I did not sleep.
That was fine.
Nobody should have slept well after watching an old man die under warm lanterns while a Saint screamed inside his own walls. Rooknest disagreed. By the time Veyrun and I carried my mother to the upper stack, most of the settlement had gone quiet again. Not peaceful, exactly. Not after what happened. But softened. Drowsy. Heavy with the kind of exhaustion that made fear sit down even when it should have kept running.
Vekk’s warning stayed in my ears.
Get your mother somewhere high before morning.
So we did.
There were no proper rooms in the upper stack unless you were important, lucky, or dead enough for people to feel guilty about where you used to live. We were none of those. But Veyrun knew an old storage loft above the dried moss racks, a cramped little chamber wedged between two support beams and a dead vent shaft. It smelled like dust, old rope, and fungus that had lost ambition. The floor leaned slightly toward the west wall. The ceiling was low enough that I hit my head twice before deciding humility was cheaper than standing straight.
Still, it was high.
Higher than the eastern stack. Higher than the lower pens. Higher than the sealed passages. That had to matter.
Probably.
Veyrun dropped a bundle of old cloth in the corner and coughed. “Good news. If we die here, we’ll die elevated.”
My mother sat on a crate with her shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her breathing was still clear.
Too clear.
She looked around the loft. “It is better than your description.”
“I described it as a dusty shelf for unwanted objects.”
“Yes. You made it sound smaller.”
Veyrun glanced at me. “Your mother frightens me with precision.”
“She does that.”
The warmth from the walls was weaker up here. Not gone, but weaker. The air felt colder, rougher, more like the Rooknest I knew. It bit at my nose and settled into my lungs with familiar cruelty.
I had never been so grateful to breathe badly.
Below us, the central hollow had quieted after Old Jim’s death. Prophet Avaruun had ordered rest. Saint Rook’s Domain had sealed completely. Vekk had disappeared into the lower passages with Brakka and three handlers who looked like they wanted to pretend they had not volunteered. Old Jim’s body remained with the dead-workers’ attendants.
Not Avaruun.
That mattered.
I told myself it mattered.
Veyrun blocked the loft entrance with two crates and a broken Skitter harness. He stepped back, studied his work, and nodded once. “That should stop anything polite.”
“What about anything not polite?” I asked.
He looked at the harness. “Then we ask it to reconsider.”
My mother reached into her shawl and pulled out a small knife.
Veyrun stared. “Mara.”
She set it beside her. “What?”
“You had a knife this whole time?”
“I live in Rooknest.”
“I respect you more now.”
“You should have done that before the knife.”
“I did. Now I respect you with fear.”
She nodded as if this was acceptable.
I sat beside her on the floor, shovel across my knees. For a while, none of us spoke. That was rare. Veyrun always filled silence because silence gave thoughts room to organize. I always listened for danger because worry needed something to chew. My mother usually stitched because her hands disliked being useless. But that night, we simply sat in the storage loft while Rooknest breathed strangely beneath us.
Every so often, the walls pulsed. Warmth rose through the floorboards, then faded. Once, from far below, a Skitter clicked.
One click.
Nothing after.
Veyrun leaned against the wall opposite us, arms folded tight. “So. We are agreed that tomorrow does not exist.”
I looked at him. “What?”
“If tomorrow existed, we would need plans. Since we have none, tomorrow is clearly a rumor.”
“That’s not how time works.”
“Time has never worked in our favor. I see no reason to defend it.”
My mother closed her eyes. “Tomorrow exists whether you respect it or not.”
“Unfortunate,” Veyrun said.
I looked at the blocked entrance. “What if Vekk comes?”
“He’ll yell.”
“What if Brakka comes?”
“She’ll kick the crates.”
“What if Avaruun comes?”
Veyrun did not answer.
Neither did my mother.
The little loft felt colder after that. I gripped my shovel. It was a terrible weapon, too long for a tight room, too dull for cutting, too familiar to make me feel brave. But I had carried it every day. That counted for something.
Maybe not much.
But something.
My mother touched my shoulder. “You should rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Khern.”
“I’m not.”
“You are shaking.”
I looked down. My hands trembled around the shovel handle. I tightened my grip until they stopped, which did not count as fixing it but looked similar.
“I keep thinking about Old Jim,” I said.
Veyrun went quiet.
Mara’s hand stayed on my shoulder.
“He knew,” I said. “Before us. Before anyone.”
“He listened,” she said.
“To what?”
“The things people disliked hearing.”
That sounded too much like something Old Jim would have said, then pretended was an insult.
My throat tightened. “He told me not to let them make quiet look like peace.”
“Then remember it.”
I looked toward the floor. Below us, Rooknest was quiet.
Too quiet.
I remembered breakfast lines without complaints. Workers singing in perfect rhythm. Saint Rook smiling softly. Skitters opening their mouths without sound. Avaruun turning every warning into a wound that needed sealing. Quiet could be peace. But it could also be something covering a mouth.
I did not sleep.
I only closed my eyes for a moment.
When the first horn sounded, I was already awake. Of course I was. My body still jerked like I had been caught late. Habit did not care about horror.
Veyrun groaned from his place near the crates. “Tell the horn I died.”
“It knows you’re lying.”
“Then tell it I died emotionally.”
My mother opened her eyes. The room was dim and gray-orange from the weak Heat Grub jar. No one outside shouted. No one cursed the horn. No children cried. No workers stomped past complaining about shifts, food, and the unreasonable existence of morning.
Rooknest woke quietly.
Obediently.
I hated that.
I stood and grabbed my helmet.
My mother watched me. “No.”
One word.
Soft.
Worse than shouting.
I froze. “I have to check the board.”
“No.”
“I won’t go far.”
“No.”
“Mara—”
“You heard Vekk.”
“He told me to get you high before morning. I did.”
“He did not tell you to go back down.”
“He didn’t tell me not to.”
Her eyes sharpened. “That is the argument of a fool trying to sound employed.”
Veyrun lifted one hand from the floor. “As a fool, I object to the standard being raised.”
Nobody laughed.
I tied my breathing cloth. My mother stood slowly. Still no cough. That should have comforted me. It did not.
“Khern,” she said, “work is not the same as duty.”
I looked down at the shovel in my hand. It felt heavier than usual.
“Vekk might need help.”
“Vekk needs many things. Sleep. Better manners. A voice that does not frighten fungus. But he did not ask you to run into danger before breakfast.”
“He said if he was right, there might not be tomorrow.”
“Then why are you rushing toward the part of tomorrow he warned you about?”
I did not have an answer. Not a good one. The real answer sat inside me like a stone. Because I did not know what I was if I was not useful. Because my whole life had taught me that hiding while others worked was how people became forgotten. Because Saint Rook was trapped inside his Domain, Vekk was somewhere below, Brakka was alone with screaming animals, Old Jim was dead, and my mother was breathing because of the same mercy that might be eating us.
Because doing nothing felt like dying early.
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“I’ll just look,” I said.
My mother’s face changed.
She knew that lie.
Every mother in Rooknest knew it.
Veyrun sat up. “You are making a very convincing case for becoming a corpse.”
“I said I’ll look.”
“Yes. That is the first stage.”
“You don’t have to come.”
He stared at me, then stood. “Do you hear yourself when you say stupid things, or is it peaceful in there?”
My mother looked at him. “Keep him alive.”
Veyrun bowed solemnly. “I will attempt the impossible.”
She looked at me next. Her hand lifted to my cheek. I went still. She had not done that in years. Not because she did not love me. Because Rooknest made affection expensive and time short.
“Do not go because you think your body is the only useful thing about you,” she said.
The words hurt because I understood them.
“I’m going because I need to know.”
“That is better,” she said. “Still foolish. But better.”
She handed me two breathing cloths, a wrapped strip of bitter moss, and one of the ash jars Vekk had sent with us. Then she took my hand and pressed something small into my palm.
Old Jim’s corpse tag.
I stared at it. The bone chip was plain, scratched with his name and work line. The dead-workers’ attendant must have given it to Mara before we climbed. Or she had taken it. I was not sure which possibility frightened me less.
“He should not be left only with the people who wanted him quiet,” she said.
I closed my fingers around the tag.
“I’ll come back.”
“Do not promise as a worker,” she said.
My throat tightened.
I remembered.
“Then how?”
“As my son.”
I looked at her. The room was cold. My hands shook again. Below us, Rooknest was too quiet.
“I promise as your son,” I said.
She nodded once.
That was enough.
Veyrun and I slipped out of the loft after moving the crates just wide enough to pass. The upper stack smelled of dried moss, cold stone, old dust, and faint sweetness drifting up from below. Doors stood half-open. People sat inside their rooms with bowls in their laps, listening to the morning horn fade. No one hurried. No one cursed. No one complained that the first horn had sounded too early or too loudly or at all.
A child waved at us from a doorway.
I waved back.
That felt more frightening than if she had cried.
At the upper rail, we looked down into the central hollow.
Rooknest had become a waiting room.
The feast tables from last night had been cleared. Broken bowls swept aside. Lanterns straightened. The lower bridges were lined with workers seated shoulder to shoulder, bowls in their hands, heads bowed as attendants moved among them with pale cloth and broth. No shifts had formed. The duty board had been covered in white fabric. Across it, someone had written in charcoal:
REST WHILE HEALING HOLDS.
Veyrun stared. “That is not a work order.”
“No.”
“That is worse.”
Saint Rook’s Domain stood sealed at the center of the hollow. The pale roots had folded over every entrance. No seams. No doors. No visible cracks. Only faint light pulsed under the surface, slow and sickly, like breath trapped behind skin. Avaruun stood near the lower steps with two Saint guards and several attendants. He spoke quietly to a group of elders. They nodded like people grateful to have fear explained.
I looked for Vekk.
Found him near the lower barrier.
He was not alone. Brakka stood beside him with a hook pole and a sack of ash jars slung over one shoulder. Two handlers waited behind her. Three menders stood near a cart of tools, all pretending not to be terrified. Vekk held the bent pick in one hand, staring at the sealed Domain like hatred might become architecture if he focused hard enough.
“We tell him we’re here,” I said.
Veyrun grabbed my sleeve. “Or we do the thing we promised your terrifying mother and look from a distance.”
“Vekk sees everything.”
“Then make him work for it.”
We started down the side stair, keeping close to the wall. The air grew warmer with every level. By the time we reached the lower bridge, sweat crawled between my shoulder blades despite the cold stone under my feet. The sweetness thickened too, not strong enough to make anyone gag, only present enough to make the back of my throat feel coated.
At the base of the stairs, a woman from the vent crews smiled at us. “Healing vigil is in the central hollow.”
“We’re checking upper supports,” Veyrun said.
She looked at his empty hands. “Without tools?”
He lifted both hands. “Advanced method.”
She smiled wider. “Rest is also useful.”
My skin prickled.
“We’ll rest later,” I said.
Her gaze moved to me. For a moment, I thought she might argue. Then her face softened with pity, and that was worse.
“Later is fear’s favorite lie,” she said.
Veyrun and I walked faster.
Vekk saw us before we reached him.
Of course he did.
His expression did something complicated. Anger arrived first, then relief, then anger again because relief had embarrassed him.
“You were told high,” he said.
“We were high,” I said.
“Past tense is not obedience.”
“I needed to know what happened.”
Vekk stepped closer. “Do you mistake yourself for someone whose knowing improves situations?”
“No.”
“Good. Then go back.”
“Is Saint Rook alive?”
That stopped him.
Brakka looked away.
The sealed Domain pulsed behind them. Slow. Soft. Wrong.
Vekk’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.” He looked at the Domain. “But he’s fighting.”
Veyrun swallowed. “How do you know?”
Brakka answered. “The Skitters still won’t eat.”
That should not have been comforting.
It was.
A soft murmur moved through the crowd. Avaruun had turned from the elders and was walking toward the lower barrier. His veils moved around him in layers of pale light. The people nearest him lowered their heads as he passed. Some touched his trailing warmth as if brushing a prayer.
Vekk saw him coming and muttered, “World Below, give me one morning without a beautiful liar.”
Avaruun stopped a few steps away. “Foreman.”
Vekk’s hand tightened around the pick. “Prophet.”
“You are near the Domain again.”
“It remains in the center of my workplace.”
Avaruun’s sorrow did not change. “Your dedication is admirable.”
“Your compliments remain unwelcome.”
“I know.”
That almost sounded affectionate.
That made me want to strike something.
Avaruun looked at me. “Khern. You brought your mother high.”
Every muscle in my body went tight.
Veyrun whispered, “Absolutely hate that.”
I did not answer.
Avaruun’s gaze held mine with impossible gentleness. “You were wise to care for her.”
“I was told.”
“Wisdom often begins as obedience to someone who loves us.”
I hated that sentence.
It was beautiful.
It was true enough to be dangerous.
Vekk stepped between us without making it look like protection. “What is happening inside the Domain?”
Avaruun turned to him. The central hollow quieted in widening circles. People loved public answers because answers let them stop thinking.
“Saint Rook is enduring sacred strain,” Avaruun said.
Vekk spat on the floor.
The hollow went silent.
Even in panic, that was a bold amount of disrespect to place near a Hollow Prophet.
Avaruun only lowered his head. “You are right to be angry.”
“I did not ask for permission.”
“No,” Avaruun said gently. “You asked what is happening. I will answer.”
He turned to the crowd. Behind the sealed roots, something groaned. Not a scream this time. Lower. Broken. The sound of a support beam holding too much weight.
Avaruun lifted one hand toward the Domain. “Your Saint has carried Rooknest beyond what any one soul should bear. For years, he took every tremor, every failing vent, every sick breath, every frightened child, every hunger season, every collapse, and placed them into himself.”
People cried openly.
Because that was true.
That was the worst part.
Avaruun did not need lies. Truth was softer in his hands.
“He wished to give relief,” Avaruun said. “When I arrived, he asked me to help him carry more.”
Vekk looked ready to bite through stone.
Liar, Old Jim would have said.
Old Jim was not beside us.
So no one said it.
Avaruun continued, “But the body of a Saint is not like ours. When a Calling as deep as Shelter releases old burdens too quickly, the Domain suffers. It must reopen wounds it sealed for others. It must remember pain it buried beneath duty.”
The crowd listened. They wanted him to make the scream meaningful. They wanted pain to have a shape they could thank.
“Do not strike the Domain,” Avaruun said gently. “Do not pry open sealed roots. Do not panic at the sound of healing.”
Healing.
The word landed like a warm cloth over a corpse.
Vekk stepped toward him. “That was not healing.”
Avaruun’s eyes turned to him. For the first time, I saw something beneath the gentleness. Not anger. Pressure. The air around Vekk thickened. His shoulders tightened, but he did not step back.
“You love this place through discipline,” Avaruun said. “Through suspicion. Through hard orders. I honor that.”
“Stop honoring me.”
Several people flinched.
Avaruun’s smile saddened. “But if you force those doors, you may kill the Saint you are trying to save.”
That stopped Vekk.
It stopped all of us.
Because we did not know.
We did not know if he was lying. We did not know if opening the Domain would save Saint Rook or tear him apart. We did not know if striking the roots would hurt Avaruun or Rook. That was how the Prophet trapped us: not with certainty, but with consequences we could not measure.
Vekk’s hand trembled around the pick.
Saint Rook groaned again behind the roots. Softly. Like he was trying not to be heard.
The crowd began whispering.
“Sacred strain.”
“Healing.”
“Let him rest.”
“Do not open it.”
“Let him rest.”
Veyrun’s face went pale. “They’re doing it again.”
I knew.
The scream had cracked the softness, but Avaruun was pouring warmth into the crack, filling it, sealing it, making a closed place.
Avaruun turned toward the sealed entrance and placed one hand against the root wall.
Every Skitter in the lower pens went silent.
The sudden absence of their screams hit harder than the noise.
Avaruun closed his eyes. “My friend.”
Something moved behind the wall.
The white roots pulsed. A shape pressed outward from inside the sealed surface.
A hand.
Saint Rook’s hand.
Or the outline of it.
The crowd gasped. The hand pressed from the inside, trembling, fingers spread against the root surface like someone trapped beneath pale ice.
I took a step forward.
So did Vekk.
Avaruun’s fingers tightened against the wall.
The outline of Saint Rook’s hand slowly relaxed.
Then withdrew.
The roots smoothed.
Avaruun opened his eyes. “He rests now.”
The crowd released breath. Not relief. Something close enough to pass for it.
Vekk stared at the wall.
I stared too.
A faint mark remained where the hand had been.
Five fingers.
Then white thread slid over it.
Gone.
Avaruun turned to us. “Today, no one enters the lower Domain. No one approaches sealed passages. No one disturbs Saint Rook’s rest.”
His voice was gentle.
His command was not.
The Saint’s guards bowed. Most of the crowd did too.
Vekk did not.
Brakka did not.
Veyrun did not.
I almost did.
My knees bent before I realized.
Then the bone chip in my hand cut into my palm.
Old Jim’s tag.
Pain sparked.
I straightened.
Avaruun’s gaze shifted to my hand.
Only for a moment.
Enough.
Then a tremor moved through the floor.
Small.
Almost nothing.
Someone near the ration line whispered, “Probably nothing.”
The words struck through me so hard I could not breathe.
Probably nothing.
A sealed vent. A missing Thren. A Skitter refusing feed. A Saint smiling softly. An old man saying run. A hand trapped behind roots. Probably nothing, because if every small fear became something, we would never move. We would just sit in our little rooms, listening to the world decide whether to crush us.
The tremor passed.
The warmth deepened.
Avaruun smiled sadly. “Old stones settling.”
Vekk looked at me.
Not publicly.
Not directly.
His eyes flicked once toward the upper stacks.
Go.
I understood.
This time, I did not argue.
I grabbed Veyrun’s sleeve. “We’re leaving.”
“What? Finally? I mean good. Yes. Sensible. Suspiciously late, but sensible.”
We backed toward the side stair. Vekk turned away as if we were no longer worth yelling at. Brakka stepped closer to the lower pens, watching the Skitters with one hand on her hook. Avaruun resumed speaking to the crowd, his voice warm enough to make fear feel rude.
Then the floor beneath Section Three cracked open.
No warning horn. No shout from a mender. No proper collapse sequence. The lower passage simply split with a wet, tearing sound, and white light poured out.
People screamed.
Not softened cries.
Real screams.
Rooknest screams.
The kind that scraped the throat and told every living thing nearby that manners had ended.
The pale threads along the lower walls recoiled from the noise.
Just enough.
Vekk roared, “MOVE!”
This time, people did.
Handlers dragged children from the lower pens. Skitters slammed against fences. Workers ran from side passages as white lines crawled through the walls behind them. A Calling guard stood near the central stair, spear raised, glowing markings along her arms flaring pale blue.
The tall guard from Saint Rook’s Domain.
Silver thread around her brace-tail.
She shouted for people to climb.
Then threads burst from the floor beneath her.
She stabbed down. The spear went through three strands. Four more wrapped around her legs. She shouted, not in fear, but command.
“UP! ALL OF YOU UP!”
Then she slammed both palms against the floor.
Light flashed.
The threads froze.
People scrambled past her. She looked at me across the stairwell. Her eyes were clear now.
“Run,” she said.
The floor swallowed her.
Veyrun dragged me before I could stop.
We climbed.
The central hollow came fully into view from the lower bridge, and everything had changed. Feast tables were overturned. Bowls shattered underfoot. Lanterns swung wildly. People packed the stairs, bridges, and tunnel mouths in screaming waves. White threads crawled along the lower roots of Saint Rook’s Domain.
Above it all stood Avaruun.
No.
Not stood.
Unfolded.
His veils had opened around him, stretching from his shoulders to the Domain roots, from the balcony to the walls, from his four arms into countless pale strands. He still looked beautiful from far away.
That was the horror.
He had not become a monster. He had simply stopped pretending the beauty was separate from hunger.
Saint Rook’s roots thrashed against the white threads. Pale light flared through them. For every thread he burned, three more slid over him. The sealed Domain bulged outward. Inside it, something struck the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Saint Rook.
Vekk stood at the base of the central steps with Brakka and a group of workers, trying to hack through white growth blocking the lower escape path. He saw me.
“Khern!”
I stumbled toward him with Veyrun beside me. My lungs burned. My shoulder throbbed. My palm bled around Old Jim’s tag.
Good.
Pain meant I was still mine.
Vekk grabbed my collar. “Your mother?”
“Upper stack.”
“Good. Go higher.”
“What about you?”
His face twisted. “Still asking stupid questions.”
Avaruun’s voice rolled over the hollow. Not loud.
Everywhere.
“Do not fear.”
People screamed.
“Do not fight relief.”
The white threads spread.
“Pain ends when resistance ends.”
Saint Rook screamed from inside the Domain. Not through the whole settlement this time. Only from the sealed roots. Muffled, furious, alive.
Vekk shoved me toward the upper stairs. “Go!”
A section of lower bridge snapped.
People fell.
Saint Rook’s roots shot outward and caught three of them midair, wrapping around waists, arms, legs. For one heartbeat, his old Shelter returned.
Holding.
Saving.
Then white threads slid along those same roots.
The rescued people screamed as warmth wrapped around them.
Saint Rook’s roar shook the hollow. The roots tore themselves apart to drop the people free rather than let the threads take them. Chunks of pale root crashed into the floor. The Domain bled white light.
Avaruun tilted his veiled head.
“My friend,” he said, almost tenderly. “Still carrying?”
The words reached me through the chaos.
So did Saint Rook’s answer.
Not spoken.
Felt.
A pulse through the floor.
Hard.
Cold.
Clear.
Run.
Every Kharuun in the hollow felt it. I knew because every ear lifted at once. For one second, Saint Rook broke through Avaruun’s warmth and gave Rooknest one true command.
Run.
Then the central support root cracked.
The sound was too large for thought.
The hollow split into motion. People ran. Not orderly. Not soft. Not grateful. They ran like Rooknest had remembered the first rule of all living things.
Do not be eaten.
Veyrun grabbed my arm.
This time, I did not argue.
We ran upward. Toward the loft. Toward my mother. Toward whatever part of Rooknest still remained high enough to breathe. Behind us, Section Three fully opened, and the lower hollow burst white.
I did not look back until we reached the upper bridge.
That was when I saw it.
Saint Rook’s Domain, the pale tower at the heart of Rooknest, had split down the middle.
Inside was not a room. Not a throne. Not a holy chamber. It was roots. Thousands of roots. Saint Rook’s roots. And among them, Avaruun’s white threads spread like silk through bone.
At the center, half-hidden by light and veils, I saw Saint Rook’s body suspended in his own Domain, arms outstretched, roots from his back pulled in every direction. His eyes were open.
They found mine.
Across the central hollow.
Across falling bridges.
Across screams, dust, warmth, and white thread.
He looked at me. Not as Saint to worker. Not as savior to saved. As someone trapped telling someone else not to become him.
Then a white veil slid across his face.
Veyrun pulled me onward.
My boots hit the upper stairs. My shovel stayed in my hand. Old Jim’s tag cut into my palm. My breath tore through my throat.
For the first time in my life, I was not late.
I was exactly where death expected me to be.