CHAPTER 31: THE NIGHT RUN

The first landing tasted like iron and chalk. The walls were clean stone scored with sigils faded by a thousand palms. The wardlight behind us slipped thin; the dark ahead took shape around ankle-height guide glyphs that woke as our boots passed.

"Anchor on my count," I said. "Four in, two hold, three out."

"Already there," Cael said.

A bell tone chimed soft in the stone—first rung. The timer woke.

At the second turn the stair widened into a short hall that ended in a split. Left: a corridor sloping down, faint hum underfoot, air warmer. Right: a narrow stair up with the crisp draft of a shaft. Painted arrows—old—pointed both ways and contradicted each other. Between them, a small wooden sign had been hung crooked: Clinic.

A mannequin lay crumpled under a fallen beam prop. Its chest box clicked an honest distress rhythm. Ward goo—fake blood—streaked one sleeve. Someone had placed a child-sized dummy near its knees, eyes painted wide and wet.

"What do you see?" Cael asked.

"Beacon hum down," I said. "Air up. Old arrows lie. ’Clinic’ sign might be rotated by the map. That beam isn’t actually pinned—fulcrum’s here." I slid my palm under and felt the play. "We can lever with rope and steps, move both in under ten."

"Do it," he said, already shouldering the weight at the right angle. Aura prickled, not loud, just enough to make mass honest instead of heroic.

"Marrow—heel. Set." The hound braced like furniture with a purpose. I ran rope through the beam’s notch, looped a stair post, pulsed Internal into fingers only, then aligned our lift with the beat. "Up—two, three."

The beam rocked. The mannequin slid free on the cloth we’d set. The child dummy went next. Hollow fluttered to the far corner and tapped twice—our code for "corner lies a little." A floor panel there shifted half a thumb under my weight and settled—a warning for later, not a trap now.

We propped the beam safe, taped the adult’s "arm," and cinched a sling the way Liora taught children and idiots: simple, secure, survivable. The chest box eased its click by a beat. Somewhere out of sight a bell in the wall stamped approval we didn’t need but would take.

"Left," Cael said. "Beacon first."

"Agree," I said. "Hollow—scout. Short range."

The bird rose a handspan and drifted ahead like punctuation. I kept him tight. The leash burned thin if I got greedy.

The corridor sloped down to a door hung with yellow hazard cloth. A faint blue pulse leaked underneath and made the floor buzz in a way you felt in your teeth. Beacon core. Unstable.

"Pattern?" Cael asked.

"Old model," I said. My brother had monologued about these in late-night calls over cold pizza: a cracked housing will bleed pressure into the chamber—hum high, heat low; bleed into the stones—hum through your feet. This was feet. "We vent first. Siphons on the wall. Hands only when the hum drops one note."

He didn’t ask how I knew. He took the left siphon; I took the right. We spun valves until stiff gave to steady, then listened with our boot soles. The hum eased a half tone—like pressure being persuaded to remember it’s a gas.

"Marrow—stay," I said. "Hollow—perch." The bird set on a pipe and went still as a good thought.

We cracked the door together. Heat sighed out, dry and clean. The core sat in the room’s center, a glass womb in a brass cage, light wounded to a soft throb. A hairline fracture webbed one quadrant. Old filters chattered in the vents—too slow, too proud.

"Timer?" Cael said.

"Every breath is points," I said. "But the essay is don’t die."

We set clamps—one, two, three—on the brass. I slipped a treated thong through the back lattice, looped it over the crack, and pulled tension—not with muscle, with timing, Internal pulsed only when the leather took shape. The line hummed as it bit. The throb steadied. The room’s heat stopped trying to decide to rise.

"Done," I said.

"Move," Cael said.

We backed out clean. The door sighed shut. The hum underfoot eased from angry to annoyed. Somewhere, a hidden bell decided we were still worth its time.

Two turns later the corridor threw a moral question at us. A fork. Left: the stamped arrow for "Refuge," faint voices in stone—recorded pleas looping. Right: a short iron stair down with the word "Watch" scratched by a nail in the grime. From below, a different sound: metal ringing on metal, steady, like a patient hammer. Unstable weapons rack? Or a timed release meant to flood the hall with loose steel and panic.

"Left is points. Right is hazard," Cael said.

"Right is the thing that turns left into a stampede if we ignore it," I said.

He nodded once. "Right."

We took the iron stairs—careful feet, breath on count. At the bottom, a gate leaned off its hinge into a rack of practice spears. A catch let go and the rack would dump the whole mess into the hall. The catch had a hairline of ward glue. It would break if you looked at it wrong.

"Hollow—tap." The bird pecked the hinge pin, testing play. "Marrow—brace." The hound planted where the gate wanted to fall. I slid my knife under the catch and took its weight on the flat, not the edge—anchor pulse only when steel touched steel. Cael set his shoulder to the rack’s opposite side, aura low and honest.

"On three," I said. "One—two—"

The corridor ahead breathed a sound I didn’t like. Not air. Not machine.

Something exhaled out there like winter finding a throat.

Cael’s head turned a degree. My back prickled. We froze in place with the gate half unpinned and a bad choice in front of us: drop the rack to free our hands and flood our own feet with spears, or hold and meet whatever the dark had decided to be with exactly what we were already holding.

"Hollow," I whispered. The bird clacked once in the direction of the breath and then went still.

The sound came again—soft, measured. Not a boy with a toy. Not a mannequin speaker. A step.

The dark ahead shifted a little, like someone thinking about standing up.

"Decision," Cael said, voice so low it was almost a thought.

"Hold the rack," I said. "If it dumps, Refuge turns into a thorn bush. We can fight with a gate in our hands if we have to. We can’t apologize to a stampede."

He smiled with the corner of his mouth like a man who’d found a real opponent at last.

"Then we hold," he said.

The breath in the corridor came again, closer, and the iron in my hand hummed under my palm like a string pulled tight.

And the dark began to move.