For one heartbeat, I thought Old Jim’s wrist would speak.
The split opened across the burned line, not like skin tearing, but like a mouth remembering it had been shaped for hunger. Pale threads writhed inside the wound, wet and thin, each one reaching toward the air. My little belt lamp guttered against them. It was not enough. The flame made them recoil, but not burn. They curled back beneath the skin, then pushed forward again, patient as roots finding cracks.
“Fire!” I shouted again.
My voice tore through the side passage and into the central hollow, where Rooknest was still singing. The boot-loving Skitter song had reached the verse where the Skitter married the boot and divorced the owner for poor maintenance. Usually, that verse started arguments because no one agreed on the proper insult. Tonight, people sang it warmly, together, in rhythm, as if fear could be chewed and swallowed with supper.
Veyrun ran.
Not gracefully. Not heroically. He slammed his shoulder into the passage wall, cursed, nearly fell, caught himself on a support beam, and kept going toward the tables where the Heat Grub jars burned. I would have laughed on any other night. On that night, I held Old Jim against the floor and felt how light he was.
That was my first clear thought after fear.
How light he was.
For years, Old Jim had seemed like part of Rooknest itself: bent, ugly, bitter, impossible to remove. A cracked support beam with lungs. Something that complained because it had earned the right. Now he was bones, old cloth, and a body fighting something thin and pale under the skin. The threads spilled from his wrist and reached toward the floor.
Not fell.
Reached.
I grabbed his forearm above the spreading lines and squeezed. That was stupid. The threads twitched toward my fingers, and I let go so fast my elbow struck the wall.
Good survival instinct.
Late, but good.
Old Jim’s mouth opened.
No scream came out.
Only sweetness.
It rolled from his throat, thick and rotten and warm, making my eyes water. I pressed my sleeve over my nose, but the smell pushed through cloth, through panic, through every old warning I had tried to keep in my head.
“Jim,” I said.
His eyes rolled toward me. For one second, they cleared.
“Khern.”
“I’m here.”
“Unfortunate.”
A terrible, broken little laugh escaped me. He tried to smile. It failed halfway. The pale line under his skin climbed past his elbow.
From the hollow, Avaruun’s blessing moved behind the song like soft hands over water.
The threads in Old Jim’s wrist stirred toward it.
I shoved the lamp closer. The metal burned through my glove, and the pain sharpened the world. Old Jim jerked under my hands, but still no scream came out. That frightened me worse than screaming. Pain should have been loud. Pain should have been ugly. Pain should have made the Skitters answer.
Instead, Old Jim’s throat gave only sweetness.
“Fire!” I screamed again.
This time, someone answered.
Not Veyrun.
My mother.
Mara appeared at the mouth of the side passage holding a Heat Grub jar in both hands.
For one moment, all I felt was anger. Hot, sharp, alive anger, because she was supposed to be away from this. She was supposed to be seated with her bowl, breathing cleanly, not standing under bad light while pale things crawled from an old man’s skin.
“You were supposed to stay back!”
She ignored me and came closer. The Heat Grub inside the jar writhed, orange body glowing with trapped fire. Its light painted her face in ember and shadow. She looked pale. She looked tired. Her hands were steady.
Old Jim saw her.
His expression twisted. “No.”
“Yes,” she said.
That was all.
She knelt beside him, and I hated that she was there. I hated more that I was grateful. The pale threads sensed the heat and pulled back into the split ash cloth. Old Jim groaned, not enough to scream, but enough to prove something of him was still inside.
“Khern,” Mara said, calm in a way that made me want to break apart. “Hold his shoulder. Not the arm.”
I obeyed.
Old Jim shook his head. “Don’t waste flame.”
“Be quiet,” Mara said.
He stared at her. Even dying, Old Jim knew better than to argue with that voice.
Veyrun burst back into the passage carrying another Heat Grub jar, Brakka behind him with a hooked knife and a bucket of ash. Foreman Vekk followed seconds later, because apparently panic traveled through Rooknest slower than Vekk did when something went wrong. He took one look at Old Jim and stopped. Not froze. Stopped, as if some part of him had slammed shut.
Then he moved.
“Block the passage,” Vekk snapped.
Veyrun blinked. “With what?”
“Your body, if necessary.”
“Terrible plan.”
“Best use I have for you right now.”
Veyrun swallowed and moved toward the passage mouth. Brakka dropped beside Old Jim and cut the ruined ash cloth from his wrist. The threads recoiled from the blade, but not enough. They had spread beneath the skin now, delicate pale lines branching under his forearm like veins that had learned the wrong color.
Mara lifted the jar.
Old Jim caught her wrist with his good hand.
Weakly.
Still enough.
“Mara.”
She looked at him.
“Don’t let it use me.”
The passage became very quiet, even with the feast outside, even with seven thousand people pretending terror could be swallowed with broth.
Mara’s face changed. Not much. Enough.
“I won’t.”
Old Jim nodded once, then held out his arm.
No drama. No prayer. No brave speech. Just an old worker giving what was left of himself to fire because the alternative was worse.
Brakka poured ash over the infected skin. Mara pressed the Heat Grub jar close. Vekk pinned Old Jim’s legs. I held his shoulder. Veyrun stood at the passage mouth with his back to us, jar in hand, watching the hollow like he could scare the crowd away by looking frightened enough.
The flame touched.
Old Jim screamed.
This time, the sound did not save us.
This time, it was only pain.
His body arched so hard I nearly lost him. Brakka pinned his arm. Vekk cursed and put more weight across his legs. My mother kept the flame steady, her jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. The pale lines blackened one by one beneath the skin, across the wrist, up the forearm, under the elbow. The smell filled the passage: burned hair, ash, old flesh, and underneath it all, sweetness dying badly.
The singing in the central hollow faltered.
Good.
Let them hear.
Let everyone hear.
Old Jim’s scream tore through the last verse of the song and left it hanging unfinished in the warm air.
Then the Skitters answered.
All of them.
Again.
The lower pens erupted with shrieks, kicks, fence rattles, shell strikes. The sound climbed the hollow, bounced off bridges, stabbed through prayer charms, and shattered the softness that had settled over Rooknest. People shouted. Bowls dropped. Children cried. Someone screamed that the pens had cursed the meal. Someone else shouted for handlers. A third voice started praying too loudly and then stopped when no one joined fast enough.
Vekk looked up.
For a moment, I thought the worst had happened.
I was wrong.
The worst was waiting politely.
Old Jim’s scream cut off. His body collapsed under my hands. The blackened lines along his arm stopped moving. Brakka jerked the knife back. Mara pulled the jar away. Vekk leaned in.
No one spoke.
Old Jim’s chest rose.
Fell.
Rose.
Fell.
Weak.
But there.
I almost sobbed.
Then Old Jim’s eyes opened.
He looked past us. Not at me, not at Mara, not at his ruined arm. Past us, toward the central hollow. Toward Saint Rook’s Domain.
His lips moved.
I leaned closer. “What?”
Old Jim swallowed. The sound scraped.
“Not me.”
My stomach went cold. “What?”
He grabbed my coat harder than he should have been able to.
“Not me,” he whispered. “Him.”
The walls screamed.
They did not shake first. They did not crack first. They screamed, and the sound tore through Rooknest from the center outward, too deep to be voice and too alive to be stone. It ran through the floor into my bones. My ear membranes slammed flat against my skull. Heat Grub jars flickered blue-white. Every prayer charm in the central hollow rattled at once.
Then a second sound rose inside the first.
A voice.
Saint Rook.
He screamed.
The whole settlement heard him. Not a distant cry from behind a sealed door. Not a person screaming somewhere far away. His pain came through the roots, the walls, the floor, the support beams, the moss trays, the Skitter pens, the vents, the old cracks sealed by his hands. Every place he had held Rooknest became a mouth for his suffering.
The side passage bucked. I hit the wall. Veyrun shouted my name, but the scream swallowed half the sound. Mara dropped the jar, and Brakka caught it before it shattered. Vekk cursed so violently that a child in the hollow began crying harder without knowing why.
The scream went on.
And on.
And on.
Rooknest stopped pretending.
People ran. Some toward the Domain. Some away from it. Some nowhere, turning in circles with bowls still in their hands because their minds could not decide which terror deserved obedience. The warm softness shattered into old instinct. Kharuun ears flattened. Hands grabbed children. Workers seized tools. Menders looked at walls. Handlers looked at Skitters.
Everyone remembered how to be afraid.
Saint Rook screamed again.
This time, the roots of his Domain lit from within: white, then pale gold, then a sick threadlike color that was not quite either. The doors of the Domain sealed. Every visible seam folded shut at once. Calling guards rushed toward it, but before the first two reached the lower steps, roots twisted in front of them and blocked the way.
One guard touched the surface.
A white thread snapped from the root and wrapped around her wrist.
She screamed.
Vekk moved before anyone else. He snatched the bent pick from his belt and threw it. The metal struck the thread, not enough to cut it, but enough to make it recoil. The guard fell backward, and the second guard dragged her away. The thread vanished into the root.
Avaruun appeared on the upper balcony.
Of course he did.
White veils. Calm posture. Four arms open in sorrow. His presence rolled over the hollow, warm and steady and wrong.
“My friends,” he said.
His voice carried beneath Saint Rook’s scream without fighting it. That was worse. He did not need to shout over pain. He moved around it, through it, with the patience of something that knew pain would tire before he did.
“Do not panic.”
Several people stopped running.
Vekk shouted, “Keep moving!”
Several started again.
Avaruun’s gaze shifted toward him. Only for a moment. Long enough that Vekk’s next order came out rougher.
“Clear the lower bridges! Children up! Menders to the support rails! Handlers, keep the pens shut!”
The Saint screamed again, and the central roots convulsed. A crack split across the floor near the lower steps. Warmth bled from it, white and sweet. Workers stumbled away. One man fell to his knees and reached toward it as if toward a hearth.
Brakka hurled her ash bucket at his chest.
He toppled backward, coughing.
“Do not touch glowing cracks!” she shouted.
That should not have needed saying.
It did.
Avaruun lowered his head, grief made beautiful. “Saint Rook has carried too much for too long. Old wounds are opening inside the Domain. He is not being harmed. He is releasing pain that should never have been asked of him.”
The words found people even through the screaming.
Releasing pain.
Old wounds.
Too much.
He made Saint Rook’s agony sound like treatment.
My mother grabbed my sleeve. “Khern.”
Old Jim still breathed under my hands. His eyes remained open, fixed toward the Domain. The blackened arm twitched once, but the pale lines did not return. Not yet.
Veyrun stumbled back from the passage mouth. “People are listening to him.”
“I know.”
“No, Khern. They are listening.”
Avaruun extended two hands toward the sealed Domain. The warmth deepened. Saint Rook’s scream bent around it, muffled for one breath, then another. Relief moved through the crowd, not because the pain had stopped, but because it had become easier to stand near.
My skin crawled.
Avaruun looked down over Rooknest. “No one approaches the Domain. No one opens sealed roots. No one follows fear into a wound. Tonight, we hold one another. Tomorrow, we help him heal.”
Tomorrow.
He gave them tomorrow like a ration.
People clutched it.
Vekk pushed through the side passage toward us, face pale under the dust. “Can Jim move?”
Old Jim answered before anyone else. “Not dead.”
“Didn’t ask for optimism.”
“Wasn’t giving any.”
Vekk looked almost relieved. Then his face hardened again. “Brakka, get ash on that arm. Mara, away from the cracks. Khern, help carry him. Veyrun, stop looking like furniture and be useful.”
Veyrun swallowed. “Where?”
“Anywhere that isn’t glowing.”
“We are surrounded by increasingly expressive walls.”
“Then choose the least expressive one.”
We lifted Old Jim carefully. He was too light. The ruined arm hung wrapped in ash cloth, blackened to the elbow. He did not scream when we moved him. That was not comforting. Pain had taken too much from him to spend loudly.
The central hollow had become a storm of bodies and wrong light. Skitters screamed from below. Menders threw ash paste over cracks. Workers dragged children toward upper bridges. Calling guards formed a line at the base of the sealed Domain, spears shaking in their hands. Above them, Avaruun stood with his arms open, guiding the crowd with sorrowful calm.
Saint Rook’s scream lowered.
Not stopped.
Lowered, sinking beneath the floor until the whole settlement groaned with it.
As we carried Old Jim past the lower tables, a woman reached toward us. “The Prophet can help him.”
“No,” I said.
The word came out before I knew I meant it.
She stared at me.
So did others.
Avaruun heard.
Of course he did.
His gaze came down from the balcony and found us with impossible gentleness.
“Khern,” he said.
The hollow quieted around my name.
I hated that. I hated how many faces turned. I hated how small I felt carrying an old man whose warning had saved them and would be explained away before the next meal.
Avaruun descended the steps slowly. The crowd parted for him, not because he forced them to, but because they wanted to make room for relief. He came toward us through fallen bowls, ash streaks, crying children, and workers too frightened to look at the sealed Domain.
Old Jim’s grip tightened weakly on my coat.
“Don’t,” he rasped.
Avaruun stopped a respectful distance away.
Even now, he was perfect with distance.
“He is suffering,” Avaruun said.
“He knows,” Veyrun muttered.
Avaruun’s eyes moved to him, then back to me. “Let him be tended.”
My hands shook around Old Jim’s shoulder.
“No.”
A small word.
A stupid word.
A dangerous word.
The crowd stared.
My mother inhaled sharply behind me. Veyrun moved closer on one side. Brakka stepped in on the other with her hook knife still in hand. Vekk did not stand in front of us. That would have looked like rebellion. He simply shifted his weight until anyone reaching Old Jim would have to go through him first.
Bodies standing where they had decided to stand.
Avaruun looked at us.
For one heartbeat, the sweetness in the air vanished.
Something old looked out through his eyes.
Old enough to be patient with insects.
Then warmth returned.
His sorrow returned.
His kindness returned.
“As you wish,” he said.
He bowed his head toward Old Jim. “Grief is a sacred place. I will not enter uninvited.”
Beautiful.
Perfect.
Cruel.
The crowd softened again.
Of course they did.
He had let us refuse him. He had turned refusal into proof of mercy.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I knelt beside Old Jim as we lowered him near the base of a support rail. My mother placed one hand on my shoulder. Veyrun stood over us, breathing hard. Brakka kept watching the wrapped arm. Vekk leaned close without looking at me.
His voice was low. “Do not react.”
I did not move.
Vekk’s mouth barely shifted. “Get your mother somewhere high before morning.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
“High. Away from lower vents. Away from sealed passages. Take Veyrun if he has a useful panic left in him.”
Veyrun whispered, “I have several.”
Vekk did not look at him. “Good.”
Across the hollow, Avaruun addressed the people again. His voice flowed warm and steady over grief, fear, doubt, and dead silence.
“Tonight we mourn. Tonight we rest. Tomorrow, we help Saint Rook heal.”
People listened.
People nodded.
People wanted tomorrow to be real.
Old Jim’s breathing grew thinner beside me. I looked down and found his eyes half-open, fixed on nothing. His burned arm lay still. No pale lines moved beneath the ash cloth. No thread reached from the wound.
“Jim,” I said.
His eyes shifted toward me.
For once, he did not insult me.
That was how I knew.
My throat closed.
He swallowed, but the sound barely came. “Tell them.”
“Tell who?”
“Anyone stubborn enough to stay alive.”
His fingers twitched against the floor. I caught his good hand. It was dry, cold, and lighter than a hand should be.
“What do I tell them?”
Old Jim’s mouth moved. For a moment, no sound came. Then he forced the words out, each one scraped raw.
“Good things can still be bait.”
“I know.”
“No.” His eyes sharpened by one final degree. “Make them know.”
I gripped his hand harder.
He looked toward Mara. Something like apology crossed his face, brief and ugly because Old Jim had never known what to do with softness. Mara knelt beside him and touched his shoulder.
“You warned us,” she said.
He breathed out a laugh that almost became a cough. “Too late.”
“Still.”
His eyes moved back to me.
“Listen,” he whispered.
Then Old Jim died under warm lanterns while Saint Rook screamed inside his own walls.
No great silence followed.
That felt wrong.
The Skitters kept shrieking. People kept crying. Avaruun kept speaking softly of rest and healing. Vekk kept issuing orders. The Domain kept glowing with sick threadlight. Rooknest did not stop for Old Jim because Rooknest had seven thousand mouths, seven thousand fears, and a Saint being eaten behind sealed roots.
I wanted the world to pause.
It did not.
Mara closed Old Jim’s eyes with two fingers.
Veyrun turned away.
Brakka whispered something under her breath. Not a prayer. A handler’s count, maybe. Something used for animals that died after warning the pen.
I stayed kneeling.
Old Jim’s hand cooled in mine.
Above us, Avaruun’s voice settled over the hollow like a blanket. “Do not let fear make you cruel. Do not let grief make you blind. Rest now. We will tend what can be tended.”
Vekk’s eyes remained on the sealed Domain.
For the first time since I had known him, Foreman Vekk looked like a man who had run out of orders large enough to hold back death. He leaned closer once more, still not looking directly at me.
“If I am wrong,” he whispered, “you can hate me tomorrow.”
The roots of Saint Rook’s Domain pulsed once.
Softly.
Behind them, far beneath warmth, I thought I heard something. Not a scream. Not anymore. A scrape, like nails against the inside of a wall.
Vekk’s voice dropped lower.
“If I am right, there may not be one.”