blade raised.

Tayla moves like lightning. One flick of her wrist and an arcane burst finds a home in the guard's chest.

Sable stares as the man drops. Blood splatters onto his face, and Sable can taste it in his mouth

That's excessive," Sable mutters as they sprint down the wooden steps of the scaffolding. His wounds, half-healed, half-forgotten, tear open again, fresh blood seeping through the bandages and trailing behind him.

Tayla just flashes him a crooked smile, fingers still wrapped tight around his wrist. “You say that like I didn’t warn you.”

She pulls him faster, weaving through the panicked bodies flooding the square. No one sees them, no one cares. Everyone's too busy screaming, running, praying. In the chaos, even a marked heretic can vanish.

The fog follows them only so far. By the time they duck into a narrow, half-collapsed alley behind a shuttered bakery, the mist begins to dissolve, teal light flickering, fading, like a dream losing shape.

“In here,” Tayla whispers.

She shoulders open the back door of the bakery open. It creaks with age, hinges screaming in protest before giving way to the dim, dust-choked dark. The scent of flour and mildew hits Sable all at once, like ghosts of warmth long gone.

The door groans shut behind them. Tayla slams the bolt and presses her back to the wall, breath ragged. For a moment, neither of them moves. Just the sound of their lungs. Of blood dripping onto an old tile. Of distant chaos still howling through the streets.

They collapse behind a stack of unopened crates. Sable leans back hard against the wall, chest heaving, every breath like splinters through his ribs. Tayla crouches beside him, one hand still on his wrist, checking his pulse, or maybe just grounding herself.

“Still alive,” he rasps, a weak smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Disappointing.”

“You’re welcome,” Tayla says, grinning through the trembling in her breath. “You owe me a drink. And a decade off my life.”

Blood streaks down his forearms, thick and dark in the low light. Tayla tears a strip from her cloak and wraps it around the worst of the wounds.

“You never pay when we drink.”

“And I won’t start now.”

They sit in silence for a beat. Just long enough for the adrenaline to drain away, leaving pain in its place. Sable leans his head back against the cold wall and exhales. Every inch of him aches—ribs, wrists, pride. The holy iron burns throb like a second heartbeat.

Tayla finishes tying the bandage and lets her hands fall into her lap. Her fingers are stained red. She stares at them for a moment before wiping them on her cloak.

“You weren’t going to close your eyes,” she says quietly.

Sable huffs a breath. “The sky was pretty.”

She nods, then leans her head back against the wall beside his. For a moment, they both just breathe.

“I thought we were too late,” she says, barely above a whisper. “I thought… I was going to watch you die. And not in the fun, dramatic, ‘you say something clever and then explode’ kind of way. Just… nothing.”

He turns his head slightly toward her. “It wouldn’t have been your fault.”

“Guilt doesn’t care whose fault it is.”

He doesn’t answer right away. His throat’s raw, his voice lower than before. “When the axe didn’t fall… I thought maybe I was already dead. That this was the afterlife.”

“And it smells like mildew and blood?”

Sable gives her a crooked smile. “Fitting, really.”

A beat.

Then, softer: “Thank you.”

Tayla looks at him. Really looks at him. He thinks he sees tears in the corner of her eyes. “Don’t make it a habit. I’m not in the business of saving family every time they do something stupid.”

Sable closes his eyes for a moment. “No promises.”

She rests her head against his shoulder, and Sable lets himself breathe. Just breathe. The pain is still there, but the air is real. The stone under him is real. She’s real.

He’s alive.

The axe didn’t fall.

And maybe—just maybe—he’ll see the sea one last time.

(Here’s a joke for you:  Two broken fugitives run from a city that wants them dead. How long before they stop running?)

(Answer: Never. They can never stop running. )

***

Tayla, he learns, is not a bad person to hide with. Then again, maybe anyone would feel like decent company after the last few weeks he’s had.

Night falls quickly. The windows of the bakery are boarded up, but slivers of moonlight slip through the cracks, casting pale ribbons of silver across the flour-dusted floor. Dust dances in the beams like tiny ghosts. The world outside feels far away, like another country, or another life.

He forgot how much he missed the moon. Even the sky. Even the quiet.

There’s still blood on his wrists. His ribs still ache with every breath. But the stillness in this moment wraps around him like a threadbare blanket. It’s not safe, not really, but it’s enough. Enough for now.

Tayla watches the window with rapt attention. Her eyes flicker every few seconds, sharp and restless. Worry pulls at her features, tightens her jaw.

“You good?” Sable asks, voice rough but steady.

Tayla chews her lip, tapping absently at the worn cover of her spellbook. “He was supposed to be here by now.”

Sable hums. It’s not unlike Corey to be late. He tends to get distracted, pulled into a fight, caught up in some flair or gamble. The thrill of risk and reward fuels him.

To Corey, life is a game. Sometimes you roll well. Sometimes you roll poorly. And sometimes, by sheer absurdity, you roll well again. Luck is both friend and enemy, and Corey knows how to play both sides.

Sable shrugs. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Tayla nods and pushes herself up from the floor. Her knees crack under her weight. “You’re probably right, but he’s our way out. I guess I’m just worried—”

A figure drops from the shadows, landing as soft as a whisper. Daggers glint at their belts.

Sable leaps to his feet, reaching for his greatsword—only to remember it’s gone.

Tayla’s hand slices through the air, a spell already forming on her lips.

“Hi,” the figure says calmly.

Then he waves—not with his own hand, but with another damn hand.

Sable blinks. 

Not Corey

But Talveres.

He looks different from the last time Sable saw him, no longer  sixteen and feral, but now eighteen and alive. The ghostly pallor has faded from his skin, and his eyes gleam with something dangerous and bright. He looks... whole.

“I brought a hand,” Talveres says, awkwardly proud.

Sable stares. Clutched in Talveres’ hand is, indeed, a severed hand.

“Why?” Sable asks, disbelief thick in his voice.

Tayla groans into her palms. Sable feels the same way.

“Because we need it,” Talveres replies with a casual shrug, like carrying around body parts is normal. And maybe, for him, it is.

Sable makes a mental note to revisit that. Possibly with a drink. Possibly with Am.

“So you just... what, took it?” Tayla gestures to the hand, which is now dripping blood in slow, syrupy drops onto the dusty floor.

“Yes.”

Sable really needs that drink.

“Well, put it back,” Tayla snaps, wrinkling her nose. Sable dosent blame her, hes seen his fair share of severed body part but this… is just disturbing.

“But it’s the key.” Talveres protest

“The severed hand,” she says, enunciating like she’s talking to a very slow child, “is a key?”

“Yes.”

“How.”

Talveres brightens, like a student showing off a questionably safe science fair project. Sable heart aches “Blood.”

Tayla squints. Sable looks between them like he’s watching a knife fight unfold in molasses. “Explain.”

“To the tunnels beneath the cathedral,” Talveres says, lightly. “The Church uses blood-mark enchantments. Needs the hand of someone sanctified to open the gates. They don't expect us to go that way.”

“You couldn’t have just… picked or dispealed the lock?” Tayla rubs her temples.

Talveres opens his mouth, pauses. “...Oh.”

“You didn’t think of that, did you?”

“No.”

Sable raises an eyebrow. Tayla just snorts.

He eyes them both, vaguely suspicious. “How do you two even know each other?”

“She hit me with a rock,” Talveres says at the same time Tayla says:

“He killed an Inquisitor.”

They both blink at each other.

Sable regrets asking. “Fantastic.”

Tayla grins. Talveres tilts his head like a confused cat. “Come on, old man. We’re your rescue team.”

Talveres offers him the severed hand like it’s a birthday present.

Sable takes it hesitantly. It’s warm. He swears he can feel it pulsing. Gods, he hopes Talveres didn’t just cut this off an Inquisitor.

Tayla brushes the dust off her cloak. “Alright. We have a stolen heretic, a severed hand, and about fifteen minutes before someone figures out where the fog came from.”

“It was good fog,” Talveres says, perking up.

“ It was good fo g,” Tayla agrees, already rifling through her satchel. She pulls out a small vial and hands it to Sable. “Healing potion. From Am.”

Sable uncorks it and drinks it down in one go. It tastes like regret and expired honey, but it works. The ache in his legs dulls, and the holy burns stop thrumming like second hearts.

Talveres pulls something from behind a crate, long, wrapped in a curtain, almost as tall as he is.

“Brought you this,” he says, reverently. 

Sable unwraps it, and freezes. His greatsword. Dented. Stained. Whole. It’s the one Mavilkea gave him when they were thirty-two.

“You carried this?” he asks softly.

Talveres shrugs. “Dragged it. Hit a guy with it. Not sure if that counts.”

Sable’s smile is faint, but real. “It counts.”

Tayla finishes tightening the bandage on her wrist and checks the alley through a slit in the boards. “We’ll go through the lower quarter. There’s an entrance behind the old shrine. It’s sealed, but if Talveres is right—”

“I am right.”

“—Then we’ll need that hand to bleed on something dramatic.”

“There’s a wall,” Talveres says. “I’ve seen it.”

Tayla stares at him for a moment, then tosses him a dagger she pulled from a dead Inquisitor. “What is it with the church and bleeding on walls?”

Talveres shrugs slipping the dagger into its holster. 

Sable straps the greatsword to his back as Tayla huffs, “Alright. Let’s go, Team Rescue.”

“That’s a terrible name,” Talveres mutters.

“You don’t get an opinion,” Tayla says liggley, pulling aside a faded purple rug behind the counter to reveal a trapdoor.

Talveres yanks it open. 

“Well,” Tayla says gesturing towards the doo,r “ladies first.”

Talveres blinks at her and then shrugs. Slipping into the tunnel

Sable follows, and then Tayla, and togethe,r bloodstained, half-healed, head straight for the lion’s den.

Sable really, really needs a drink.

(Here’s a joke for you: What do you get when you mix a heretic, a war criminal, and an assassin?) 

(Answer: Apparently, a plan.)

***

Tayla was fairly sure this wasn’t the dumbest thing she’d ever done.

But it was easily in the top five.

The church tunnels felt like veins,tight, pulsing corridors winding deep beneath the city, almost alive. The air hung heavy, thick with the taste of soot and old prayers, carrying a heat that promised fire. A fire that could suck the oxygen from their lungs and leave them gasping on hollow, desperate breaths.

Sigils lined the walls—each one different, carved with meticulous precision, humming faintly with lingering power. Tayla didn’t know what they meant, and honestly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Talveres, though, did. He moved ahead with grim certainty, reading the cryptic symbols like a language written on his skin.

Maybe he had been born to it.

He walked like a ghost, hollowed out, learning how to live again. Sliding like a phantom between crevices, signaling the correct path with a flick of a finger or a tilt of his head. Avoiding traps and cursed markings with an ease that made Tayla’s skin crawl.

He kept his eyes fixed ahead, speaking only to whisper directions or to point when the tunnels forked, just like when they escaped the Tenth Hell.

In some fucked-up way, Tayla trusted him.

He’d helped save Sable. Pulled her from the depths of the Tenth Hell, even though it made his own capture more likely. He’d followed her plan, gone along with the distraction, put himself on the line.

And now here they were, slipping through the bones of the city, bound by necessity and something more fragile than trust. 

She didn’t know his story, and he didn’t know hers. Yet somehow, he put his trust in her. So Tayla would do the same. She didn’t ask questions. She just followed him, deeper beneath the city.

( Make a stealth check. ) 

Behind her, Sable’s footsteps were careful but uneven. She could feel the pain in the tight set of his shoulders, the hitch in his breath with every step. Yet he didn’t complain. Not here. Not now. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him complain about an injury before.

The air thickened with every step, pressing down on Tayla’s chest like a weight she couldn’t shrug off. Each breath felt like a fragile truce between her lungs and the stale, choking atmosphere. Her fingers brushed against cold stone walls, slick with damp, and the faintest trace of something darker. Blood, maybe. Or worse.

Her wand stayed raised, casting a faint teal glow just enough to light the path ahead, but not enough to draw attention.

The tunnel narrowed ahead, and Talveres stopped, silent as a ghost, quick as a shadow. He paused, listening. His fingers found a dagger at her belt. Tayla wondered if it was the same one he used when rescuing Sable, or if he simply carried an insane number of knives.

“Wait here,” Talveres whispered, voice low. Then he melted forward, like he belonged to the shadows themselves, his presence both comfort and warning.

There was something about the way he moved through the tunnels, as if every step carried the weight of past sins, every motion soaked in silent regret. 

Tayla wondered what he had lost 

“What's happening?” Sable’s voice was a low rasp behind her.

“No idea,” Tayla whispers “Talveres went to scout ahead” 

Sable nods, “sounds like him” 

Tayla chews her lip, eyes fixed on the shadows ahead. She can only see so far in the dark, even with the soft glow from her wand. The silence stretches too long, too quiet. No footsteps. No voices. Just the distant sound of dripping water and the faint, ever-present hum of old magic etched into stone.

Sable shifts behind her. She hears the faint rustle of his cloak, the soft hiss of breath through clenched teeth.

“Hell, be ok,” he mutters, half comforting himself, half comforting her

Tayla exhales through her nose. “He better be.”

A beat passes. The quiet eats at her nerves.

Then, just at the edge of the teal light, a flicker. Not movement, exactly. More like something adjusting to the dark. A presence. Watching.

Tayla raises her wand. Her fingers twitch toward a glyph stitched into her sleeve.

Before she can speak, Talveres appears, slipping back into the light without a sound. .

“Two inquisitors,” he says calmly. “Both dealt with.”

Tayla blinks. “Dealt with?”

Talveres tilts his head. “Efficiently.”

He starts forward and then pauses “I need the han.d”

Sable nods, looking relieved as he passes the severed hand to Talveres. She wouldn't want to hold onto that either. It looks worse now than it did earlier, the skin turning a dull purple color and the blood at the stump having dried. 

Talveres takes the hand without flinching. Cradles it like it’s a relic, not a corpse’s fragment. He turns it over once in his palm, checking something in the curled fingers, then tucks it into a leather pouch at his side like it’s just another tool.

Tayla tries not to gag. Sable doesn’t bother hiding his grimace.

They move again, faster this time. Talveres leads, silent and sharp. Sable follows with a limp that’s growing harder to ignore. Tayla keeps her wand high, casting long, distorted shadows along the tunnel walls. The sigils here grow denser. Hungrier. The air thickens, and the temperature dips, cold enough now that it bites at exposed skin. 

The tunnel bends sharply, then ends abruptly.

Before them stands an arched stone wall, carved deep with glowing sigils. It looms high and proud, an ancient barrier in the underground maze.

Beside the wall lie two Inquisitors. They’re motionless, piled like fallen statues, their armor unmarked and gleaming faintly in the teal light.

Tayla can’t tell if they’re alive or dead, breathless statues or sleeping ghosts.

She thinks they might be dead, she can't tell if they are breathing or not.

Talveres walks over them, as if they were simply fallen branches, and towards the archway. He pulls the hand from his pack and cuts the palm open, and faint droplets of blood flow down the decaying palm. Talveres presses it into one of the sigils of the door. 

For a long, heavy moment, nothing stirs.

Then, the faint screech of rusted hinges, and the stone wall grinds open before them. A rush of stale air and muted light spills from the gap. Talveres slips through first, hand raised in a silent gesture to follow.

Tayla follows, Sable closes behind, and the door thuds shut behind them.

The new tunnel opens wide enough for two to walk side by side. It feels like the city is finally breathing, granting them space to escape.

Somewhere ahead, a distant drip echoes water, or something darker ,each drop a quiet reminder that time is slipping away.

“How much longer”? Tayla whispers to Talveres, her eyes flickering to Sable. 

The longer they walk, the more exhausted Sable becomes. He’s trying to hide it, but Tayla sees the way his breaths grow heavier, his steps falter. His wounds have reopened, and the healing potions only do so much. If they don’t find somewhere to rest soon, Tayla isn’t sure how much longer he’ll last.

Stubbornness and spite only get you so far.

“Not long,” Talveres replies, eyes fixed on the path ahead. “We’re about half a mile from the exit. After that, we’ll be outside the city. The Golden Key has a safe house there that we can use.”

“You're with the key?”

Talveres stares at her for a moment, then a thought seems to strike him, his cheeks flush faintly. “I forgot to mention that, didn’t I?”

She just stared at him blankly.

They kept walking.

The tunnel grew rounder the closer they got, like a sewer pipe. Tayla could feel the cool summer air brush her face. It was morning. The sun would rise soon, and when it did, they’d be far from this place.

Ahead, a faint glow, the first sign of anything other than stone and shadow in hours. Talveres paused, his silhouette a dark cutout against the light. He glanced back, eyes glinting with something Tayla couldn’t place. “Almost there.”

The tunnel mouth yawned ahead, a jagged slit slicing open the earth’s dark belly. Tayla stepped forward, the night air washing over her like cold water, sharp, bitter, alive.

Behind them, the tunnel swallowed their footsteps, as if it never wanted to let them go.

“We made it,” she whispered, staring up at the moon. Its soft rays bathed them in silver light, cool and clean. Beyond the mountains, the stars twinkled, giggling softly to themselves, like they knew something no one else did.

Sable let out a low, gruff laugh. He leaned against the wall, blood still trickling from his open wounds. He was alive. The Church hadn’t gotten him.

Beside her, Talveres nodded. His hair stirred in the wind, and though a dagger still hung loosely in his hand, he looked calmer now. Freer. Like the air had finally started to thaw something frozen inside him.

Tayla looked at them, wounded, tired, alive, and up at the moon above.
They’d made it out.
The church didn’t get them. Not yet.
The wind stirred the blood on their sleeves and the dirt on their boots. It carried the faint scent of smoke, or maybe memory.

They didn’t come all this way to die.

And they certainly wouldn’t start now.

(Here’s a joke for you: Three fugitives, A mage, a heretic, and a half-dead assassin, crawl out of a holy city with nothing but blood, blades, and borrowed time, thinking it's over.

The Punchline? It’s never over. Not for people like them.)