The rain returned, heavier than before, turning the alleys into rivers of filth.
Caelan moved through the slums as Brann had taught — quiet, quick — but today, something gnawed at him.
An itch between his shoulders he could not shake.
He had just turned down Ratcatcher's Alley, a narrow passage that stank of dead things and worse, when he stumbled.
His foot caught on something soft.
Caelan staggered back, heart hammering.
It was a man.
Or had been.
The body lay half-submerged in a puddle, rich velvet sleeves sodden with mud, a gold chain tangled around a pale throat. His face was twisted in a rictus of fear.
Even Caelan, memoryless as he was, recognized the cut of those clothes: a nobleman.
Before he could move — before he could even think — a shout rang out.
"You there! Hands where I can see 'em!"
Steel flashed in the gloom.
Two city guards rounded the corner, boots splashing through the muck. Their tabards bore the crimson stag of House Valmere, the ruling family of this miserable kingdom.
Caelan froze, hands splayed, panic rising like bile.
"It's not what it looks like," he croaked — but the guards were already upon him, rough hands twisting his arms behind his back.
They didn't listen.
They never listened.
The castle prison stank of mildew, blood, and old, festering sorrow.
Caelan was shoved into a cell without ceremony, the iron door slamming shut with a finality that made his knees buckle.
He wasn't alone.
In the corner of the small, damp space sat a man — or something like one — cross-legged, humming a broken tune under his breath.
He looked up as Caelan stumbled in.
Wild hair hung around a gaunt, grinning face. His clothes were a patchwork of rags stitched together with pieces of twine and bone. One eye was missing; the other gleamed sharp and blue as winter ice.
"New fish," the man cackled, clapping his hands. "New fish in the bucket!"
Caelan backed against the far wall, heart pounding.
The man stood — too quickly, like a puppet with half its strings cut — and bowed with an exaggerated flourish.
"Name's Tammer Vex," he said, his voice sing-song. "Breaker of promises, picker of locks, teller of truths no one wants to hear."
He straightened, cocking his head.
"And who, pray, are you, little gutter-snipe?"
Caelan opened his mouth — then shut it. He wasn't sure what to say. Even his name still felt strange in his mouth.
Tammer didn't seem to mind. He plopped back onto the filthy straw, resuming his tuneless humming.
Time crawled.
Rats skittered in the dark. Water dripped from the ceiling in a maddening rhythm.
Caelan sat, arms around his knees, staring at the stone floor, fear coiling tighter inside him.
Hours passed — or maybe days.
Hard to tell in the dark.
Then — footsteps.
A key turning in the lock.
The door creaked open just enough for a familiar, battered face to peer inside.
Brann.
He looked tired. Angry.
But there was something else in his eyes, too — something like grim determination.
"You're a damned fool," Brann said lowly, glancing behind him before slipping inside. "A dead noble in the gutters? You couldn't've tripped over a drunk baker, could you?"
Caelan stood quickly, shame burning his face.
"I didn't—"
"I know," Brann cut him off, voice hard. "Doesn't matter. They got you with blood on your boots and no witnesses."
He jerked his thumb toward the door.
"They're already spinning tales outside. Political ones. Lordlings sniffing for a scapegoat to toss to the crowd."
Caelan's stomach twisted.
"What... what happens now?"
Brann stepped closer, lowered his voice.
"I'll find a way. Might not be pretty, might not be fair. But I'll get you out."
He glanced at Tammer, who waved cheerfully at him from the straw.
"You just stay alive in here. Keep your wits. Trust no one but me."
Brann's gaze was fierce, heavy.
"You understand?"
Caelan nodded, fists clenching.
"Good."
Brann pulled the hood of his cloak lower and slipped back into the shadows, leaving only a whisper behind him.
"Hold fast, boy. The worst storms always break."
The door clanged shut.
The lock clicked.
And Caelan was alone again, save for Tammer Vex, who was now balancing a rat skull on his nose and giggling softly.
The darkness in the cell thickened.
Time became something slippery, something untrustworthy.
Tammer Vex passed the hours — or days — in endless motion, muttering to himself, crafting strange little figurines out of rat bones and straw, balancing them atop each other until they toppled with a dry clatter.
Caelan sat against the wall, arms around his knees, staring at nothing.
Sleep came in fits.
When it came at all, it brought no peace.
That night, something cracked open inside him.
It started as a noise — the clash of steel, the roar of men.
The world around him shifted, blurred.
The stone of the cell became wet grass beneath his fingers.
The stench of the slums became the coppery tang of blood and smoke.
He was back there.
Back on the battlefield.
Steel flashed in the half-light — a chaos of banners, broken spears, and dying screams.
He staggered, clutching his side where something hot and wet poured through his armor.
A knight loomed over him — faceless in a helm painted deep green.
Not an enemy.
One of his own.
The knight hesitated — just a moment — then reached down with gauntleted hands.
Relief flickered through Caelan.
But instead of lifting him to safety, the knight dragged him roughly across the trampled field — to a pit.
A yawning black wound in the earth, where corpses were heaped like refuse.
"You should have never come," the knight said, voice muffled behind the visor.
Then he dropped Caelan into the pit like so much trash.
The sky spun.
The stink of death closed over him.
Darkness swallowed everything.
A sudden shock of cold water slammed Caelan back into the present.
He gasped, blinking wildly, as the bucket clattered to the floor.
Two guards stood over him, both wearing the grim expressions of men who enjoyed their work too much.
"On your feet," one barked.
Before he could fully rise, rough hands yanked him upright, half-dragging him from the cell.
Tammer Vex cackled behind him, waving a bone effigy.
"Don't lose your toes!" Tammer sang out. "They always start with the toes!"
The guards led Caelan down twisting stone corridors lit by guttering torches. The walls were slick with damp. Somewhere far below, water dripped and chains rattled.
They shoved him through a heavy oak door into a small, low-ceilinged room.
The torture room.
It wasn't as monstrous as the stories.
No iron maidens, no great spiked wheels.
Just a wooden table, chains, and a collection of small, cruel tools laid out like a butcher's knives.
An officer in a crimson sash stood waiting — a man with a thin, meticulous face and gloves that gleamed black with oil.
He gestured to the table.
"Sit."
Caelan obeyed, trembling despite himself.
The officer picked up a thin iron rod from the rack, testing its weight.
"You know," he said conversationally, "a man's guilt isn't always written on his face. Sometimes, it has to be... coaxed out."
He set the rod down gently.
"We'll start simple."
The questioning was brutal in its simplicity.
Where had he found the noble?
Who had paid him?
What house did he serve?
Each time Caelan answered — truthfully, desperately — they listened with cool detachment.
Each time his answers displeased, they applied a little more pressure.
A shallow cut across the palm.
A knuckle bent a little too far.
A blow to the ribs.
It was not the worst pain Caelan had ever known —
—but it was steady. Grinding.
Designed not to kill, but to wear him down.
Through it all, Caelan clung to the one thing Brann had given him: Hold fast.
So he did.
He bit down his cries.
He kept his story straight.
He endured.
When they finally threw him back into his cell, bruised and bleeding, Tammer greeted him with a delighted clap.
"Still got all your toes!" he chirped.
Caelan collapsed against the wall, every breath a raw ache.
Tammer slid closer, blue eye glinting.
"They think you're a little fish," Tammer whispered, conspiratorial. "But maybe... maybe you're a shark, hmm?"
He tapped the side of his nose with a rat bone.
"Big secrets swim in little puddles, boy."
Caelan closed his eyes, the words slipping past him like smoke.
All he knew was that something inside him — something old, something angry — had started to wake.
And it would not sleep again.
The pain made the world small.
A narrow tunnel of thudding heartbeats and burning flesh.
Caelan drifted at the edge of consciousness, half-curled in the corner of the cell.
The air was thick, heavy with mildew and despair.
Tammer Vex crouched nearby, humming softly — a tune without rhythm, broken like everything else down here.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes.
Time had no shape anymore.
Then — Tammer shifted.
The madman leaned closer, his grin widening.
"You look awful," Tammer whispered, as if sharing a grand secret. "Just like they want you to."
Caelan forced his swollen eyes open, fixing him with a glare.
"What... do you want?" he croaked, voice a ragged ruin.
Tammer's hands danced through the air, as if weaving invisible threads.
"Maybe it ain't what I want, gutter-rat," he said, voice sing-song. "Maybe it's what you want. Hm?"
He leaned in until Caelan could smell his breath — sour and strange, like rotten apples.
"Way out," Tammer whispered. "There's always a way out. If you're willing to squirm through the muck far enough."
Caelan coughed, spitting blood onto the stone.
"What... way?"
Tammer tapped the side of his head with one filthy finger.
"Old places under this castle," he said. "Older than stones. Older than kings."
He leaned back, voice dropping into a half-mad reverence.
"Burrows. Holes. Forgotten tunnels. Places the rats and the broken ones still remember."
He cackled, arms wide.
"Places I remember."
Caelan stared at him, the words slow to settle.
"Escape?" he rasped.
Tammer giggled, covering his mouth with a skeletal hand.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Depends how much meat you're willing to leave behind."
He stood in a sudden flurry of motion, striding to the far corner of the cell.
There, hidden behind a loose stone, he retrieved something — a bent piece of iron, sharpened into a crude blade.
He tossed it onto the floor between them.
"First rule of freedom," Tammer said, eyes glittering. "Tools before hope."
Caelan didn't move. His ribs screamed. His wrists burned.
Tammer crouched again, voice dropping low, almost tender.
"They'll come for you again, boy. Ask more questions. Hurt you worse. And worse after that."
He tapped the floor with one bony finger, rhythmic.
"They won't stop until you sing the song they want to hear."
A long pause.
"Or until you break."
Silence stretched between them.
The crude blade gleamed dully in the guttering torchlight.
Caelan reached out — slowly, painfully — and wrapped his fingers around it.
It felt heavier than it should.
Tammer's grin widened.
"Good," he whispered. "Good, little fish."
He stood, spinning in a slow, mad circle.
"Tonight," Tammer sang softly. "Tonight the rats dance. Tonight the locks forget."
He fell back into the straw, humming again, as if nothing had happened.
Caelan lay there, staring at the blade in his hand, the cell walls pressing closer.
He had no plan.
No allies, save a madman.
But he had a choice now.
Stay. Break.
Or run.
Bleeding, hunted, and hated.
A bitter smile touched his lips.
There really was no choice at all.
Brann paced outside the castle gates, his boots sinking into the filth-churned mud.
The rain had eased to a mist, but the stench of the slums clung heavier than ever — rot, smoke, and the sour breath of too many bodies crammed too close together.
He adjusted his threadbare cloak, hood pulled low, eyes sharp beneath the shadow.
The castle loomed above him, its grey stones jutting from the earth like a rotten tooth.
No banners flew tonight.
The only colors were blood and fog.
Brann spat into the mud.
This was bad.
Worse than he'd feared.
Caelan wasn't just another unlucky fool in the wrong place —
He'd tripped into the middle of something bigger.
Word was already whispering down the alleys:
A noble dead in the gutters, secrets slipping through bloodied fingers, and too many lords looking for someone to blame before the vultures circled.
Someone low.
Someone disposable.
Someone like Caelan.
Brann had tried.
Gods knew he'd tried.
Pulled every favor.
Threatened every rat-faced clerk and drunken watch-sergeant he could find.
But gold only stretched so far.
Fear — real fear — went deeper.
Tonight, even the usual backdoor deals felt colder, harder.
No one wanted to touch Caelan's case.
Too many lords were sniffing around.
Too many knives hidden in too many sleeves.
Brann leaned against a broken stone wall, watching the castle gates through slitted eyes.
Inside those walls, Caelan rotted.
He ground his teeth.
The boy was tough, but not unbreakable.
No one was.
Brann knew what happened in those dungeons.
He still bore the scars of it himself, from long ago when he'd been young and stupid enough to think justice was something real.
If Caelan cracked — if he gave them anything, even lies — it wouldn't just be his neck on the block.
The slums of Gallows Hill would suffer too.
The nobles would use any excuse to send soldiers into the gutters, to cleanse the "vermin" with sword and fire.
And Brann couldn't let that happen.
Not again.
A shape detached itself from the mist — a young girl, no older than ten, wrapped in rags too thin for the cold.
Brann recognized her.
Midge, one of the streetrunners. Sharp as broken glass.
She slipped up beside him, breathing hard.
"You were right," she said in a whisper. "Lord Darrick's men came sniffin'. Fancy coats. Real quiet."
Brann stiffened.
Darrick.
That scheming vulture had fingers in every dirty pot.
If his men were here, it meant they wanted Caelan for something. Maybe to pin a murder on. Maybe to bury a secret.
Maybe worse.
"Good work," Brann muttered, tossing her a silver penny.
Midge caught it, flashed a gap-toothed grin, and melted back into the mist.
Brann turned back to the castle, heart hammering.
Time was running out.
Fast.
He had to move — had to find a crack, a way in, a way out — before Caelan was lost for good.
Or before someone made sure he never left that dungeon breathing.
Brann's hand drifted to the knife hidden under his cloak.
Sometimes, survival meant getting your hands filthy.
And Brann was no stranger to dirt.