The Spine District burns slow.
Not with flame—but with tension. Doors stay half-closed. Eyes peer from behind curtains. Every brick feels like it remembers war.
I move through it with Narth, Lira, and Jeral at my back. Sov scouts ahead. The ring hums louder with every step.
"They're close," Jeral mutters, fingers twitching near his blade.
"They know we're here," Lira says.
"Let them," I reply.
We pass a broken statue—an old Threadless symbol, half-chiseled away. Someone tried to erase it. Someone else tried to put it back.
The ground shifts beneath us. Not physically—but the feeling. Like something's waiting. A presence. Half-familiar.
Then Sov's voice in the ring, urgent: *"Found their den. Five figures. One's marked in bone."*
I respond silently, pulse-tight, and we shift into position.
The den is an old bathhouse—abandoned, crumbling, half-swallowed by time. We enter through the side wall, collapsed enough to squeeze.
Inside, silence. Mosaics chipped. Pools dry. In the center, five figures.
One steps forward.
"You came fast," he says. Bone-thread sleeves. Eyes like wet ash. Not the rival—but an echo of him. A disciple.
"You've been pulling threads," I say.
"To reweave," he answers. "The city's soul frayed long before you rose from the Vault."
"Then you're too late. We've already begun stitching it back."
He smiles—thin, cold. "With your silence?"
"With memory. With mercy. With fire, if we must."
He raises one hand. The others move.
Narth flares threadlight, lines zipping out. Jeral steps into the nearest attacker, blade humming. Lira moves past me, smooth and silent.
The battle is sharp. Not wide. Close.
Two of them fall quickly—one stilled by threadlines, the other knocked unconscious by Lira's hilt.
But the disciple is strong.
His threads move like smoke, biting into Narth's defenses. I step forward, ring raised. The Vault echoes through me. I don't speak.
I *command.*
The disciple freezes. Just for a breath—but it's enough. Lira knocks him flat. Sov lands from above, binding his hands.
We hold.
I kneel beside him. "Where is your master?"
He laughs again. Less confident this time. "Gone deeper. Not hiding. *Becoming.* You stopped the first strike. But the next won't aim at the city. It'll aim at its *roots.*"
The Vault pulses.
Roots.
Stonefold isn't built on stone alone.
It's built on what we buried.
I stand. "Take him to the Hollow Vault. Under guard."
Jeral nods and lifts the man like a sack of ash.
Lira watches me. "Roots?"
I nod. "We've been thinking too high. The next move won't come from above. It'll come from *beneath.*"
Wren's voice crackles through the ring: *"You need to see something. Now. East tunnel—something's opened that shouldn't."*
We move fast. Every step echoes louder than it should.
Because below our feet, something ancient has begun to stir.
And it remembers *everything.*