I killed her. I killed her. I killed her.
The thought loops endlessly, a mantra of guilt that pounds in time with my footsteps.
I stumble over a raised stone and nearly go down. My hand catches the wall, fingernails scraping against rough rock, and I force myself to slow. To breathe. To think past the panic that wants to consume me.
I need a safe house. Shelter while I figure out what I’ve awakened and how to stop it. A place the city guard won’t findme, won’t drag me to the Ash Pits and burn me before I can explain what really happened in that chamber.
Not that anyone would believe me. A mourning witch claiming a dead boy’s corpse was possessed by an ancient presence? They’d laugh before they lit the pyre.
I navigate by witch-light—pale, cold flames that hover at irregular intervals along the main passages, maintained by generations of practitioners who needed to move through the Undercroft without being seen. The light is barely enough to see by, casting more shadows than illumination, but I’ve learned to read the darkness down here. The way certain tunnels smell of older stone. The way sound carries differently near collapsed sections. The way the air moves—or doesn’t—depending on whether a passage leads anywhere or ends in rubble.
I find a safe house in the seventh branch off the main corridor. A hidden chamber behind a false wall, marked with a symbol only practitioners recognize—three circles interlocked, representing the living, the dead, and the whispers that bridge them. I press my palm against the symbol and speak the word of passage.
The wall swings inward.
The space beyond is cramped and dark, barely large enough for two people to stand without touching. A single candle sits in a wall niche, unlit. A narrow cot is pushed against one wall, its blankets thin and musty. A small trunk in the corner holds emergency supplies—dried food, water, bandages, the basic necessities for a witch in hiding.
It’s empty. That’s all I need.
I seal the wall behind me and collapse against it, sliding down until I’m sitting on the packed-earth floor. The shaking starts again—worse now that I’ve stopped moving, worse now that there’s nothing to distract me from what I’ve done.
I press my hands against my face and try to breathe.
The blood from my nose has mostly stopped, but my fingers come away red when I touch my upper lip. I wipe them on my dress—already ruined, already stained with the evidence of tonight’s disaster—and force myself to take stock.
I’m exhausted. Drained from channeling power I was never meant to touch. My head pounds with every heartbeat, and my magic feels thin and distant, stretched too far to be reliable. If I had to perform a rite right now, I’d probably pass out before I finished the first invocation.
I need rest. Food. Water. Time to recover before I try to figure out what happened in that chamber.
I drag myself to the supply trunk and dig through its contents. Stale bread. A waterskin that’s been refilled so many times the leather has gone soft. A few strips of dried meat that might have been venison once, before months of storage turned them to jerky.
I eat anyway. Force myself to chew and swallow, even though every bite tastes like ash in my mouth. My body needs fuel, even if my mind is screaming that I don’t deserve it.
Ira Genn is dead because of me.
I set the food aside, suddenly nauseous, and wrap my arms around my bent legs. The candle in the wall niche remains unlit. I should light it—the darkness down here is oppressive, pressing against my awareness—but I can’t seem to make my hands cooperate.
They won’t stop shaking.
Pull yourself together. You’ve survived worse.
Have I, though? I’ve survived close calls with the Council. Survived rites that went sideways, spirits that didn’t want to cooperate, families who blamed me for the truths their dead revealed. But I have never survived anything like this: a death I caused, a presence I awakened, a force that spoke through me with a voice made of a thousand grieving souls.
Find theAshwalker. Tell him the dead remember.
The words rise unbidden, echoing in my skull with harmonics that make my teeth ache. The presence that spoke through me is gone—I can sense its absence, the void where it pressed against my consciousness—but its message remains. Burned into my memory. Impossible to forget.
The Ashwalker. Drokhar Stoneveil.
I know the name now. Everyone in Blackreach knows it, even if they’ve never heard it spoken aloud.
And now the dead want me to find him. To deliver a message from the thing that used Kellan Venn as a doorway.
Fuck that.
I’m not going anywhere near the Ashwalker. He’d burn me on sight. Every mourning witch in Blackreach knows the stories—the practitioners he’s dragged to the Ash Pits, the rites he’s interrupted, the closure he’s denied to grieving families who wanted one more moment with their dead.
He’s a monster. A weapon the Council points at people like me.