The first breath inside tasted like old pennies.

  Cold, too, but not the clean kind. This was air that had been sitting in stone for a long time and only got stirred when someone opened the doors and dragged trouble through.

  The pressure changed the second his boots cleared the threshold. It felt like stepping from a roof in a stiff wind into an attic where all the heat had gone somewhere else. The sound of the outside—the not-wind over the trees, the low groan of the gates—cut off behind them like a door closing on a jobsite radio.

  Matas did not like being on the wrong side of that door.

  Tharel walked ahead with the same measured stride he’d had on the terrace, as if he’d done this a thousand times and none of those times had ended with the ceiling dropping on his head. Merrik and Serh flanked Matas, one at each elbow, like they didn’t trust him not to try sprinting back out through the dangerous arch and into the wolves’ territory. Which, to be fair, they shouldn’t.

  The entry space was smaller than he’d expected after all that exterior theater. High ceiling, sure, rafters shadowed, but the footprint was just a long, narrow hall cut straight into the mountain. Stone floor. Stone walls. Iron fittings where sconces, hooks, and something like weapon racks had once lived. Most of them were empty now, outlines on the walls and lighter patches where dust had refused to settle.

  A lantern burned near the far end, on a low table with scuff marks around it. Fresh boot tracks overlapped ancient ones in the dust. Somebody had been using this place as a real room, not just a museum.

  The building creaked around them. Not loud. Just little ticks and sighs in the stone and metal, like an old house breathing. His skin crawled. Somewhere overhead, a flake of grit let go and pattered down onto the floor, landing a few feet in front of him.

  He tracked the sound upward without thinking. The ceiling was solid—hand-cut stone, no mortar lines visible, load bearing through compression alone. Whoever had built this place had understood weight. But understanding weight and maintaining what held it were two different jobs, and the second one hadn’t been done in a long time. Hairline fractures radiated from the nearest iron fitting like crow’s feet around a tired eye.

  Every instinct he had screamed that they were under too much load, and the joists had never been properly checked.

  “Great,” he muttered. “From bad roof to worse basement.”

  Merrik made a questioning grunt at that, but didn’t ask. His hand tightened fractionally on Matas’s arm. Serh’s fingers did the opposite, loosening just enough that he could feel the line between restraint and support.

  Tharel stopped near the lantern and turned. His gaze tracked over the cot against the far wall, the table, the jug, then settled on Matas. His eyes paused on the half-healed bite, on the way Matas kept flicking glances toward the walls, and a small muscle jumped once in his jaw. Whatever else their customs demanded, nothing in his face suggested he liked this.

  He said a few words, tone flat as stone. The dub dragged up three scraps and shoved them forward. “…danger… watch… food…”

  The pain behind Matas’s left eye sharpened and then backed off, like a warning tap instead of a full swing. He grimaced.

  “Got it,” he said under his breath. “Processing the weird foreigner is a group project.”

  Tharel looked at him a heartbeat longer than was comfortable, then pointed down a narrower side corridor cut off from the main hall. The gesture was clear enough even without any language help.

  Merrik and Serh hustled him that way.

  The corridor had the same thick, overbuilt feel—too much stone for the amount of air. Doorways opened on either side, some with the doors gone, some with rough planks barring them. They passed one that smelled like old smoke and something sour. Another that just smelled like dust and time.

  At the third door on the right, Tharel stopped again. This one had actual hinges, and they croaked when he pushed it in.

  Inside was simple.

  Maybe ten feet by twelve. One slit high on the outer wall let in a stripe of gray that did little more than prove the sun still existed. A narrow cot sat against the left wall, blanket folded on top in a way that said somebody had at least tried once. A small, sturdy table and two chairs took up most of the rest of the space. On the table: a clay jug, a cup, and a small cloth-wrapped bundle that might have been food.

  No chains on the walls. No bloodstains on the floor. Just stone, air, and the sense that whatever he did in here, someone else would hear it.

  Tharel gestured at the room, then at Matas. Even without the dub, that part was easy.

  “Stay,” he said.

  That one came through clean. No lag. No pain. Just the word, shaped a little differently in his mouth, but close enough that Matas’s brain clicked it into place.

  His throat went dry.

  He pointed at his own chest. “Matas.”

  Then at Tharel. “Tharel.”

  The older man watched calmly, as if checking he hadn’t forgotten in the last ten minutes. Then he called something down the hall. The dub offered up one intelligible slice. “…watch him…”

  Of course.

  Serh stepped around him, into the room. She checked the corners the way you check an unfamiliar attic—quick, economical glances at the joints and up at the slit window. Satisfied, she moved back to the doorway and said something low to Tharel.

  The dub made a half-hearted attempt, then decided this particular bundle of consonants wasn’t worth it. His eye thanked it.

  Tharel answered, nodded once, and then his gaze settled on Matas one last time. Whatever decision he’d made, it didn’t show on his face. He turned and walked away down the corridor, footsteps fading.

  Merrik and Serh stayed.

  Merrik guided him to the nearest chair, applying pressure to his arm that wasn’t quite optional. When Matas sat, his legs agreed that this was the most intelligent decision he’d made all day. They shook as the weight came off them.

  Serh poured water from the jug into the cup, set it on the table in front of him, then unwrapped the cloth bundle. Inside: flat, hard bread and thin strips of something dried and dark that his nose filed under “meat-like” with a question mark.

  She pointed at the cup, then at him.

  “Keth,” she said. Then, a beat later, “Drink.”

  The first word hit his ears only as sound. The second arrived a fraction of a second later. The lag punched through his temple like a small, precise hammer. He hissed.

  Serh’s brow furrowed. She repeated the first word more slowly.

  “Keth.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She touched the cup. Lifted her hand halfway to her mouth without actually making contact.

  “Keth. Drink.”

  The dub wrapped the local word in the same English tag. His stomach growled on cue.

  “…okay,” he said. “Yeah, I can play charades.”

  He picked up the cup with his good hand and took a long swallow. The water was colder than he expected, with a mineral bite that said mountain, not tap. His entire throat sighed in relief.

  Serh watched his face, then glanced back at Merrik. She said something that might have been approval, or might have been “he’s not an immediate rabid monster.” The dub caught nothing but rhythm.

  He set the cup down and pointed at it.

  “Drink,” he said.

  Then at himself. “Matas.”

  Those two didn’t really go together, but he wasn’t exactly rehearsed. He sounded like a toddler constructing a bizarre sentence.

  Serh’s mouth twitched, then flatlined back into seriousness so fast he almost missed it. She pointed at the cup again. “Keth.”

  Then at him. “Matas.”

  The dub didn’t bother with either of those this time. It probably assumed they’d got the gist.

  His eye throbbed. The mailbox in the corner of his vision gave a single, slightly sharper pulse, then went back to its usual lazy four-count. Watching. Logging. Not helping.

  “Great,” he muttered. “Glad you’re entertained.”

  Merrik leaned on the doorframe, spear resting upright at his shoulder. He said something in their language, tone lighter than Serh’s had been. The dub scraped together just enough for Matas to catch one word. “…strange…”

  He couldn’t argue.

  Serh answered with a short, dry reply. Her voice was flat, but the rhythm had the shape of a joke, like they were discussing a particularly weird hauler back home.

  Matas ate because not eating would have been stupid. The bread was tough and dry enough to scrape the inside of his mouth; the meat chewed like jerky that had lost an argument with a salt mine. His stomach still sent grateful signals up the line.

  When he was done, Serh gathered the empty cloth and nodded once, a businesslike acknowledgment that he had performed the basic human function of consuming calories. Then she stepped back into the hall.

  A deeper voice called her name from the corridor—older, roughened, used to being obeyed. The sound snapped her spine a fraction straighter. She answered once, short and clipped, then turned toward that voice, her pace quickening as she vanished down the hall.

  The room felt different with just Matas, Merrik, and the stone.

  Merrik shifted from the doorframe to the other chair, easing himself into it with a faint exhale. He laid the spear across his knees like a casual afterthought. Matas doubted it was.

  For a minute, they sat in silence that wasn’t. The building creaked. Somewhere below, deep in the stone, something dripped in a slow, steady rhythm. His heart found its own beat and tried not to sync to either.

  Matas let his eyes drift over the room. The walls were rough-cut but true—someone had taken the time to plumb them, even down here where nobody was meant to be impressed. The cot frame was iron, bolted to the floor with brackets that had been drilled, not hammered. Whoever maintained this place did not do half-jobs. That was either reassuring or terrifying, depending on what they’d built it to hold.

  Merrik drummed his fingers once on the shaft of the spear, then stopped.

  “Merrik,” he said, touching his chest with two fingers.

  He’d done it before, out on the terrace, but this time he watched Matas’s eyes like he was testing retention.

  Matas nodded. “Merrik.”

  He tapped his own chest. “Matas.”

  Merrik repeated it, a little more confidently than the first time he’d said it on the terrace. “Matas.”

  Then he pointed at the door, at the hall beyond. He said a word that the dub offered nothing for, then crossed his forearms in front of his chest in a pretty universal “no” gesture.

  Matas watched him for a second, then mirrored the move, slower.

  “No,” he said. “Got it.”

  Merrik blinked. Tilted his head. Then he repeated the local word, shaping it clearly.

  The dub finally decided to lend a hand. “…no…”

  The pain that rode in with that tiny piece of help made his vision pulse at the edges. Matas pressed his thumb into the bridge of his nose until the spike eased.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Maybe don’t spam that.”

  Merrik frowned, then mapped cause to effect: sound, flinch, hand to face. He said something short—probably the local equivalent of “head hurts?”—but the dub threw up its hands and walked away.

  Matas gave him a tiny shrug and a palm flip that lived somewhere between “it’s fine” and “what can you do?”

  Merrik sighed through his nose, something like exasperated sympathy, then shifted in his chair. For a second, his posture slumped, duty mask slipping just a fraction. A twenty-two-year-old guy with a long day behind him and a stranger in front of him that his captain had just dumped in his lap.

  He said something then that came with a different shape.

  The words spilled out in a slightly looser rhythm, his mouth doing that half-smile thing he couldn’t seem to help when he was off-duty by half an inch. He gestured at the room with the tip of his spear, then at Matas, then at himself.

  The dub tried. It caught three bits and smeared them together. “…guest… wolves… smell…”

  It hit Matas like a bad translation of a familiar joke: something about “best room we have for honored wolf-bait,” or “finest guest suite this side of the wolves you dragged in,” delivered with that mix of self-deprecation and situation-gallows humor he’d heard on more sites than he could count.

  His brain did the rest. The tone, the gesture, the one word that came through clean—wolves—pinned the intent.

  He laughed.

  Not a big, hysterical burst. Just a short, honest bark of sound that matched Merrik’s timing on instinct. The laugh you give a coworker when the roof is leaking in three places, and you’re both already soaked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hell of a room. Five stars. Loved the wolves in the lobby.”

  He knew Merrik missed the words, but the rhythm landed. Merrik’s eyes widened a fraction, then his own laugh slipped out, low and quick. He shook his head like he couldn’t believe the universe had saddled him with this.

  For half a heartbeat, they were in the same place.

  The mailbox in the corner of his sightline flared.

  Not just a brighter pulse. The little flag snapped upright hard enough that it felt like a physical click behind his eyes. A sheet of cold dropped through his chest. The world narrowed to the rectangle in his vision and the stone under his boots.

  Text slammed across his sight in clean, icy lines.

  Behavioral data sufficient.Subject: Matas.Classification: Integrated participant.Level: 3.Resources partially restored.

  Every muscle in his body seized. Not all at once—more like a wave, starting at the soles of his feet and rolling up. His hands clenched on nothing, nails biting into his palms. His heart tripped, then sprinted. Heat and cold chased each other under his skin.

  He heard Merrik say something sharp and worried, but it came from the end of a long concrete tunnel.

  The text didn’t stop.

  Linguistic channel stabil—

  Sound dropped out. Pain punched through his left eye hard enough to blur the world.

  —ized

  Skill initiated: [Speech of the Cosmos].Resource cost profile updated.Baseline: reduced.Active use: maintained.

  Then the mailbox snapped back to its usual lazy pulse, as though nothing had happened.

  The real world rushed in sideways.

  Sound went first. For one thin, terrifying second, he heard nothing at all—not Merrik’s voice, not the building, not his own breath. Just a flat, crushing silence that made his teeth ache. Then everything came back at once, too loud, every creak of stone and rustle of cloth turned up to eleven.

  He sucked in a breath that felt like it might split his skull. One hand flew to his left eye. The pressure there peaked, and he rocked back in the chair.

  “Matas!” Merrik’s voice cut through, sharp and much, much too clear.

  He froze.

  Merrik had said his name before, dozens of times now. But this time, Matas heard it all. Not just the shape, not just the tone. The word slotted into place as if it had always been there.

  Merrik was out of his chair, spear clattering to the floor in a move that told Matas exactly how worried he was. His hand landed on Matas’s shoulder to keep him from pitching off the chair.

  “What was that?” he demanded. “Your eyes went—”

  Matas stared at him.

  “I understood that,” he said.

  The words came out in English. They landed in his ears in Kharuul-Teth, just for a heartbeat, then flipped. His tongue sat somewhere between the two, as confused as the rest of him.

  Merrik blinked.

  “You…” he began. Then he stopped, regrouped. “You speak?”

  Matas let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a groan.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I do now.”

  The sentence tangled halfway through. The first three words came smoothly; the rest warbled, as if the system had to reach further into the new wiring to pull them out.

  Pain flickered at the edge of his vision, then settled into a dull throb.

  Merrik’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

  “Repeat it,” he said slowly. “Say… ‘I understand.’”

  “I understand,” Matas said.

  No lag. No dub. The language overlaid his own like it had been downloaded into his head, as if he had been speaking it most of his life.

  His hands were shaking. He pressed them flat on the table and stared at the grain of the wood—a real, physical thing that hadn’t changed just because his brain had been rewired without his permission. The cup was still half full. The bread crumbs were still there. The room was the same room.

  He was not the same person who had sat down in it.

  The room seemed to tilt—not from the building, but from the way the world was suddenly twice as loud in all the wrong ways.

  Out in the corridor, bootsteps hurried closer. Serh’s voice snapped a question that he didn’t need a dub for anymore.

  “What happened?” she demanded from the doorway. “I heard him—”

  She cut herself off mid-word, eyes flicking from Merrik to Matas. She could see the way he was looking back now. Not guessing at tone, not scanning for gestures.

  Understanding.

  “Tharel’s going to love this,” Merrik muttered, in a tone that said the exact opposite.

  That came through just fine, too.

  The mailbox flag ticked up, down, up, on its steady four-count, like a metronome marking time in a room that had just gotten a lot more complicated.