Chapter 16

  Something was wrong. The streets were too quiet; a smear of corrupted essence clung to the walls, and the air felt thick, almost sickly. But with Amalia and Albert close behind, their bonded followed closely at their heels, River felt safe enough to keep moving.

  Silence pressed against him like a second skin. Heavy. Unnatural. No birds. No dog barking two alleys over. No clatter of a dropped pan, no late laugh from an open window. Just the brittle crunch of old leaves under their boots, each step too loud, as if the stones were whispering a warning and the whole town could hear it. Buildings loomed in washed-out grays, windows dark and hollow as sockets. Wooden signs swung and clicked on their hooks, but no voices spilled from doorways, no shadow twitched behind cracked shutters. A town asleep—or abandoned.

  River kept his hand close to his side. Not on a weapon, not yet. He flicked a glance to Amalia, then to Albert. They felt it too. Amalia’s mouth had flattened into a blade; Albert’s hammer hand kept flexing, unconsciously, knuckles pale. Both of them scanning roofs and alleys, breaths clipped and shallow, as if even the air had turned against them.

  He couldn’t sense anything specific—no clean thread to pull; yet the back of his neck prickled. Watched. By what or who, the street refused to say.

  They turned a corner and a crooked structure hunched into view, wedged between two tall white houses. Smoke leaked from a battered chimney in tired pulses. River pointed. No one argued. They went.

  The door hung warped, twisted on rusted hinges; boards splintered, iron scarred. Albert pulled; the wood scraped over stone with a long, tearing shriek that clawed the quiet like a blade. River winced. Instinct said cover your ears. He didn’t. Forward.

  Albert stepped through first, then Amalia. River followed and stopped hard.

  The smell hit like a fist. Thick. Wet. Unmistakable. Rot. It saturated the air, crawled up into his sinuses and stuck there, coating his thoughts as easily as it had his body. Something had died in here. Not recently enough to be kind.

  He swept the room for the source. Table, four worn chairs. Sink stacked with plates fuzzy at the rims. A fraying rug scattered with toys abandoned mid-play. A normal life, paused and curdled.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Movement tugged his eye: Albert, hunched over, chest heaving. Fighting the urge to vomit. A long moment stretched, like the house wanted to watch them lose it. No one moved. No one spoke.

  Albert straightened at last. Color high in his cheeks, eyes bright with unshed tears. “You all right?” River asked, voice low.

  “I’m fine,” Albert rasped through his teeth. “Let’s… find it.”

  They pushed deeper. The hall was narrow, paper peeling from damp plaster. Amalia slipped ahead, and a sharp sound split the house.

  A shriek.

  River’s pulse snapped high. Sweat beaded along his hairline. He sprinted and swung into the back room.

  He wasn’t ready.

  A bedroom, once; the scraps of it still tried to insist. A toppled bed with one leg snapped. A threadbare curtain stuck to a pane. On the far wall, a family of four had been nailed—yes, nailed—to the boards. Iron spikes through wrists and ankles. A man. A woman. Two children. Their skin had gone the wrong shade of gray, eyes filmed and open. Dried blood fanned across the floor in arcs that carved the memory of movement. In the corner, the smallest child’s stuffed animal slumped, its fur sodden and red. Above the bodies, gouged deep into the wood:

  WITNESS.

  The word burned into River’s thoughts, hot and cold at once.

  No scuffed prints. No shattered lock. No broken windows. Whoever did this took their time.

  He almost jumped as Calira’s mind brushed his. I don’t like this. We should get out of here, she sent.

  Not yet, he answered. We haven’t finished what we came for.

  River backed a step, pressed two fingers to his temple. Breathe. Think. Plan. His hand went to the wooden box at his hip—the King’s “communication device.” If ever there was a time.

  “Let’s contact the King,” he said. Steady, he hoped. “Maybe he knows what this means—or what we do next.”

  Neither Amalia nor Albert objected. They couldn’t. Their eyes were still glued to the wall like magnets. Even Nymeira and Tessa had gone small, a low whine tucked in their throats, their fur and hide bristled as if something invisible paced just out of sight.

  River knelt and broke the seal. The lid lifted on silent hinges.

  Inside: not a crystal, not a rune-etched stone. Just a smooth black tile set into the base, humming faintly like a swallowed insect. He reached for it.

  A sound.

  Not from the box. From the bones of the house.

  A low thrum rolled through the walls. A pulse, as if the building had a heart and had just decided to beat.

  Then a second sound.

  Outside. Claws on cobblestone, slow and deliberate, scraping with the patience of a match drawn too long.

  River’s head snapped up. Amalia’s blades were already out, edges a thin breath from singing. Albert’s grip had slid to the hammer’s balance point.

  “Did you hear—?” River started, but the question died. Of course they had.

  He glanced down at the device, then toward the door. A thought he didn’t like elbowed in: had he just called for help… or rung the dinner bell?