Dark. My ribs are wrong, something's wrong with them.

  The pressure I felt before has intensified. It throbs now, in rhythm with a pulse I can't hear. A second heartbeat that doesn't belong to me.

  No light at all. Just black, pressing against my eyes like a physical weight.

  My head pounds. Mouth tastes of sweet rot. Wrists burning where rope has bitten through skin.

  Wait. There—a faint gray line near the floor marks where a door meets stone. Cold ground beneath me, hands bound behind my back, and the air smells of salt and old blood. This room has been soaked in it.

  And shapes in the shadows. Human shapes.

  "Hello?" My voice comes out cracked. "Is someone there?"

  Movement. A face emerges from the dark—a boy, older than me by a year or two, thin, his eyes flat with the look of someone who has stopped hoping.

  "New one," he says. Not to me. To the others. "They brought a new one."

  More shapes stir. A girl my age with eyes that catch what little light exists and throw it back wrong. Twin boys who might be nine or ten, clutching each other, silent. And in the corner where the shadows pool deepest, a small figure who doesn't move at all.

  "How many of us are there?"

  "Six now. With you." His voice is dull. Rehearsed. He's answered this question before. "I'm Daniel. That's Sarah. The twins don't talk. And the little one..."

  He trails off. I look where he's looking.

  The small figure is a girl. Younger than the twins—six, maybe seven. A fine dress, now gray with grime, the lace collar torn, the silk ribbon in her hair hanging limp and dirty. She sits with her knees drawn to her chest, rocking slightly. Her lips move in a constant rhythm.

  Counting. She's counting.

  "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four..."

  Barely human, that sound. A mechanical rhythm, a clock that's forgotten how to stop. Her voice has been worn down to nothing. Just air passing over vocal cords, shaping numbers that have lost all meaning.

  "How long has she been doing that?"

  "Since before I got here." Daniel's voice flattens further. "She screamed at first. Fought harder than anyone. Bit one of the guards so badly he needed stitches. They—" He stops. Swallows. "They did something to her. Took her somewhere. When she came back, she was like this. Just... counting. Forever counting."

  "What did they do?"

  "I don't know. She won't say. Won't say anything except the numbers." A tremor runs through him. "Sometimes at night, she stops. And the silence is worse than the counting. She's listening for something. Then she starts again, and I can breathe."

  Her eyes are fixed on a point I can't see, looking at a place that has already consumed her.

  The pressure in my chest swells, throbbing, responding to her, to this place. Whatever broke her left traces that my body can sense.

  And another thing. Stranger still.

  Her tears. Not visible—the darkness is too complete for that. But I feel them somehow. The moisture on her cheeks. The salt. The particular temperature of water that's been warmed by skin. A sixth sense I never knew I had, awakening here, reaching out toward the only moisture in this dry stone tomb.

  I don't understand it. But I know she's crying, even though she makes no sound. Crying while she counts, the tears falling in rhythm with the numbers that have become her whole world.

  I crawl across the stone floor toward her. Daniel makes a sound—warning, maybe—but he doesn't stop me.

  The counting girl doesn't acknowledge my approach, just keeps rocking, keeps counting.

  "Hello," I say softly. "My name's Eleanor. What's yours?"

  "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten."

  "I'm going to get us out of here. All of us. I promise."

  "One, two, three, four..."

  My hand reaches out. Touches hers.

  She flinches. For just a moment, her eyes focus on my face. Really focus. And I see it—terror, and beneath it, certainty. The knowledge that no one is coming. That the world isn't safe. The monsters are real, and they wear human faces, and they smile while they hurt you.

  Then the moment passes. Her eyes go distant again. The counting resumes.

  "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten."

  Beside her anyway, it's all she has left.

  The others tell me what they know.

  Different places, all of them. Daniel from a fishing village up the coast, Sarah from a carriage outside London, the twins from somewhere they won't talk about. The counting girl was here before any of them. No one knows her name.

  "I was with my father," Daniel says. His voice is flat, reciting facts that happened to someone else. "Pulling nets. The boat was small. Just the two of us. Men came out of the fog. I thought they were customs at first, or maybe pirates. They killed him. Threw his body overboard. Took me."

  "How long ago?"

  "Three weeks. Maybe four." He laughs, but there's nothing in it except exhaustion. "Time doesn't mean much down here."

  Sarah's story is worse. Traveling with her aunt to visit relatives in Cornwall. A birthday trip. A reward for good marks in school. The carriage stopped. The door opened, and it wasn't the driver. She never saw her aunt again.

  "I keep thinking she'll come," Sarah whispers. Her eyes are distant, seeing a different place. "Keep thinking someone will notice I'm gone. That they're looking for me."

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "They're not." Daniel's voice goes flat. "No one's looking for any of us. They pick people who won't be missed. People whose families can be bought off, or are already dead."

  The twins don't speak. Won't speak. Daniel says they came together, holding hands, and haven't let go of each other since. Whatever they saw before they arrived, it was bad enough to seal their mouths shut. Two small figures pressed together—and I wonder what words they're saving. What screams they're holding back.

  "They feed us twice a day," Daniel explains. "Bread, water, sometimes soup. The guards don't talk to us. Don't look at us, mostly. We're cargo."

  When the meal comes, thin soup that's more water than substance, Sarah hasn't touched hers. She's shaking too hard to hold the bowl, her skin burning hot even from across the cellar.

  "Here." My bowl slides toward her. "You need it more than I do."

  "You'll starve."

  "I'll manage." The bowl goes into Sarah's trembling hands. "Drink. You need the water to fight the fever."

  Daniel watches. "You don't even know her."

  "I know she's sick, I know she needs help." Steadying the bowl as Sarah drinks. "That's enough."

  "Have you tried to escape?"

  The others go very quiet.

  "Once," Daniel says finally. "When I first got here. I rushed the guard when he opened the door. Got maybe ten feet down the corridor before they caught me." He pulls up his shirt.

  A hiss through my teeth.

  A scar runs across his ribs, puckered, ugly, still pink with recent healing. But the scar doesn't hold my attention. The symbols do. The same twisting shapes scratched into the walls, carved into this boy's flesh.

  "They didn't kill me," Daniel says, letting his shirt fall. "They wanted me to know they could have. And they wanted to... prepare me. For something. Two days after they carved me, they took Peter. He had marks like mine. He didn't come back."

  I listen. File every detail. But while Daniel talks, I'm also planning—testing the walls.

  My fingers trace the stones behind my back, searching for loose mortar, gaps, anything. The analytical part of me is working now—architecture, weakness, escape.

  The stones are solid, centuries old, fitted together by craftsmen who knew their trade. But in the corner, where the shadows pool deepest—there. A gap where water has worn away the mortar. Barely wide enough for my fingertips. A flaw in the prison.

  I keep my face blank, keep listening to Daniel's story. My fingers work at the gap. Probing. Measuring. Already calculating how long it will take to widen.

  Days pass. Or what I think are days. The meal comes twice, so that must mean something, but whether it's day or night outside these walls, I can't tell. The counting girl never stops. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Over and over. A rhythm that gets into your bones, your blood.

  Sarah's fever gets worse.

  Her skin is fire now. Her breathing comes in shallow gasps. And there's nothing to do but sit beside her, wipe her forehead with a damp cloth torn from my sleeve, whisper stories my mother used to tell me.

  "There was once a scholar," I murmur, "who traveled to the edge of the world to find a cure for death..."

  Sarah doesn't respond. Her eyes are glassy. But her hand finds mine, grips it with a strength I didn't expect.

  Somewhere above us, the tide is rising.

  Pressure against my ribs, a pull in my chest that responds to the water's movement. The strange sense that brought me here, the awareness of moisture that let me feel the counting girl's tears, is growing stronger.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

  Waiting is dying. I refuse to just wait.

  "Daniel," I whisper, after what might be the second meal. "The gap in the wall. The one in the corner. Have you noticed it?"

  He looks at me like I've lost my mind. "There's no gap. I've checked every inch of this place."

  "There is now. Water damage. The mortar's crumbling." My voice stays low, barely audible over the counting girl's rhythm. "It's not big enough yet. But if we work at it, slowly, carefully, only when we know the guards aren't coming..."

  "Work at it with what? Our fingernails?"

  "Yes." Hands up, showing him. My nails are already cracked and bleeding from testing the stone. "If that's what it takes."

  His expression shifts. Something cracks in his resignation. Resistance, maybe. Just a ghost of it.

  "They'll notice," he says. "When they take us out for the ritual. They'll see the damage."

  "Then we cover it. Dirt. Grime. There's enough filth on these walls to hide anything." Leaning closer. "Daniel, we have two choices. We sit here and wait to be slaughtered, or we try. Even if it doesn't work. Even if they catch us. At least we'll have done something."

  Silence. The counting fills the space between us.

  Then his chin dips. Once.

  "Show me where."

  We work in shifts.

  Daniel and I take turns at the gap, scraping at the mortar with our fingernails, with the edges of the wooden bowls they feed us from, with anything we can find. The work is slow. Agonizing. My fingers bleed constantly now, but I've stopped feeling the pain. It's just information.

  Sarah is too sick to help, but she watches for us. Her fever has sharpened her hearing somehow; she can sense the guards' footsteps from further away than any of us.

  "Coming," she whispers, and we freeze. Wait. The footsteps pass. We continue.

  Even the twins help, in their way. They sit near the gap when we're working, their small bodies blocking the sight line from the door. They don't speak, don't acknowledge what we're doing. But they're there. Part of it.

  The counting girl just counts. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

  But as the hours pass—her counting slows when we're working. Speeds up when we stop. She's paying attention. She knows.

  Her rhythms become familiar. The counting speeds up when footsteps pass outside the door. It slows when she's tired, the numbers dragging. Sometimes she pauses, just for a heartbeat, and draws a sharp breath, and I think she might speak.

  She never does.

  But once, in the deepest part of what might be night, her fingers curl around mine. A grip so faint I might have imagined it.

  Her hand in mine anyway.

  The gap is wider now, an inch maybe. Progress. Proof that we're not just cargo waiting for transport.

  And a promise I know I probably can't keep.

  I'll get you out of here. All of you. Somehow.

  The door opens.

  Light floods in, blinding after so long without it. I throw my hands up to shield my eyes, but even through my fingers I can see them—the silhouettes in the doorway. A guard, and behind him, a woman.

  I force myself to look, to notice. Even through the blinding light, even through the fear, that part of my brain catalogs. Learns.

  The guard is large but slow; he favors his left leg, an old injury that makes him shift his weight unevenly. A ring of keys at his belt, and the largest key has a distinctive green patina—copper, probably. The door opens inward, and when he steps through, his right side is briefly unprotected.

  The woman stands back, letting him do the work. Her hands are clean, her shoes fine leather. She's management. Not labor.

  Small details. Useless, probably. But filed away anyway. Because maybe someday they won't be useless.

  "This one." The guard points at the counting girl. "She's next."

  No.

  On my feet before I know I'm moving. "Wait. Take me instead. Take—"

  He doesn't even look at me, just crosses to the corner, reaches down, and lifts the counting girl by the arm. She doesn't resist, doesn't scream, just keeps counting, her voice steady as a metronome.

  "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten..."

  "Please." Grabbing his arm. Trying to pull him back. "She's just a child. She doesn't even know where she is anymore. Please. Take me. I'll go willingly. I'll cooperate. Whatever you want—"

  He shoves me. The wall hits hard enough to blur my vision, hard enough to taste blood.

  But as I fall—the key ring swings wide when he moves. Unbalanced, loose on his belt. One sharp tug, and it would come free.

  I can't use that knowledge now, but it's stored anyway, in the cold quiet place where the scholar's mind lives.

  "Your turn will come," he says. "Be patient."

  The door closes. The dark rushes back.

  I lie on the floor, listening to the silence where her counting used to be. The silence is worse. So much worse.

  I strain to hear her, some faint echo, some distant rhythm still connecting us. But there's nothing—just the drip of water somewhere in the walls. Sarah's labored breathing. The twins clutching each other.

  She's gone. The little girl whose name I never learned. Gone to the room with candles, to the table, to whatever comes next.

  My face is pressed against the stone, and something is changing inside me. That part that was still soft, still hoping, still believing that someone would come, that this was all a mistake—it dies.

  A different thing takes its place. Something cold. Patient. A thing that will remember faces. Voices. Every hand that touched us here.

  Every person in this place. Every guard who didn't look at us.

  The silence where her counting used to be fills my ears like the roar of the sea.

  I'm going to make them pay.

  Above us, footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. The creak of the cellar door.

  Light spills down the stairs, harsh after so long without it. A voice calls out.

  "The Winchester girl. Marsh wants her before tomorrow's ritual."

  Tomorrow—

  The ritual is coming, Marsh is waiting.