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wandering through the palace now, but at least they didn’t seem very intelligent.

“Where to now?” Halek wondered once we had confirmed that the room and surrounding hallways were empty.

I consulted my trusty map. Briefly, I wondered how the Circle knew so much about a city that had been lost for thousands of

years, but the instructions on the back were crystal clear . Find the vault , the spidery handwriting said, in the crypts below the palace .

“Crypts,” I muttered, rolling up the map up again. “Fantastic. Nothing terrifying in the crypts, I’m sure.”

Halek chuckled, appreciating the sarcasm. “If we survive this, remind me to tell you about my venture into the burial mounds

of the siha.”

The palace went on, an unending labyrinth of hallways, rooms, corridors, and vast chambers.

Time, it seemed, had either been frozen or didn’t flow normally here.

Carpets still stretched down corridors, intact except where the floors had cracked beneath them or the walls had fallen on them.

Colorful tapestries lined the walls, depicting scenes of flowers, animals, and people, with a towering figure in white and gold looming over everything.

Books were unchewed by rodents or insects, paintings unfaded.

A bathing chamber still held crystal clear water that was icy cold to the touch, though the tiled floor around the pool was shattered.

The air remained deathly still, as if the very walls and floors were holding their breath.

But now we weren’t alone. Shambling skeletons wandered the halls, and a few times Halek and I had to duck into a room or find cover and wait until an undead monstrosity had hobbled past. They never stopped or paused to look around, patrolling the halls with mindless fortitude.

Probably cursed to march a set route forever.

I hoped nothing more intelligent waited for us in the shadowy halls of the crypts.

Following the main hall, we slipped farther into the palace, making our way past more wandering undead, collapsed hallways,

and empty rooms until we abruptly came to a place where we could go no farther. An entire section of floor had fallen, leaving

behind a huge, gaping hole, at least thirty feet wide and maybe fifty feet across, completely blocking our path forward.

I walked to the edge and peered down. The darkness made it impossible to see the bottom, but it wasn’t a sheer drop into the

void. The sides were slanted enough that we would be able to make our way down, carefully. If we slipped, we would probably

break our necks at the bottom, but the walls were scalable.

I looked at Halek. “The map says the vault is below the palace,” I said. “This is probably the quickest way down, but it won’t

bet the easiest.”

He shrugged. “Not the first giant hole I’ve flung myself into.”

A rattle at the end of the hall made us glance up just as a skeleton creature shambled into the corridor. Without thinking, I stepped off the edge and dropped several feet into the gaping hole.

Halek followed, the light of his glowstone pulsing weakly in the gloom. The hole grew narrower the farther down we went, the

air turning colder.

I dropped onto a ledge and came face-to-face with a skull, grinning at me from the wall. With a shudder, I continued picking

my way down, the faint light from above dying around me, until my boots finally hit what felt like solid stone. Gazing around,

I found myself in a partially collapsed stone tunnel with long, narrow shelves carved into the walls. A bony foot poked out

of one, and a shattered piece of a spine lay on the floor beneath it.

Halek dropped beside me and took in our surroundings with a glance. He wrinkled his nose. “Well, we are definitely in the

crypts,” he whispered. “Amazing that even this much survived when the city fell.” His gaze went to the skeletal hand poking

out of the stone shelf. “We should be careful. This is most definitely a place that could be cursed. And there are a lot of skeletons down here. If they start crawling out of the walls, it’s going to be interesting.”

With that lovely image in mind, we started into the crypts.

Thankfully, despite Halek’s ominous observation, none of the skeletons crawled out of their alcoves to attack us.

Perhaps it was only the guards who were cursed to protect the palace, even in death.

It was still eerie making our way through narrow, claustrophobic tunnels, the bones of the dead on either side.

“I know you can’t tell me,” Halek whispered as we ducked into yet another low-roofed tunnel. “But if what you’re looking for

is down here, it might be difficult to find in this mess. I hope what you’re searching for isn’t small.”

I swallowed. “It’s the size of a finger,” I whispered back, and he winced.

“We could be here awhile, then.”

“There’s supposed to be a vault.” I gazed down the tunnel at the seemingly endless shelves of bones. Hopefully, the vault

would still be intact, not broken open, as Halek was right: We would never find the memory stone if it had been lost in the

crypts.

“A vault,” Halek repeated. “Well, that’s something. If there’s a vault, I guess we’ll know it when we...”

He trailed off, stopping at a crumbled section of wall half blocked by a pillar. I paused, too, edging forward to peer through

the gap, and my stomach curled. Beside me, Halek released an awed breath.

“Maederyss’s mercy. I think we found it.”

My heart beat faster. A breeze whistled through the gap and into a massive chamber, soaring up into the darkness. Similar

to another cavern I had recently been in, this one was circular, ringed with stone columns that vanished up into the void.

In the center, an enormous platform rose out of a pit that seemed to drop straight into the center of the earth, vanishing

into blackness. A narrow stone bridge led to the edge of the platform, and at its very center stood a pedestal.

Something glimmered on the pedestal, something small yet clearly powerful, pulsing with a glow that seemed to suck in the light instead of reflecting it. A chill slid up my back, and I suddenly knew—this was what I had come for.

Ducking under the pillar, I stepped into the room.

I tensed, gazing around the cavern, waiting for a rush of choking air to sweep through the chamber or a voice to hiss that

I was doomed. But nothing happened. No wind, no voices, no sudden arrival of skeleton guards, clawing themselves upright to

destroy me. The chamber remained silent, my pulse and the faint drip of water somewhere in the void the only sounds I could

hear.

This doesn’t feel right. I was a thief, and in my world, no one left a vault unguarded.

Halek eased his way through the hole and looked around, blue eyes wary as he scanned the cavern. He, too, was tense, not trusting

the apparent stillness. “Well,” he ventured, “I don’t like that nothing has jumped out at us, but I guess we should take advantage

of it while we can.”

Carefully, we walked to the bridge. It arced slightly away from us before coming down at the edge of the platform. I peered

into the pit and saw what I’d suspected—a straight plunge into absolute darkness. If I let my imagination run wild, I could

imagine thousands of eyes peering up at me and Halek from that abyss. With a shudder, I wrenched my gaze away and studied

the pedestal in the center of the platform.

“Be careful, Sparrow.” Halek’s voice was uncharacteristically somber.

His warm hand came to rest on my arm, making me start.

“I don’t know what that is,” the Fatechaser went on, “but I’ve been in a few cursed places in my time, and this place.

..” He shook his head with a shiver. “Just... be careful,” he finished, dropping his hand.

“I’ll stay here, in case you step onto the platform, get hit with a nasty curse, and need someone to pull you back. ”

My stomach churned. And suddenly, I didn’t want to do this. I was the best thief in Kovass, was chosen for this job by the

Circle because I was literally the only one who could do it, and... I did not want to grab that stone.

“Or you could let me do it,” Halek offered. I glanced at him in surprise, and he gave a wry grin. “I’ve dodged a couple curses

in my time,” he said. “If it’s not my fate to die here, not even the curse of a Deathless King can kill me. If it is, well,

there’s nothing I can do to prevent that.” He gave a casual shrug, as if the thought of his own death was truly of no concern to him. “So if

you want me to march up there and grab that stone, I will. Just say the word.”

“No.” I shook my head. I trusted that Halek was probably not someone who would snatch the treasure and run with it, but still, this was my mission. If anyone was going to pick up

the memory stone and whatever curse came with it, it had to be me. “I’ve got it, Halek.”

He nodded. “All right. I’ll stay here, then. If you feel yourself turning into dust or a centipede, just yell.”

“Yeah. Thanks for putting that thought in my head,” I muttered, and started across the bridge.

The feeling of eyes on me grew stronger as I crossed the narrow arching pathway, and I couldn’t shake the sensation that we weren’t alone. As if hundreds of things were clinging to the underside of the bridge, mere inches from the bottom of my boots. I kept walking, putting one foot in

front of the other, refusing to look down, until I stepped off the bridge onto the platform.

Still nothing. A breath of wind circled the chamber, stirring up dust eddies and smelling of death, but nothing happened on

the flat surface of the platform. I set my jaw, locked eyes on my target, and started toward it.

A foot from the pedestal, I paused, staring at what I’d been sent to retrieve. The tiny black stone hovered over the stand,

the ominous dark glow surrounding it sucking in the light. It seemed to pulse like a heartbeat, and with every beat, tiny

crimson runes appeared on the jet-black surface, making my eyes burn when I looked at them.

This was what the Circle wanted. This was what I had to retrieve, though every instinct I had was telling me not to touch

it. Normally, I listened to my instincts; they had kept me alive when otherwise I would’ve been captured or killed. A suspicious

deserted alleyway that held thugs waiting to ambush me. A normal-looking empty window that actually held a guard with a crossbow,

ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Sometimes I got lucky—luckier than most—but sometimes, I kept myself out of

trouble by listening to my gut. And my gut was telling me everything about this was wrong.

But this was my mission. I couldn’t return to the surface empty-handed. I knew how the guild worked well enough to know the Circle would kill me, and Vahn, if I failed. I was a thief. This was my place in the story.

Taking a deep breath, I stretched out my hand toward the glowing rock.

“Stop!”