The Skitters settled before morning, which should have made everyone feel better. It did not.
By first horn, the lower hollow smelled of sour moss, nervous animals, and the kind of fear people stepped around instead of naming. Handlers moved from pen to pen with red eyes and stiff backs. Menders checked the fences twice. Brace Beetles were set loose along the lower supports, their hard little legs clicking over beams, paste seams, and old cracks. Pen four had survived the night, and the nervous breeder still had all its legs, all its eyes, and all its plates.
It had not eaten.
No one said panic. No one said omen. No one said warning. In Rooknest, dangerous words were treated like sparks near oil, so everyone used the safer phrase instead: bad season. A Skitter refused moss? Bad season. A tunnel sweated black moisture? Bad season. The Shuddering came early, late, too soft, too hard, or in a pattern that made old workers stop talking? Bad season. It was a useful phrase because it explained everything while solving nothing.
Foreman Vekk stood by the duty board with his jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. His torn ear twitched every few breaths, which meant he had been awake long before first horn. Unfortunately, he still noticed when I arrived. Fortunately, I was not late. I had never been more proud of arriving somewhere I did not want to be.
Vekk looked at me, then at the horn post, then back at me. “You’re early.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I feared punishment.”
“Good.” He marked something on the board, and when I tried to see, he turned it away with the slow precision of a man denying water to a dying plant. “Section Three. Support check. Wall paste. Brace Beetle notes. You’ll go with Veyrun.”
My relief lasted half a breath. “With Veyrun?”
“Yes.”
“On purpose?”
Vekk’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have a problem?”
“No, Foreman.”
“Good. He talks too much. You worry too much. Between the two of you, maybe I’ll get one functional worker.”
From behind me, Veyrun gasped. “Foreman, I am deeply wounded.”
“Then bleed quietly.”
“I have been nothing but loyal.”
“You skipped Section Nine yesterday.”
“In spirit, I was there.”
“In body, you were laughing at dung.”
“That was also spiritual.”
Vekk pointed toward the tunnel. “Move.”
We moved.
Section Three was older than Section Nine and much meaner about it. The passage had been carved before Saint Rook’s Domain grew into the central hollow, back when Rooknest was smaller, poorer, and apparently built by people who hated future generations. The ceiling dipped too low in some places and rose too high in others. Support beams leaned at uncomfortable angles. Wall-worm paste bulged from cracks like dried scars. Heat Grub jars hung unevenly from hooks, giving the tunnel a pulsing orange light.
A line of Brace Beetles crawled ahead of us, each one squat and dark-shelled, about the size of my foot, with thick front legs and flat heads. Red thread had been tied around their bodies to mark them as colony property. They moved slowly, tapping the ground and walls with their antennae. If a Brace Beetle crossed a tunnel, the support was safe. If it stopped, the support needed checking. If it turned around and ran, everyone nearby was supposed to do the same.
Miners trusted Brace Beetles more than foremen.
Foremen hated knowing this.
Veyrun crouched beside one and clicked his tongue. The beetle ignored him, and he sighed. “Rude.”
“It’s working.”
“So am I.”
“You’re crouching.”
“Observation is work.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“That is what small-minded people say before dying in poorly observed tunnels.”
I sighed and opened the repair pack. Inside were strips of resin cloth, wall paste, bone nails, a chisel, two measuring sticks, and a jar of thick white sealant that smelled like old milk and regret. Veyrun sniffed it once, and his face collapsed.
“That came from a wall worm, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I miss the dung.”
“You said you’d never be clean again.”
“I have grown.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“I grow quickly.”
The first half of the tunnel passed without trouble. The Brace Beetles crossed each beam, we marked the supports, and I scraped loose paste away from old cracks before replacing it with fresh sealant while Veyrun held the lamp and provided moral suffering. Section Three made enough ordinary noises to keep my shoulders tight: water dripping somewhere behind stone, old beams settling, distant tools striking crust, workers cursing in other tunnels. None of it was comforting, exactly, but it was familiar.
Then the third beetle stopped.
Both of us went still. The beetle stood near the left wall, antennae pressed against a narrow vertical seam I had not noticed before. Its shell lifted slightly. Its legs trembled against the floor.
Veyrun’s smile faded. “Is it stopping stopping?”
“It looks like stopping.”
“Maybe it’s tired.”
“It has six legs.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
The beetle turned slowly, then backed away from the seam. It did not run. It did not shriek. It simply refused to cross, which was almost worse because panic could be dismissed as panic. Refusal looked too much like judgment.
Veyrun crouched and put his ear membrane near the wall. I did the same. At first, I heard only the ordinary tunnel sounds. Then came a scrape, faint and far beyond the stone, from somewhere deeper than the tunnel should have gone. It was not close, not loud, and not repeated, but both of us heard it.
The wall gave a quiet pulse beneath my palm, not heat, more like pressure, as if something had pressed back from the other side.
I jerked my hand away. Veyrun did too.
The Brace Beetle turned around and began walking back the way we had come. It still moved with dignity, which was rude for something abandoning us.
“I think,” Veyrun said carefully, “we should write that down.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe in large letters.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we should write, ‘Bad wall. Do not touch. Khern touched it and nearly became paste.’”
“I hate you.”
“That can go in smaller letters.”
I marked the seam with red chalk.
UNSTABLE. DO NOT PATCH. DO NOT DIG. ASK VEKK.
When we reported the seam, Vekk did not yell. That was how I knew it was serious. He stood with the repair slate in one hand, listening while Veyrun talked too much and I nodded too often. His torn ear folded tight against his head when we described the sound behind the wall.
“A scrape?” he asked.
“Yes, Foreman,” I said.
“What kind?”
Veyrun opened his mouth.
I answered before he could compare it to anything stupid. “Stone shifting against stone. Far off.”
“Pressure?”
“A little.”
“Heat?”
“No.”
“Wet smell?”
“No.”
“Metal?”
I hesitated. The wall had smelled wrong, but faintly. Not blood. Not rot. Not any clean thing. “Maybe.”
Vekk’s expression tightened. He handed the slate to a runner waiting near the board. “Tell Brakka to check the pens again. Tell Mender Soth I want two crews near Section Three by second horn. Nobody patches that seam without me present.”
The runner took off.
Veyrun and I stood there, waiting for the rest of the yelling. Vekk looked at us as if surprised we still existed. “Well?”
“Well what?” Veyrun asked.
“Do you want applause?”
Veyrun brightened.
“No,” I said quickly.
Vekk pointed toward the water line. “Tools cleaned. Then eastern support checks. And if either of you starts a rumor, I’ll assign you to explain the rumor to every Skitter individually.”
Veyrun looked thoughtful. “Would they listen?”
“Move.”
We moved.
By mid-shift, word had already spread, though not the true version. The true version was boring: a beetle stopped, a wall scraped, and Vekk looked worried. Rooknest preferred its fear seasoned. By the time we reached the water line to wash tools, I heard three different versions. In the first, Section Three had split open and swallowed half a crew. In the second, a Pale Warden had been heard clawing through the wall. In the third, I had apparently touched the seam, gone blind, and started speaking in the voice of the World Below.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“That last one flatters you,” Veyrun said while rinsing his hands.
“I don’t think blindness flatters anyone.”
“No, the speaking part. You usually mumble.”
“I do not mumble.”
“You mumble so softly your own fear has to lean closer.”
I splashed water at him. He ducked too late, and a pair of workers nearby snorted. One of them, a narrow-faced woman from the west stacks, glanced at me and said, “Careful. He’s touched by the Deep now.”
Her friend laughed.
I forced a smile. It came out wrong.
Veyrun noticed, because of course he did. He always noticed the things I wished he wouldn’t and missed the things directly in front of his face. “Don’t listen.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s worse.”
“They were joking.”
“Kharuun are always joking. That’s how we say cruel things politely.”
I looked at him.
He shrugged. “What? I overshare. This is known.”
We passed the lower market hollow, where handlers sold small portions of Skitter cheese, moss cakes, dried grubs, tick-fat oil, patch cloth, and little charms carved from shed Skitter plates. The market was not loud. Rooknest never had enough abundance for true noise. But people gathered there after shifts because crowded hunger felt slightly less lonely than private hunger.
A child ran past us chasing a Scrape Rat with a loop of string. The Scrape Rat won. A mender argued with a moss-picker over the weight of a damp bundle. Two old women sat beside a heat jar and insulted every passerby with terrifying accuracy.
“Your tail drags like bad news,” one said to Veyrun.
He stopped, turned, and bowed deeply. “Grandmother, your cruelty keeps me humble.”
“It should keep you quiet.”
“Nothing can.”
“We noticed.”
The other old woman pointed at me. “And you. Chin up. You look like you’re apologizing to the floor.”
I immediately lifted my chin.
Veyrun covered his mouth.
I pretended not to see.
Then the market bell rang once, and every ordinary sound in the hollow changed shape. It was not an alarm bell, not shift, not ration. A message bell. People turned toward the upper passage as a runner stumbled down from the eastern gate, breathless, mud-gray dust coating his face and shoulders. Two guards followed behind him, one supporting a figure wrapped in travel hide.
The traveler was taller than any Kharuun, thin enough to look assembled from sticks and blades, with layered shell ridges along the shoulders and arms. A pale mask grew over the lower half of the face, not worn but part of the body. Long fingers tapped against the guard’s arm in quick, uneven rhythms that made my ear membranes twitch.
A Thren Shell-Speaker.
I had seen one only once before, from far away. Thren crossed the Scarlands in small bands, trading maps, warnings, predator routes, and corpse rights. Kharuun distrusted them for many reasons, but the biggest was simple: the Thren did not waste dead things. Any dead things.
This one’s shell mask was cracked. One arm hung limp. Something had torn through the travel hide near the ribs, and dark fluid had dried along the edges of the wound.
Whispers moved through the market.
“Raid?”
“Rift Hounds?”
“Rukhar?”
“Pale Wardens?”
The runner bent double, hands on knees, gasping. Foreman Vekk appeared from somewhere, because apparently yelling gave him the ability to teleport.
“What happened?” he snapped.
The runner tried to speak and failed. The Thren raised its good hand, tapping a quick pattern against the guard’s arm. No one understood.
Then Elder Sira stepped from the crowd.
She was small, bent, and wrapped in so many patched shawls she looked like a pile of laundry with eyes. Her left ear membrane had gone cloudy with age, and one of her hands was missing two fingers. Most people in Rooknest treated her like a decorative warning about living too long. I had once watched her beat a drunk moss-picker unconscious with a walking stick, so I feared her with respect.
Sira approached the Thren and tapped her stick against the ground.
Once. Twice.
The Thren went still. Its fingers moved again, slower this time, and Sira listened with her feet, her stick, and her jaw. The whole market waited. Even the old women stopped insulting people.
Veyrun leaned closer and whispered, “Do you think it’s bad news?”
“It came bleeding through the eastern gate.”
“So yes.”
Sira’s expression changed. Not fear. Shock, which frightened me more because fear was common and shock required effort.
She turned toward Vekk. “Send for Saint Rook.”
The market erupted.
Vekk’s face hardened. “Why?”
Sira’s eyes swept across the crowd. For one heartbeat, I thought she would refuse to say it in front of everyone. Then she looked toward the Saint’s Domain and spoke loudly enough for the nearest workers to hear. “Because something is descending through the Ivory Gates.”
The words hit the crowd like dropped tools. The Ivory Gates were ways down and ways out, old passages into deeper hollows where maps became arguments and things sometimes came up that should have stayed below.
Someone whispered, “A raid?”
Sira shook her head. The Thren tapped again, faster now, and her grip tightened around her walking stick. “No. Not a raid.”
Vekk stepped closer. “Then what?”
Sira looked toward Saint Rook’s tower, and her voice dropped, but everyone heard. “A Hollow Prophet.”
Nobody moved for a moment. Even Rooknest forgot how to breathe.
Then the market became sound. Questions rose, prayers followed, disbelief cracked into laughter, and someone started crying near the moss stalls. Another worker shouted that it was impossible, and a third told him to shut up before he offended something that had not arrived yet.
A Hollow Prophet. I knew the words. Everyone knew the words. Stories of them passed through Rooknest like warmth we could not keep: beings from the deepest layers, living miracles, Saints who had completed the Hollowing and become something greater than people. Protectors of ancient domains. Judges of Callings. Pillars of the World Below. There were supposed to be only a few in all of history. Some said seven. Some said nine. Old Jim once said anyone who claimed to know the number was trying to sell either religion or poison.
And now one was coming here, to Rooknest, to the Outer Crust, to us.
Veyrun stared at Sira, then at me. For once, his mouth hung open without producing anything.
I should have felt awe. I should have felt hope. Everyone else did. I could see it spreading through the hollow already: faces lifting, shoulders loosening, hands clasping in prayer. Workers who had spent the morning whispering about bad walls and restless Skitters now looked like someone had cracked open the ceiling and poured warmth through.
If a Saint kept Rooknest alive, what could a Prophet do? Repair the tunnels. Strengthen the walls. Fill the moss pockets. Drive off raiders. Heal the sick. Ease Saint Rook’s burden.
Help my mother breathe.
The thought came so suddenly I hated myself for having it. Then I had it again.
A Prophet could do anything, couldn’t he?
The crowd parted as Saint Rook arrived. No horns announced him. No guards shouted. One moment the market was chaos, and the next people lowered their heads as if the air itself had changed.
Saint Rook walked slowly through the crowd, roots trailing from his back into the walls as far as they could reach before thinning into pale threads. Two Calling guards followed him. His face was calm, but now that I knew what tiredness looked like, I could see it under the calm.
The Thren bowed, though not fully. Their kind did not kneel.
Sira tapped her stick once in respect. “My Saint.”
Saint Rook looked at the wounded traveler. “You came far.”
The Thren tapped weakly.
Sira translated. “From the lower scar pass. Their band was broken near the third Ivory Gate.”
“By what?” Saint Rook asked.
The Thren hesitated. Its fingers touched the crack in its shell mask before tapping three slow beats.
Sira went pale.
Vekk noticed. “What?”
Sira ignored him and looked at Saint Rook. “They do not know. Only that it moved without scent, without footfall, and without hunger.”
That made no sense.
Everything had hunger.
Saint Rook’s expression did not change, but the roots behind him pulsed once. The market floor warmed beneath my feet, then cooled.
He turned toward the eastern passage. “How far?”
Sira listened to the Thren’s tapping. “Three days. Maybe four, depending on the Gates.”
The market erupted again, but this time the noise had edges. Three days was not a story. Four days was not a legend. It was a date.
Vekk barked for silence. Nobody listened. Then Saint Rook lifted one hand, and the central hollow stilled. Not by force. Not exactly. It was more like every wall remembered him at once. The lamps steadied. The floor stopped creaking. Even the children quieted.
Saint Rook looked at us, all of us. “The arrival of a Hollow Prophet is not a small thing. Rooknest will prepare with care. No one abandons duty. No one spreads panic. No one approaches the Ivory Gates without permission.”
A worker called out, “Is it true, my Saint?”
Saint Rook looked at the Thren. Then at Sira. Then toward the depths.
“Yes.”
The word changed the settlement. I felt it happen, not in the walls but in the people. A starving place had been handed a feast and told it might be real.
Someone started laughing. Someone else fell to their knees. A handler near the pens pressed both hands over her mouth. Veyrun whispered, “A Prophet,” and sounded younger than I had ever heard him.
Saint Rook continued before the hope could turn into a stampede. “There will be extra shifts. The eastern tunnels must be cleared. The central hollow prepared. The guest chambers opened. All moss stores inspected. Skitter handlers will separate the restless breeders. Menders will reinforce public paths. No one works alone.”
Vekk nodded sharply, already looking like he intended to make this everyone’s problem.
Then Saint Rook said, “Rooknest has endured long in the Outer Crust. Too long without aid.”
His eyes moved across the workers, the handlers, the elders, the children, the sick, the tired. For one brief moment, he looked unbearably sad.
“If this is blessing,” he said, “we will receive it with gratitude.”
Most people did not hear the first word. I did. So did Sira. So did Vekk. From the lower pens, a soft clicking began. It was not screaming or panic, just hundreds of mouthparts tapping slowly in the dark, crawling under the celebration like insects beneath a floor.
Saint Rook turned his head toward the pens, only for a moment.
Then he smiled.
The crowd needed that smile. They took it greedily.
By evening, Rooknest was already preparing for a miracle, and miracles, I learned, required a lot of unpaid labor. Vekk split the workers into crews before anyone had time to finish being amazed. Section Three was sealed. The lower paths were swept. The central hollow was cleared of scrap piles, dead lanterns, broken troughs, and anything else that made us look as poor as we were, which was difficult, because we were very poor.
Veyrun and I were assigned to the eastern procession path, scraping crust off the walls and patching old nail holes with paste.
“Do you think he’ll float?” Veyrun asked.
I pressed sealant into a crack. “Who?”
“The Prophet.”
“Why would he float?”
“Prophets feel like they should float.”
“Saint Rook doesn’t float.”
“He’s polite.”
“That makes no sense.”
“You lack imagination.”
“You lack supervision.”
He leaned on his scraper and looked down toward the central hollow. People moved everywhere. Handlers brushed Skitters until their shells looked almost clean. Children carried old prayer charms to the Saint’s Domain. Menders argued over which banners were least embarrassing. Old women supervised everyone with the merciless joy of people too old to do the work themselves.
Even the air felt different. Still dusty. Still cold. But lighter. Hope was strange that way. It did not fix anything. It just made people stand straighter while carrying the same weight.
“Maybe he can help,” Veyrun said.
I glanced at him.
He was not joking.
“With what?”
He shrugged. “Everything.”
That was too large a word. The walls. The food. The sick. The Shuddering. The raids. The dust. The fear. My mother’s cough. Old Jim’s trembling hands. Saint Rook’s tired eyes.
I looked back at the crack and pressed the paste in harder. “Maybe.”
Veyrun smiled faintly. “That’s the most hopeful thing you’ve ever said.”
“I regret it already.”
“Growth.”
“Don’t make me hit you.”
“With your tiny hopeful hands?”
I threw paste at him. He dodged, and it hit the wall behind him with a wet slap.
A passing mender stared at us.
Veyrun pointed at me. “Religious excitement.”
The mender sighed and kept walking.
After last horn, I returned home with sore arms and more news than food. My mother already knew, of course. News moved through Rooknest faster than smoke and smelled worse when people added too much to it. She sat by the lamp, breathing cloth in her lap, eyes on the doorway before I entered.
“A Prophet,” she said.
I stopped. “Hello to you too.”
“A Hollow Prophet.”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“What did Saint Rook say?”
I sat across from her. “He said we should prepare carefully.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He also said if it’s a blessing.”
Her needle paused only for a breath before continuing. “Did he?”
“Everyone else ignored that part.”
“People ignore what makes hope inconvenient.”
I watched her stitch. The room felt warmer tonight, not because it was, but because of the word sitting between us.
Prophet.
I pulled the ration bundle from my coat and set it on the crate. She looked at it, then at me.
“Smaller again?”
“Preparation shifts.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the one they gave.” I quickly added, “It’s only for a few days. When the Prophet arrives, things might get better.”
My mother’s eyes softened, and that was worse than doubt. Doubt I could argue with. Softness meant she knew exactly how badly I wanted to believe.
“Khern.”
“He could help you.”
The words came out before I could stop them. I stared at the crate, at the moss cake, at my cracked hands. “He’s a Prophet. They do impossible things, right?”
My mother set her stitching down. The silence stretched long enough for me to regret speaking. Finally, she said, “Maybe.”
That one word hurt more than no.
I looked up. “You don’t believe it?”
“I believe powerful people are still people. Or were, once.”
“Prophets aren’t people.”
“That is what frightens me.”
I frowned, but she reached across the crate and touched my hand before I could argue.
“Hope is good,” she said. “But do not hand your whole heart to something just because it shines brighter than your life.”
I did not answer. I needed the Prophet to shine. If he did not, then tomorrow was only tomorrow again: work, dust, coughing, rations, Old Jim against the wall, Saint Rook growing more tired, and me becoming useful enough to survive but never enough to rest.
My mother squeezed my fingers. “I am not telling you not to hope.”
“Then what are you telling me?”
“To keep enough of yourself back in case hope asks too much.”
I thought of Saint Rook’s roots disappearing into the walls. I thought of his shoulders sagging after he stilled the market. I thought of the Skitters clicking beneath a crowd that wanted to celebrate.
“I don’t know how,” I said.
Her thumb brushed over my knuckles. “I know.”
That night, I could not sleep. The eastern stack was louder than usual. People whispered through walls, argued in low voices, prayed over little charms, laughed too suddenly, cried too quietly. A Hollow Prophet was coming. The sentence repeated in my head until the words stopped meaning anything.
I lay on my mat and stared at the ceiling. A thin crack ran across it, sealed with old paste. The paste pulsed faintly in the lamplight, probably from the Heat Grub jar. Probably nothing.
Below us, the Skitters clicked in uneven waves. Above us, the roots of Saint Rook’s Domain held the settlement together. Somewhere beyond the eastern tunnels, past sealed paths and guarded cracks, past old scar passes and the Ivory Gates, something ancient was descending toward Rooknest.
A miracle, people said. A blessing. Aid at last.
I wanted to believe them so badly that it scared me.
Wanting made a person easy to fool.
And in Rooknest, even good news tasted strange.
Deep below the eastern stack, the Skitters stopped clicking all at once.
The silence woke everyone who had managed to sleep.