Chapter 45. When the City Went Deaf

It wasn’t full darkness.

Just the after-image of light gone out, like the ghost of a sun burned into the inside of my eyelids.

The lantern burst, and the noise of the world was eaten whole. Pain didn’t roar—it sliced, thin and deliberate, as if the body had been replaced with glass and the hurt was just the act of scoring it. The brand under my collarbone froze solid; the binding at my wrists pulsed once, a warning without the dignity of being heard.

Then the water took my ankles.

Not a grab, but a pull—steady as a chain with a mind of its own.

I didn’t reach for Kael. I reached for the shard hidden inside my wrist, the one that had cut more bargains than blades. My fingers moved in their small, unheroic way. Blood. Press. Circle.

The mirror flared—a hand’s breadth of truth, raw and narrow. Not enough to save anyone; enough to make the needles hesitate when they met it.

Above, mouths opened on screams that never climbed high enough to reach