The palace dungeons breathed with rot. The air was damp, thick with the metallic tang of rusted chains and something far fouler—death, but not the peaceful kind.

  Leonotis pressed his back to the cold stone wall, his torch hidden beneath his cloak. Only the faintest glow escaped, painting Low’s borrowed beard a ghostly hue as she crouched beside him.

  “You’re sure about this?” she whispered, voice low, wary.

  “No,” Leonotis admitted. He shifted the wrapped sword in his grip, its weight oddly heavy tonight. “But if Gethii’s here, we can’t just wait until Rega parades him in chains. We find him now, or we lose him.”

  Low exhaled through her nose, muttering, “Stubborn fool.” Then she smirked faintly. “Good thing I like stubborn fools.”

  They slipped deeper into the underbelly of the palace. Every corridor seemed to groan beneath centuries of oppression, the walls etched with scratches, prayers, curses—all carved by desperate hands long turned to dust.

  At the first barred cell, Leonotis halted. Something moved in the dark.

  Claws scraped metal.

  A hand shot out, pale and shriveled, its nails black as coal. It grasped the bars with rattling force, jerking violently. Leonotis stepped back, torchlight revealing a nightmare: a man—or what had once been one—skin stretched paper-thin over bone, lips eaten away to expose grinning teeth. Its eyes glowed faintly green, hollow pits of hunger.

  “Orisha preserve us,” Low whispered, axe half-raised.

  The creature hissed, long and guttural, slamming itself against the bars. Others stirred in nearby cells, answering the call. Soon the dungeon was alive with sound—moaning, rattling, claws scraping iron. An army of the dead, sealed but not silent.

  Leonotis’s chest tightened. “Undead soldiers. Bound in cells like… animals.”

  Low grimaced. “Rega’s idea of guard dogs. Even the air feels cursed down here.”

  A particularly large corpse flung itself at the bars so hard they bent outward with a metallic screech. Its jaw opened unnaturally wide, snapping at the empty air.

  Low took a step forward, axe ready. “If that breaks through—”

  “No.” Leonotis grabbed her arm. “Noise will bring guards. Or worse.”

  Her eyes flashed irritation, but she lowered her weapon. “Fine. Then we move faster. Before one of them decides to chew through the bars.”

  They hurried past cell after cell, torchlight dancing over grotesque faces. Some of the undead were armored, their rusted mail hanging off skeletal frames. Others still wore the tatters of prisoner garb. All of them pressed to the bars, reaching, clawing, moaning for flesh.

  Low’s voice was barely a breath. “If Rega keeps things like this under his palace, what else is he hiding?”

  Leonotis shook his head. “Nothing good.”

  At the end of the corridor, they found a larger chamber. The door was sealed with three iron locks, each etched with crude runes. Leonotis pressed an ear against it, hearing nothing but silence.

  “This is where they’d keep him,” he said. His voice almost cracked, hope surging like fire in his chest.

  Low held the torch closer, eyes scanning the locks. “Looks like they didn’t want anyone—or anything—getting in or out.”

  Leonotis pulled at the first lock, then the second. Too heavy. Too tight. His pulse quickened. Gethii’s in there. He has to be.

  “Stand back,” Low muttered. She planted her feet, hefting the axe. “One good swing, I’ll—”

  “No!” Leonotis hissed, grabbing the haft before she could strike. “If he’s inside… if he’s chained… you’ll kill him.”

  They froze, staring at each other in the flickering light. Low’s grip tightened, but slowly she let the axe lower.

  “Then what do we do, oh wise Lia?”

  Leonotis swallowed. He pressed his hand to the runes, trying to feel for something, anything. But all he felt was cold. Heavy. Final.

  “I… I don’t know.”

  Silence stretched between them. Only the moans of the undead filled the space, echoing endlessly down the corridors.

  Finally, Low broke it. “Look.” She gestured to the dusty floor. “No footprints. Not in or out. If Gethii’s supposed to be here, he isn’t. Not anymore.”

  Her words struck like a hammer to the chest. Leonotis staggered back from the door, torchlight trembling in his grip. “No. He has to be. They said—”

  “They lied.” Low’s tone was blunt, but her eyes softened. “King Rega dangled him like bait. And we took it.”

  Leonotis’s throat closed. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He saw Gethii’s face in his mind—stern eyes, calloused hands guiding his own on a sword hilt, the father figure he never truly had.

  And now, nothing.

  He slammed his fist into the wall, stone cutting his knuckles. “Then where is he?!”

  The undead hissed at his outburst, rattling their cages louder, the noise rising into a chorus of hunger and rage.

  Low grabbed his arm. “Quiet! Do you want the whole palace down here?”

  He bit back a curse, chest heaving, and forced himself to still. His hand throbbed, blood dripping onto the stone floor.

  Low studied him in the dim glow. “Listen. I know what he means to you. But this doesn’t end tonight. We’ll find him—if he’s alive. But if we die here, chained up next to these walking corpses, then none of it matters.”

  Leonotis closed his eyes. Her words cut, but they were true.

  Finally, he nodded, voice raw. “…Fine.”

  They turned back the way they came, passing the cells again. The undead clawed and shrieked, slamming against bars until bloodless fingers cracked. One rasped a single word, guttural and broken through rotting throat:

  “Flesh…”

  Low quickened her pace. “I’m going to be hearing that in my dreams.”

  Leonotis didn’t answer. His thoughts were too heavy, his heart too raw.

  As they slipped back into the night air, the palace looming above them like a predator, Leonotis cast one last glance over his shoulder.

  The dungeon door was shut tight. But the sound of rattling bars and moaning voices followed them into the dark, echoing long after they’d gone.

  And beneath it all, the silence where Gethii should have been.

  The stairwell leading out of the dungeon was steep, the air growing less foul with every step, though the weight in Leonotis’s chest only grew heavier. His torch guttered as they slipped through a cracked iron gate into a narrow hall.

  Low was first to speak. Her false beard was hanging half off from sweat and exertion, but her voice stayed steady. “We need to move. Guards are bound to patrol this wing. And we made enough noise to wake a corpse.”

  “Those weren’t just corpses,” Leonotis muttered, still hearing the rattling of iron and the word that had crawled out of the grave: Flesh.

  Low glanced at him but said nothing. Her axe was already resting across her shoulder, heavy and ready.

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  They turned a corner—then froze.

  Footsteps. Armored, deliberate.

  A patrol.

  Leonotis shoved out the torch and pressed himself against the wall, yanking Low into the shadows. They flattened themselves into a shallow alcove as light flared ahead: lanterns, swinging, accompanied by the clatter of boots and the faint scrape of steel.

  Three guards marched into view. Their armor was polished but pitted, the shine dimmed by rust. Their faces—

  Leonotis’s breath caught.

  Their faces were gray. Lips chewed away, skin stretched taut across skulls. The smell hit him: rot, sweet and sour, carried on the draft.

  “Undead,” Low hissed under her breath, eyes wide.

  Not the same as the prisoners they’d seen behind bars. These walked with discipline. One carried a halberd, another a pitted shield. The last dragged a heavy chain behind him, its links clinking on the stones like funeral bells.

  The leader’s empty sockets glowed faint green. His voice was low like gravel grinding. “All cells accounted for. None escaped.”

  Leonotis swallowed. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until his lungs screamed.

  The patrol passed, the lantern glow sweeping just feet from their hiding spot.

  One of the guards stopped. Head turning slowly, unnaturally, like it was on a broken hinge.

  Its gaze lingered on the alcove.

  Leonotis’s hand drifted to his sword. Low tensed beside him, jaw tight.

  The guard’s jaw creaked open. A single word rasped out, cracked and trembling, as if memory itself had forced it past rotting lips.

  “...Gethii...”

  Leonotis’s heart slammed against his ribs.

  Low’s hand shot out, gripping his arm hard enough to bruise. Her eyes screamed don’t move.

  The undead’s milky gaze lingered one more agonizing heartbeat, then shifted away. It turned, the patrol continuing into the darkness until the scrape of their boots faded.

  Only when the silence returned did Leonotis let out a shuddering breath.

  “Did you—did you hear that?” His whisper shook. “It said his name. His name.”

  Low’s grip on him tightened, then released. “I heard it.” Her voice was rough, almost unwilling to admit it.

  “That means he's here.” Leonotis’s eyes burned with sudden fire. “Rega’s holding him somewhere. He—”

  “Or it means they fed his name to his pets,” Low cut in sharply, her voice a whip crack meant to ground him. “You saw their eyes. Those weren’t memories. That was command. Orders written into bone.”

  Leonotis shook his head fiercely. “No. No, that wasn’t just command. That was…” He struggled for words, fists clenching. “That was him. He’s alive. He has to be.”

  Low studied him for a long moment. Her beard dangled loose now, barely clinging, but her eyes—clear, steel-hard—were all that mattered.

  “Hope can keep you alive,” she said finally. “Or it can get you killed. Which is this, Leonotis?”

  He met her gaze, unflinching. “It’s the only thing keeping me standing.”

  Low exhaled slowly, her resolve softening, just a fraction. She gave a short nod. “Then let’s use it to keep moving. But no more noise. And if one of those things whispers my name, I’m chopping its head off.”

  Despite the danger, Leonotis almost laughed. The sound came out bitter, trembling. “Fair.”

  They crept forward, hugging the wall, ears straining for any hint of pursuit. Every flicker of lantern light from distant corridors made Leonotis’s chest seize. Every scrape of their boots against stone felt like thunder.

  At last, they found the service stairwell, spiraling up toward fresher air. The stink of death fell behind them, though the memory of that one rasped word clung to Leonotis like a chain.

  When they finally pushed open the iron grate at the top, the night sky stretched above them. The courtyard was silent save for the distant chatter of drunken guards near the outer wall.

  Low yanked off the dangling beard and shoved it into her belt. “We can’t risk another run like that. From now on, we plan better. No rushing blind into the King’s nest.”

  Leonotis nodded, though his mind wasn’t in the courtyard. It was still in the dungeon, hearing the scrape of chains, the hollow word.

  “Gethii’s here,” he said, quiet but certain. “I swear it. And I’ll tear this whole palace apart if I have to.”

  Low gave him a sidelong look, half-smirk, half-grimace. “Good. Because after tonight? Rega already knows someone’s prowling in his shadows. We don’t have much time.”

  They melted into the darkness, leaving the palace looming behind them like a predator.

  Far below, in the dungeon, the undead patrol returned to its route.

  The leader stopped at the same alcove they had hidden in, his jaw creaking open once more.

  This time, no word came out.

  Just a hollow hiss, echoing like laughter in the dark.

  The small, forgotten shrine was a welcome pocket of quiet after the dungeon’s oppressive gloom. Leonotis and Low found Jacqueline and Zombiel already there. Jacqueline sat cross-legged near a guttering oil lamp, reviewing a scroll of tournament brackets, while Zombiel was a motionless shadow near the entrance.

  “Look who finally showed up,” Jacqueline noted, folding the parchment. Her eyes scanned the grime and exhaustion clinging to Leonotis and Low.

  “We were busy not getting eaten,” Low grumbled, pulling the half-tattered false beard out of her pocket and tossing it into a corner with disgust.

  “Any luck with Gethii?” Jacqueline asked, her tone neutral but intent.

  Leonotis shook his head, the disappointment a heavy stone in his chest. “It was a trap. Rega wanted us to rush in and get caught. There was an empty, sealed chamber.”

  Low chimed in, shivering slightly. “The place was a zoo, Jacqueline. Undead guards, undead prisoners... those things give me the creeps.”

  Zombiel, who had been placidly staring at the wall, slowly turned his head to face Low. He blinked once, a slow, deliberate movement.

  Low froze mid-sentence. “Oh. Right. Sorry, Zombiel. Not you. You’re—you’re not undead anymore. You’re… reanimated, but in a good way, for us, not—” Low’s voice stammered to a halt. Realizing she was only making it worse, she finished lamely, “It’s just… King Rega is using them as slave labor, as they are. They should have stayed dead.”

  Zombiel simply continued to look at her, his expression unchanging.

  “I’m going to shut up now,” Low muttered, rubbing her temples.

  Jacqueline ignored the exchange, returning her focus to Leonotis. “Did you find anything, then? Any whispers about the merman, or strange sea creatures? We need to help him.”

  Leonotis’s jaw tightened. The thought of the merman had vanished from his mind the moment he saw the empty cell.

  “Dammit,” he muttered, slamming his hand lightly on his knee. “I… I forgot. Everything was just focused on Gethii and getting out.”

  Jacqueline’s composure fractured. Her lip curled slightly, and her dark eyes narrowed, though her voice remained low. “You forgot? Leonotis, you know that the merman is important to me, and you forgot to check the wet cells?”

  “I’m sorry, Jacqueline. Truly.” Leonotis held up his hands in apology. “It was a chaos of screaming, rattling death. But you’re right. The wet cells are where the river feeds in. Next time I’m in the dungeons, I’ll try to find clues about him there.”

  Jacqueline exhaled sharply, letting the anger deflate. “Fine. Just… fine. I’ll focus on scouting information on our opponents for the next round. You two just try not to get yourselves executed before the sun rises.”

  She picked up her scroll again, effectively ending the discussion.

  “Sleep, Lia,” Low said, nudging him toward a bedroll. “We need every ounce of energy we can get for the second day of the tournament.”

  "Seriously Low stop calling me that."

  "Fine, Fine."

  Leonotis nodded, lying down on the rough blanket. As he closed his eyes, he heard the soft rustle of Jacqueline returning to her work and, from the shadows, the silence of Zombiel.