Old Jim’s scream saved us.
That was the first awful thought I had after Brakka pressed the Heat Grub flame against his wrist. Not concern. Not horror. Not even sympathy. Relief came first, sharp and ugly, because the moment Old Jim screamed, the Skitters screamed too.
All of them.
Every pen in the lower hollow erupted at once. Shell-backed bodies slammed against railings. Vents flared. Mouths opened wide enough to show flat grinding teeth and wet pale gums. Their shrieks tore through the softened warmth like rusted hooks through cloth, so painful that workers clapped hands over their ears and children began crying before they understood why.
It was ugly. It was painful.
It was Rooknest.
For one beautiful moment, the softness cracked.
Bowls dropped. Workers cursed. Handlers shouted over one another. Someone on the upper bridge yelled, “The pens!” and someone else yelled, “I told you the Skitters were cursed!” A third voice told them both to shut their mouths before the beasts learned grammar. The old Rooknest rose through the new one in a burst of elbows, panic, insults, and practical fear.
Then Foreman Vekk’s voice tore through everything.
“MOVE, YOU MOSS-BRAINED CORPSE CANDLES!”
There he was.
The hollow answered him like it remembered being alive. People stumbled into motion. Workers grabbed hooks, buckets, tools, anything with weight. Handlers ran for the lower pens. A mother snapped at her sobbing child, “Breathe or faint, but choose,” and the child cried louder, which was probably the correct answer.
I nearly laughed.
I did not, because Old Jim was still screaming.
Brakka held his arm down against the feed rail with one hand and the Heat Grub jar with the other. Her face shone with sweat. The flame hissed against his skin, and sweet smoke curled upward from the pale line on his wrist. Old Jim thrashed once, hard enough that Veyrun almost lost his grip.
“Hold him!” Brakka shouted.
“I am holding him!” Veyrun yelled back. “He’s made of spite and tendon!”
Old Jim cursed us, then Brakka, then the Heat Grub, then his own wrist for being attached to him. The pale line across his skin blackened. For a heartbeat, it lifted. Not his skin, but the line itself, rising like a hair trying to leave the flesh.
Brakka shoved the flame closer.
The thread snapped.
Old Jim’s scream broke apart. He went limp against the rail, chest heaving, mouth open around air that could not decide if it wanted to be a curse or a sob.
The Skitters kept screaming.
I almost missed that.
The thing on his wrist had burned, but the animals did not stop. They kicked and shrieked and slammed themselves against the fences, no longer calm, no longer chewing in rhythm, no longer bowing toward warmth. Brakka pulled the jar away and stared at Old Jim’s wrist. The burn was ugly, blistered red around a black line where the pale thread had been.
Good.
Ugly meant normal.
Mostly.
Old Jim sucked air through his teeth. “Again.”
Brakka froze. “What?”
“If it moves, burn it again.”
“It’s gone.”
“If it comes back, don’t ask permission.”
That frightened me more than the scream. Old Jim hated pain. He complained about old bruises like they were political betrayals. If he was asking to be burned again, then whatever had touched him was worse than fire.
A shadow fell over the pen entrance.
The Skitters’ screaming changed.
It did not stop. Not yet. It thinned, pulled tight, until the whole lower hollow sounded like a blade dragged slowly across stone.
Prophet Avaruun stood beyond the rail.
No one had seen him arrive.
Of course no one had.
His white veils hung around him in soft layers, untouched by dust, feed muck, or panic. His many eyes moved over the dead calf, Brakka’s shaking hands, Old Jim’s burned wrist, Veyrun half-crouched like he might bolt, and me standing there with feed dust on my knees and fear in my mouth.
Then his gaze settled on the collapsed Skitter calf.
Sorrow entered his face.
Not surprise.
I noticed that.
“Poor creature,” he said.
The lower hollow quieted around him in pieces. The Skitters still shrieked, but the people did not. Workers gathered near the fences, handlers clutching hooks and brushes and buckets that suddenly looked useless. Vekk pushed through the crowd with two Saint guards and three menders behind him, his face carved hard around his anger.
Avaruun stepped carefully into the pen.
Brakka rose at once and put herself between him and the calf.
That was brave. Or stupid. In Rooknest, those were often the same thing with different witnesses.
“My honored Prophet,” she said.
Her voice did not shake.
Her hands did.
Avaruun looked at her with gentle approval. “You care deeply for them.”
“They’re mine.”
“Yes.”
He bowed his head slightly.
The gesture softened several faces in the crowd.
Brakka did not move.
Vekk’s eyes went from the dead calf to Old Jim’s wrist, then to me. I shook my head once.
Not here.
Not in front of everyone.
Vekk’s jaw flexed, but he understood.
Avaruun crouched beside the calf. His four arms folded with graceful care, two resting across his knees, one hovering above the corpse, one lifted slightly as if calming the air itself. He did not touch the calf.
I watched his fingers anyway.
No clear drop. No thread. Nothing.
Somehow that made it worse.
“This calf was marked yesterday,” he said.
Brakka’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
“It had been touched by pressure sickness.”
Old Jim made a sound.
Veyrun stepped on his foot.
Old Jim glared at him.
Veyrun whispered, “Do not duel the Prophet while sitting.”
Avaruun continued, his voice soft enough that the crowd had to quiet further to hear him. “Creatures of the Outer Crust are sensitive. More sensitive than many people realize. They feel the changing pressure in stone, the old wounds under walls, the sickness that travels through cracks.”
Several handlers nodded reluctantly.
That was true. Skitters did feel things first.
“Sickness?” someone whispered.
Avaruun looked up. “Not plague.”
The crowd relaxed too quickly.
“Not a threat to those who keep distance and follow proper care,” he said. “But this poor thing likely carried an echo from the eastern passage. Perhaps from the Ivory Gate’s opening. Perhaps from old pressure trapped below the lower pens.”
It sounded reasonable.
Again.
Always.
Reasonable enough to stand on if you did not look down.
Brakka’s voice stayed flat. “It spoke.”
The crowd went still.
Avaruun’s eyes moved to her.
“Pain can make strange sounds.”
“It said closed.”
Whispers moved through the lower hollow.
Closed. Closed. Closed.
Avaruun lowered his head.
“Yes.”
The whispering stopped because he sounded so sad that people listened harder.
“Death echoes often borrow nearby thoughts,” he said. “Fear, memory, repeated words. Rooknest has been frightened of closed places today.”
His gaze moved gently toward me.
Not long.
Enough.
My stomach tightened.
“Such echoes are not prophecy,” he said. “They are wounds repeating what fear taught them.”
The words moved through people like warm broth.
Wounds. Fear. Echoes.
Not danger. Not lies. Not warning.
A thing explained into harmlessness.
Old Jim tried to stand. I gripped his shoulder before he could. He looked at me with fury, and I held on anyway. I had no plan for surviving a public argument with a Hollow Prophet. I only knew Old Jim standing up right then would make everyone stop hearing the wound and start seeing a bitter old man.
Avaruun’s eyes moved to his burned wrist.
“And you acted quickly,” the Prophet said.
Old Jim froze.
Avaruun smiled sadly. “Fire was harsh, but perhaps necessary. Some residues from pressure sickness cling to skin. Burning it away may have spared him a deeper fever.”
People looked at Old Jim differently then.
Not like a mad old worker.
Like a victim.
Like someone saved.
That was worse, because Avaruun had not denied what happened. He had folded it into his story and made it useful.
Vekk stepped forward. “Pens will be cleared. All marked animals isolated. Lower feed changed. Handlers assigned in pairs. Nobody touches residue barehanded.”
Avaruun inclined his head. “Wise.”
Vekk’s eye twitched. “Do not call me wise when I am giving orders.”
A dangerous silence opened.
Then Avaruun laughed.
Warm. Genuine-sounding. Forgiving before anyone had asked forgiveness.
“Practical, then,” he said. “Forgive me, Foreman.”
A few people laughed.
Vekk did not.
Good.
Avaruun rose and looked over the gathered crowd. “You are frightened.”
Nobody answered.
“That is natural. For many days, Rooknest has been asked to hope. Hope frightens people accustomed to survival.”
His veils shifted. The sweetness in the air deepened. I pressed my thumbnail into my palm until the skin sparked pain.
Good.
“But fear must be given a place to rest,” Avaruun said, “or it begins digging its own tunnels.”
His gaze moved upward toward Saint Rook’s Domain.
“Tonight, if Saint Rook permits, I would ask Rooknest to gather.”
People lifted their heads.
“A meal,” he said. “Not celebration. Not denial. A simple sharing of warmth. Let no one sit alone with fear tonight.”
A murmur passed through the lower hollow.
A meal. Shared warmth. Food.
No one in Rooknest rejected food, especially not food attached to comfort.
Vekk’s face hardened. “My honored Prophet, stores are rationed for a reason.”
“Then let the ration be modest.”
“Modest multiplied by seven thousand becomes a problem.”
“Then I will provide what I can.”
That silenced him.
Avaruun placed one hand over his chest. “I did not come to exhaust Rooknest. I came to ease it.”
Ease.
The word had begun to feel like a hand over my mouth.
People softened. Even some handlers near the dead calf. Even Brakka, for one tired second, looked like she wanted to believe the horror in her pen had an explanation. I understood that look too well to hate her for it.
Old Jim leaned close to me.
His voice was raw. “He’s good.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
“No.” Old Jim’s eyes stayed on Avaruun. “You don’t.”
The Skitters slowly quieted.
Not because the fear passed.
Because Avaruun lifted one hand.
Just one.
The screaming thinned, faded, and stopped. The lower pens settled into silence, and no one noticed that the silence was worse than the screaming.
Or maybe they did and were too grateful for quiet to say so.
That evening, Rooknest gathered in the central hollow.
Not all at once. In waves. Families from the eastern stack first, then lower workers, upper bridge crews, menders, moss-pickers, handlers, old ones, sick ones, children, guards, clerks, and people who usually avoided public gatherings because public gatherings became public obligations.
Tonight, no one wanted to be alone.
That part was true.
I did not either.
My mother came with me.
I almost told her to stay home. Then she stood without coughing, wrapped a clean shawl over her shoulders, and looked at me with the calm expression she used when she had already made a decision and was allowing me to waste breath near it. So we went.
She walked slowly, but she walked from our room to the central hollow without stopping twice, without pressing a hand to the wall, without swallowing a hidden cough behind her sleeve.
I should have been happy.
I was.
And afraid.
And angry that those feelings had to share space.
Veyrun waited near the lower steps with his arms folded. He saw my mother and straightened immediately.
“Mara,” he said, bowing far too dramatically. “You look terrifyingly alive.”
My mother smiled. “And you look like fear learned to stand upright.”
“High praise.”
“It was not.”
He placed a hand over his heart. “Even better.”
I wanted to laugh.
I nearly did.
Then Old Jim appeared behind him, wrist wrapped in ash cloth, face gray from pain. Veyrun flinched.
“Must you arrive like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like a curse with knees.”
Old Jim looked at my mother. “Mara.”
“Jim.”
They knew each other, of course. Everyone old enough in Rooknest knew everyone else through labor, illness, debt, or someone’s funeral.
My mother’s eyes moved to his wrapped wrist. “You burned it?”
“Brakka did.”
“Good.”
Veyrun looked between them. “You two are horrifying.”
“Eat something,” Mara said.
He obeyed immediately.
I stared at him.
He shrugged with his mouth full. “I fear her differently.”
The central hollow had been transformed again. Long planks had been dragged out and laid across crates to form rough tables. Moss cakes sat in woven baskets. Steam rose from clay pots of broth. Thin strips of Skitter meat floated in the richer servings near the front, though rich in Rooknest meant you could identify what died for it.
Lanterns burned along the bridges. Prayer charms clicked softly in the drafts. The cracked banners still hung overhead, but someone had tied fresh white cloth around the torn sections.
White cloth.
I tried not to stare at it.
The crowd filled the hollow with warmth, noise, and the strange nervous joy of people who had been frightened and then handed bowls. Vekk stood near the food tables, personally supervising distribution as if he expected someone to betray mathematics.
“No second portions until every section has been served. Children first does not mean children twice. If I see one of you borrow a child to cheat rations, I will assign you to raise it.”
An old woman raised her bowl. “What if the child volunteers?”
“Then I assign both of you to wall scraping.”
The old woman lowered her bowl.
Veyrun sighed. “He’s beautiful when angry.”
“He’d throw you into a vent for saying that,” I said.
“Then his beauty would have consequences.”
My mother accepted a bowl of red moss broth from a clerk.
The clerk smiled. “Prophet’s mercy.”
My mother smiled back. “Carefully.”
The clerk blinked. “What?”
“Mercy,” Mara said. “Handle carefully.”
The clerk looked confused for a second, then smiled again and turned to the next person.
Veyrun leaned toward me. “Your mother scares people in ways they don’t understand until later.”
“I know.”
Saint Rook emerged from the Domain when most had eaten.
The hollow quieted, not with fear but with relief. He looked better from far away. That was the cruel part. Standing on the lower steps, wrapped in a pale mantle, roots glowing softly behind him, he still looked like Saint Rook. Tired, yes, but holy tired. The kind of tired people could turn into comfort because it meant he had been working for them.
Only if you had seen him below the Domain did you notice the difference.
His hands were too still. His glow was too faint. The roots nearest him pulsed out of rhythm with the rest of the hollow.
Avaruun stood beside him.
Beautiful. Calm. Four arms folded gently. White veils drifting in air that did not move.
The crowd bowed.
Saint Rook lifted one hand. “Rise.”
We did.
Slowly.
His eyes moved across the hollow. I thought they paused on me, then Mara, then Old Jim’s wrapped wrist. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I needed him to see.
Saint Rook spoke. “Rooknest has endured fear today.”
His voice carried, but not as strongly as before. The roots behind him brightened slightly, helping.
“Fear is not shameful,” he said. “A settlement without fear is a settlement that has stopped listening.”
A ripple moved through the crowd.
Not approval.
Unease.
Those words were sharper than Avaruun’s.
Vekk looked up from the ration tables. Old Jim lifted his head. My mother’s fingers closed around her bowl.
Saint Rook continued. “The walls speak in stress. The animals speak in panic. The sick speak through weakness. The old speak through warning. We survive because we listen before the collapse teaches us.”
The hollow had gone very quiet.
Avaruun’s face remained gentle. His lower hand shifted only slightly.
Saint Rook’s breath caught.
His fingers curled.
For a moment, I thought he would stop.
Then he kept going.
“But fear alone cannot guide a people either. Fear without care becomes cruelty. Care without fear becomes blindness.”
My mother’s hand found mine.
She squeezed once.
Saint Rook looked over the gathered bowls, old tables, patched banners, and children leaning against their parents. “Tonight we share food not to forget fear, but to remember we are still responsible for one another.”
That sounded like him.
Truly him.
The hollow breathed. Not the strange shared breath of the last days. A real one, rougher and uneven.
Alive.
Then Avaruun stepped forward.
Nothing dramatic happened. No pulse. No command. No visible change in the lamps. He simply moved, and everyone turned toward him.
That was power too.
“My friend speaks wisely,” Avaruun said.
The words were kind.
Something in me clenched.
My friend.
He placed one hand lightly on Saint Rook’s shoulder. Saint Rook’s posture softened just a little, and the crowd softened with him.
“Fear teaches listening,” Avaruun said. “But pain can teach people to hear only danger. Hunger can make every gift look like a trap. Long suffering can turn even kindness into suspicion.”
His eyes moved across the hollow.
One found Old Jim.
One found Veyrun.
One found me.
“Rooknest has been brave for so long that some have mistaken peace for weakness.”
People lowered their heads.
Avaruun’s voice warmed. “But peace is not weakness. Rest is not decay. Relief is not betrayal.”
He lifted two hands. The lanterns seemed brighter, or maybe everyone only looked at them at once.
“No life here is small to the World Below,” he said.
My throat tightened.
I knew I should resist the words. I knew that. But knowing did not stop them from entering.
“No worker forgotten in dust. No mother’s breath too quiet to matter. No old hand too worn to be held. No child too poor to be witnessed. No beast too lowly to be mourned. No dead name lost because a wall closed over it.”
The corpse tags.
The missing box.
My skin prickled.
“No life,” he said, “is forgotten by the World Below.”
The central hollow broke softly. People cried, not everyone, but enough. A mender covered her face. A handler bowed over his bowl. One of the old women wiped her eyes and loudly accused the broth steam. A child hugged a Skitter-bone charm to her chest.
My own eyes burned.
I hated him.
I believed him.
Both.
Beside me, my mother whispered, “Carefully.”
I did not know if she meant him, or me, or hope.
Avaruun lowered his hands. “Eat. Rest. Remember one another kindly tonight.”
The meal continued.
At first, it was tense. Then food did what food always did. It softened the edges of terror. People spoke. Children laughed. Bowls passed. Someone began an old song, stopped out of embarrassment, then began again when others joined. This time the rhythm was uneven.
Better.
People forgot words, argued over verses, mocked wrong singers, and laughed too loudly. For a while, Rooknest almost returned. Not the old Rooknest. Not the soft one either. Something between.
Something that might have lived if left alone.
Vekk sat near the food tables with his arms folded, refusing a bowl until an old woman shoved one into his hands.
“You look thin,” she said.
“I am compact.”
“You are underfed and unpleasant.”
“I am efficiently built.”
“You are built like a nail that learned bitterness.”
Veyrun whispered, “I want her to teach me.”
Vekk ate the broth angrily.
That made it taste more normal somehow.
Brakka sat near the lower pens, apart from most of the crowd. Her bowl rested untouched beside her. Every few moments, she looked back at the animals.
Old Jim sat with us because my mother told him to. He had tried to refuse.
She looked at him.
He sat.
His wrist remained wrapped in ash cloth.
He had not eaten.
“You need food,” I said.
“I need fewer people noticing that.”
“Eat,” Mara said.
Old Jim picked up his bowl slowly. His hand trembled.
At first, I thought it was age.
Then the tremor traveled from his fingers to his wrist.
The wrapped wrist.
The ash cloth shifted once.
My stomach dropped.
“Jim.”
He looked down.
A dark spot had appeared on the wrapping.
Not blood.
Too pale.
He stood too quickly. The bowl fell and shattered against the floor. Several people turned. Old Jim grabbed his wrist and stumbled away from the table.
I followed.
So did Veyrun.
Mara rose, but I shook my head.
Stay.
She did not like it.
She stayed.
Old Jim pushed through the edge of the crowd toward a side passage beneath the lower bridge. His breath came harsh and uneven. His steps dragged.
“Jim, stop,” I hissed.
“Don’t make noise.”
“You dropped a bowl in the middle of seven thousand people. We are past quiet.”
Veyrun reached for his arm.
Old Jim slapped him away. “Don’t touch.”
The ash cloth around his wrist pulsed.
Pale.
Dim.
Pale.
Veyrun went white. “We need Brakka.”
“We need fire,” Old Jim said.
“There are Heat Grub jars by the tables.”
“No.” His voice cracked. “Too many people.”
A cheer rose behind us. Someone had started the boot-loving Skitter song, and the chorus was terrible. The crowd sang anyway. The sound covered Old Jim’s breathing as he staggered deeper into the side passage.
Warmth pressed through the walls.
Too much warmth.
The white thread around his wrist bulged beneath the cloth. Then another line appeared under the skin of his forearm, thin and pale, moving upward.
Old Jim stared at it.
For once, he did not curse.
That scared me most.
“Jim,” I whispered.
His eyes lifted to mine. “Khern.”
My name sounded wrong in his mouth. Too clear. Too young.
“You saw the Thren wall?”
“Yes.”
“You saw the calf?”
“Yes.”
His breath hitched. “It doesn’t eat like teeth.”
The pale line moved under his skin. He gritted his jaw.
“It tastes first.”
Veyrun’s voice trembled. “What does that mean?”
Old Jim laughed.
It was a terrible sound.
“It means I was right. Hate that.”
He grabbed my coat with his good hand and pulled me closer. His eyes were wet, not soft, not gentle, but furious, afraid, and alive.
“Listen to things that still scream,” he said.
The line reached his elbow.
His body jerked.
From the central hollow, Avaruun’s voice rose in blessing again, warm and clear over the song. Old Jim’s face twisted as if the sound hurt more than fire.
He leaned close to my ear.
His whisper was barely breath.
“It’s tasting us.”
Then his knees gave out.
Veyrun and I caught him before he hit the floor. Barely. The ash cloth split, and pale threads spilled from the burn like wet hair.
Veyrun made a sound I had never heard from him.
Half sob.
Half curse.
“Fire,” I said.
My voice did not feel like mine.
“Khern—”
“Fire.”
Veyrun looked at the hollow, then back at Old Jim. The nearest Heat Grub jars were too far and too public. Brakka was across the central hollow. Vekk was near the food tables. Avaruun’s blessing rolled above all of it, gentle enough to make shouting feel like sacrilege.
I looked at the lamp on my belt.
Small. Weak. Mine.
I tore it free.
Veyrun caught my wrist. “That won’t be enough.”
“It has to be.”
“It could spread.”
“So will this.”
The threads reached for my sleeve.
I brought the lamp down.
The flame touched pale hair.
Old Jim’s body arched.
This time, his mouth opened and no scream came out.
Only sweetness.
The threads curled away from the fire, not dying, only retreating beneath his skin. The lamp guttered. I shoved it closer until the metal burned my fingers through the glove.
“Khern!” Veyrun grabbed my coat, holding me back and holding me there at the same time. “You’ll burn him open!”
“I know!”
I did not know what else to do.
The central hollow kept singing. The walls pulsed softly with the rhythm. Avaruun’s blessing flowed over the people: warm, kind, patient. Old Jim convulsed in my arms, and from somewhere below the side passage, hidden beneath song and blessing and the clatter of full bowls, something tapped back.
Tap.
Tap-tap.
Pause.
Tap.
Veyrun heard it.
So did I.
Old Jim’s eyes rolled toward the floor.
The tapping came again.
Closer.
I lifted my head and shouted the one word Rooknest still knew how to obey.
“VEKK!”
The song faltered.
A bowl shattered.
Somewhere in the crowd, my mother called my name.
And beneath my burned hand, Old Jim’s wrist split open like a mouth.