Page 79

Grizzlethorn came through, whoever that was. Some shadowy cartographer with a treasure trove of rare maps, apparently.

Discovered in the Underground libraries—a place Kato had always dismissed as nothing more than an urban legend—Skye explained how it was smuggled out of Infinity’s Edge before the Sanctorum burned everything inside it.

The edges were frayed and yellowed with age. The paper crackled softly, threatening to tear with even the gentlest handling. It revealed a curious and intricate depiction of the island covered almost entirely in a sprawling cityscape, a labyrinth of streets and structures.

Some of the landmarks Kato recognized: the river, the spires of the palace, the general locations of the major villages (which used to be their own city-districts consuming much larger areas).

But by far, the most interesting part about it was the smattering of symbols scattered about.

A dragon coiled around a tower in the northeast corner, the branching limbs of a tree to the south, and dozens more—there was even the ouroboros, both the one where they’d fallen through and the other where they’d come out.

And just north of Ryme was an eye—lidless and creepy. On paper, it hovered over the city like a bad omen.

That’s what the Marquess wanted them to investigate. If each symbol corresponded to a riftway—their current theory—that one could mean trouble.

Kato stepped over a fallen branch, grimacing as he adjusted his pack. The weight of it pressed uncomfortably against his shoulders, and the whiskey from earlier wasn’t doing him any favors.

“Whoever said alcohol and hard labor go hand in hand was a liar,” he muttered.

Skye didn’t glance back. “Nobody says that.”

“You obviously haven’t spent enough time with Grandpa.” Kato tripped over a root for a third time. “For the record, if I’d known this was going to involve hauling ass outside the walls, I would’ve told you to go pound sand.”

The remnants of the old city peeked out from beneath the encroaching underbrush—stone foundations and broken archways swallowed by time and moss.

Vines twisted like veins along fractured walls, their flowers glowing faintly in flickering pulses, as though the ruins themselves were trying to breathe again.

Or maybe that was just the mirthroot. Unlike the whiskey, it was doing amazing things.

Towering bloodpines pressed in on all sides, their crimson needles swaying, catching glimmers of shifting green and blue. Kato tipped his head back. Above, ribbons of light wove through the sky like a silent, slow-moving river.

He squinted. No, not just light.

Kato jabbed a finger upward. “You see that too, right?”

Skye glanced up, barely pausing in his stride. “What, the auroras? They’re always brighter during Solnar.”

“No, not the auroras.” Kato gestured more emphatically, nearly stumbling over another root as he kept his gaze fixed skyward. “ That. ” He pointed again. “There. The... swimming things.”

“Oh, you mean the luminara.” Skye stepped over a tile half-buried in red needles. The faint scent of sap mixed with the cold air. “They migrate during Solnar. You can’t see them inside the city because of the lights.”

He said it like it was nothing, as if one of the universe’s greatest wonders wasn’t unfolding right above them.

Kato’s gaze followed a glowing shape looping lazily through the auroras, its long body flickering like a lantern caught in a breeze.

The gaps in the blood pines framed the scene perfectly, a shifting canvas of light and motion, alien and mesmerizing.

For a moment, it was all he could see—no forest, no cold air, no gnawing shame at how predictably he fucked up. Just the strange beauty of the luminara gliding through the heavens.

Kato smacked into the wall of his brother’s back. “What the—” He glared at the kid. “You could at least warn a guy before stopping like that.”

“We’re here,” Skye said without looking back.

Just ahead, the forest fell away to reveal a graveyard of giants.

What remained of the buildings jutted upward, skeletal and immense, their sheer scale still enough to dwarf the trees that now fought for space among the ruins.

Massive slabs of stone lay scattered, some buried so deep in the earth that only their edges showed, while others tilted like forgotten gravestones marking the city’s slow decay.

The map made it look straightforward—just a marker. But the city wasn’t that simple. It had been built in layers, with buildings rising high into the sky and digging deep into the earth.

“Where do we go from here?” Kato asked, eyeing the tilted skeleton of a skyscraper swaying faintly in the wind. The riftway could be anywhere, up or down, in any of these old buildings.

“We need to go down,” Skye said, kicking at the dirt, looking for something. “Taly scried for the location. She said she saw the riftway in a room with windows looking out onto a cavern with a stone ceiling.”

“That’s useful. Must be nice just being able to peek at the solution.”

“If by ‘peek’ you mean lose sleep, swear at it, throw something, hit something else, and then swear some more until she finally pieced together that little bit, then… sure.”

Skye produced a second map, this one pulled from the Ryme city archives.

It showed the old airtram tunnel network—now the only way to access the underground city.

While his brother busied himself with shoving aside bits of rubble and muttering about a “hatch here somewhere…”, Kato made himself useful by supervising from a distance.

There were no shades on the north side. They always attacked from the south.

Still, being outside the walls set Kato’s teeth on edge.

The ruins stretched around them like the skeleton of a beast too massive to understand, broken and scattered but still somehow oppressive.

Then again, that was Tempris in a nutshell—strange, broken, and full of secrets waiting to pounce.

“Hey, can you hurry up?”

“You could help,” Skye muttered, kneeling and skimming his hands across the ground.

“Leadership is all about delegation,” Kato said, leaning against a chunk of rubble.

“Delegation,” Skye repeated flatly from where he crouched. His fingers scraped through the dirt like they were along the edge of something. “There. I think I found it.”

Roots and clumps of dirt gave way, snapping and crumbling as he pried the hatch open with a grunt.

Kato peered down into the dark. “That doesn’t look safe.”

Skye didn’t say a word, just raised a brow in silent challenge before stepping into the pitch-black opening.

“Damn it,” Kato muttered.

He did not sign up for this shit today. But orders were orders, and right now his were to follow that little punk…

Joining the Gate Watchers was officially the worst decision of his life.

It wasn’t as far down as he’d been expecting. His boots hit solid ground.

The smell hit like a sledgehammer—damp rot, sour and clinging, the kind of stink that seeped into your clothes. Kato gagged. “ What died down here? ” He waved a hand in front of his face, but the air barely moved.

Skye didn’t respond, his focus on the narrow path ahead. The light from his lantern flickered against the walls, casting jagged shadows over the cracked stone and the tangle of roots that had worked their way through over time.

They moved cautiously, their footsteps echoing in the confined space. The floor was a treacherous mix of uneven stone and slick patches of dampness. Long, rusted rails vanished into the gloom. Here and there, a shattered tile bore a flash of color—part of a larger mural eroded by time.

Kato slowed, his gaze darting to a patch of the wall where a faint streak of greenish slime caught the light. He made a face, pulling his coat tighter around himself. “What are we looking for exactly?”

“A service entrance,” Skye said, shining his light into the tunnel ahead. “With a little luck, there should be an airlift shaft that will take us down. At least, according to the map.”

The deeper they went, the more pungent the smell of earth became, heavy and damp, mingling with the acrid scent of something that might have once been oil. Water dripped somewhere in the distance.

Skye paused, angling his light against the crumbling wall. There was a faint outline—a seam in the stone that didn’t match the rest. “There. That’s the entrance .”

“You’re sure?” Kato asked, arching a brow.

“Not really,” Skye admitted. “But Taly said to follow the sound of water dripping, and…” He cocked his head as if to say, listen .

Kato held his breath, tuning out the sound of his heartbeat, of Skye’s… There—the sound came faintly through the wall. The distant, hollow drip of water.

The door was reinforced steel and rusted into place. It groaned like a dying beast when they tried to move it, their combined weight and strength jolting the ancient thing until it screeched open.

A narrow hallway stretched away from them. At the end of it, an airlift shaft loomed, its dark opening like the throat of some great beast. Its edges were jagged where the frame had buckled under years of neglect. The platform had long since crashed to the bottom.

But the ladder remained.

Its rungs were coated in grime, pocked with rust, and creaked ominously under their weight as they began their descent.

“Be careful,” Skye said, his voice echoing softly in the enclosed space. “Structurally speaking, this place is solid. Mostly. There weren’t any Gates that exploded in the area. But the infrastructure’s been neglected for two and half centuries.”

“Great,” Kato muttered, glancing at a chunk of stone missing from the wall as he slipped past.

The air grew colder, the sound of water dripping somewhere below growing louder with each rung.

The climb felt endless. Kato wasn’t sure how far down they’d gone—100 feet? 200? The steady echo of dripping water grew ever louder, but it did nothing to mark progress.

“Are we close?”

“Keep going,” Skye said from above.