CHAPTER 32: THE GATE BREATHES

The breath came again—soft, measured—from the dark ahead.

Cael’s shoulder stayed wedged against the rack. My knife held the bad catch on the flat. Marrow braced the leaning gate like carved furniture. Hollow perched on the pipe, head tilted toward the sound.

"Decision," Cael said, voice low.

"Hold the rack," I answered. "If it dumps, Refuge turns into thorns."

He nodded once. We didn’t have a hand to spare for heroics. Good. I prefer work.

The thing in the hall took one step. A flat scrape, not claws. Another step. The dark peeled back and made a shape: long, low, plated—like the boar-thing from the training yard, only this one had iron bands pinned into its hide and a black glass bulb where an eye should be. A brass tag rattled at its throat. A test animal you don’t want running free.

"Ballast warden," I said. "Designed to push. If it hits the gate, the catch goes."

"Can you talk it down?" Cael asked.

"No," I said. "But I can make it choose a different line."

It lowered its head. The glass bulb pulsed once. It charged, shallow angle, the kind of shove that turns a wedge into a spear pile.

"Now," I said.

Cael shifted his weight one finger’s width so the rack stopped being a wall and became something that could be guided. I pulled the catch just enough to keep it in place without letting it spring. "Marrow—left," I said. The hound slid three paces and set, a white barricade at the warden’s knee height.

Anchor Step pulsed through my heel only when the knife kissed metal. "Hollow—tap," I added.

The bird dropped like punctuation and pecked the warden’s glass eye. It flinched—not pain, just re-aim—by exactly the degree I needed. The shoulder hit Marrow instead of the gate. Bone squealed, held. The impact bled into the floor. I let the catch take the extra and then sat it back, slow, careful, like lowering a sleeping child.

"Again," Cael said, calm.

The warden reversed with a mechanical stutter and came on the other side. I pivoted my knife hand so the catch stayed honest. "Marrow—right." The hound slid, set. "Hollow—edge." The bird tapped the far ear-plate this time. The warden committed to the wrong angle again and thumped into bone instead of hinge. It shook its head like a bad thought and stepped back.

"Pressure vent," I said. "There."

Cael read my eyes, dropped his aura just enough to make friction hurt the warden more than us, and gave it a half step of room. It chose less pain. It backed into the narrow side corridor we’d ignored, turned, and trundled away with the unhappy dignity of a scolded ox.

I counted to three for traps that love people who unclench too soon. Nothing else moved.

"Ease," I said. We re-seated the hinge pin, slid a leather strip under the catch, and tied it with a treated thong.

"Safe," Cael confirmed.

We breathed—four in, two hold, three out—and moved.

The iron stairs took us back to the fork. Left carried the recorded pleas to "Refuge." Right would have been a mistake now that the warden had wandered there. I marked the wall with two sharp lines and a dot—field code for hazard moved—and pointed left.

We hit rung two with a soft tone in the stone. The path opened into a wider room with a broken ceiling grate. Water dripped steady. A paper placard, old and curling, hung from a wire: CLINIC ARROW—someone had flipped it. The arrow pointed toward a waist-high door with a smear of fake blood. The real clinic scent—medicinal pine—came from the opposite hall.

’Lie with confidence and most people believe you,’ I thought. ’Old Armand would have believed it, too.’ I took the opposite hall.

At the first bend, a stretcher lay tipped against the wall, straps tangled. A mannequin "mother" clutched a "child." The chest box clicked too slow. I crouched, leveled the frame, and retied the straps with Liora’s simple knot. Cael didn’t hover. He held the corner where corners learn new tricks.

"You always know the right hinge," he said.

"I’ve had years of wrong ones," I answered.

We pushed the stretcher to a painted cross on the floor. A hidden bell stamped acceptance we didn’t need but would take. The timer in my head stopped shouting and went back to counting.

We ran.

The corridor descended, curved, then opened on a chamber where three doors argued about where to be. Under one, blue pulsed: the second beacon core. To the right, a barred window showed a room of toppled shelves and a "watchman" dummy pinned by a bookcase. Through the left-most door, I heard the dry hiss of sand—bad. Sand in a dungeon means time measured mean.

"Beacon first," Cael said.

"Agree," I said. "Fast."

Inside, the second core hummed through the soles. Two hairline cracks this time, at angles that would make a novice think to pull in opposite directions and snap them both. I split a thong into two short ties, looped one at a time, and pulsed Internal only when the leather took shape. Cael held the cage steady, aura low and honest. The hum slid down a note. The heat steadied.

"Done," I said.

The sand hissed louder in the hall. I looked left. The door’s bottom gap showed grain pouring under it in a sugar-bright stream.

"Flood hall," I said. "If it fills the spine, Refuge jams."

"Right," Cael said.

We set a wedge in the door seam with two short ribs—bone, not construct—and jammed a plank across the jambs. The flow narrowed. Not enough.

"Pressure slot," I said, scanning. The walls wore old repair plates where cracks like to start. "There." A hairline sparkle near the floor.

Cael knelt and set his hand to it; aura pressed, gentle, like a thumb on a pulse. "Hold."

I cut a strip from a treated pad and slapped it over the seam. Internal pulsed only when cloth touched stone. The hiss softened, then dropped to a whisper. A hidden bell decided we were not idiots.

We took three breaths. They tasted like dust and old choices.

"Rung three," Cael said. "Then stairs."

We ran again. My legs knew the rhythm now. Hands only when they earn it. Internal only on contact. Aura only to make mass honest, not heroic.

We hit rung three. The tone chimed cleaner. The hall bent right, then left. My foot came down on a tile that moved a thumb and stopped. Hollow clacked twice—corner lies—and I turned my ankle the way the mat taught me years ago. The tile clicked without eating me.

At the next turn, a lantern guttered over a painted arrow. Someone had scratched a new line through it pointing the other way. A practical joke that would cost lives in a real fall. I put my blade tip through the paint so the arrow bled into ugly honesty. Petty, but the kind of petty that saves people.

We climbed.

At the top of the stair, a grate shuddered. A chain sang somewhere above us. Air moved like a door waking up.

"Pressure event," I said.

"Ready," Cael said.

I rolled my shoulders once and let the weight settle. I heard my old team in my breath—Kade laughing about noodles, seven idiots over cards—and made my heart be quiet.

We stepped into the next hall together.