None of them attack.
“Drokhar.” Aradya’s voice is tight with controlled fear. “What are they doing?”
I watch the corpses take their positions. One row, then two, then three. They face us from both sides of the street, creating an honor guard of the forgotten dead.
Or a gauntlet.
“They’re watching.” My voice comes out flat. Controlled. The Ashwalker’s voice, even as the man underneath screams. “The Gravetide King knows we’re coming. It’s letting us pass.”
“Why?”
“Because it wants us to reach the Council.” The understanding anchors in my gut with cold certainty. “It wants them to see a death warden walking beside a mourning witch. It wants them to know the man who burned their dead has chosen to protect the woman who speaks for them.”
I look down at Aradya. At the mark burning at her collarbone, visible even through the chains that bind her magic. At the answering light blazing over my heart, bright enough to see through leather and armor.
“It’s using us.” My teeth grind. “Our marks. Whatever is happening between us. The Gravetide King is going to weaponize it against everything the Council has built.”
She meets my eyes. No fear—that steady determination I’m beginning to recognize as her default state.
“Then we give it nothing to use.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” A hint of my own words, thrown back at me. Her lips curve, a fraction. “But I’m not going to stand here and let it win. Are you?”
The dead continue to watch. Dozens of them now, their empty faces turned toward us, their ancient weapons held at rest. Waiting. Bearing witness.
Then the chanting begins.
The sound builds slowly—a whisper at first, rising from a hundred dead throats. One word, repeated over and over, growing louder with each iteration until it fills the street, echoes off the leaning buildings, shakes the fog itself with its intensity.
Aradya. Aradya. Aradya.
Her name, spoken by the dead. A summons. A claim. A declaration of intent.
The Gravetide King wants her. Wants her voice, her magic, her ability to speak for the forgotten. And it’s willing to raise every corpse in Blackreach to get her.
I reach for her bound hands. Close my scarred fingers around hers.
“Stay close.” My voice is low, rough, meant only for her. “Whatever happens in the Council chambers, whatever the Arbiters decide—stay close to me.”
She squeezes my fingers. A small gesture. A silent answer.
We walk between the ranks of the risen dead—a death warden and a mourning witch, marked by forces older than either of us, heading toward a judgment that will decide the fate of everyone in Blackreach.
The dead chant her name with every step.
And somewhere in the depths beneath the city, the Gravetide King stirs, and waits, and smiles with a thousand mouths that haven’t spoken in centuries.
They’re all speaking now.
Every forgotten soldier. Every abandoned corpse. Every body I’ve burned without letting them say goodbye.
They’re all speaking her name.
And gods help me, I’m going to make sure they don’t get her.
FIFTEEN