Page 69 of Orc’s Hex

Not immediately, not all at once—the stone is old and thick and does not fail cleanly—but the Foundation Crypt’s collapse is traveling upward through the oath channels the same way the reversal did, and every corridor we pass through carries the groan of stone under pressure that has been suddenly released.

He does not let go of my arm.

He is bleeding significantly and moving at a pace that does not account for the bleeding and I am absorbing the dust and the cold and the residual Blood Law discharge off the walls as we pass and none of that slows either of us.

The Hall of Oaths level.

The oath carvings in the floor are dark. The channels have gone still, and the quiet in the stone is the loudest thing I have heard in twelve days.

A chunk of the corridor ceiling falls behind us.

“Faster.”

I do not need to be told.

The floor drops.

Not far—six inches, maybe less—but enough that my next step lands wrong and my ankle rolls and for one full second I am certain I’m going down into a crack I can’t see the bottom of in the dark. Drazhul’s grip is the only thing that keeps me upright, his hand closing hard enough to bruise around my forearm, and he doesn’t slow down to check if I’m hurt. There isn’t time for checking. There’s only forward.

I find my footing mid-stride and keep running.

At the upper catacomb junction his grip on my arm pulls me left before I choose left, before I have read the corridor. He has been mapping these passages his entire life and right now his knowledge is faster than mine.

I let him lead.

This is not a thing I have ever done before.

It is not difficult.

The main corridor. The crypt door behind us. The eastern stair.

We don’t stop.

Up.

We come out through the secondary hold entrance into gray morning.

Low light, cold, flat—the sky above Blackstone Range the color of iron before dawn—and the air outside the hold is the clearest thing I have breathed since we went down.

Varek is at the entrance with four garrison soldiers and Brynna, who takes one look at Drazhul’s chest wound and uses a word I have not previously heard her use.

Drazhul finally lets go of my arm.

He turns to look at me.

His face is doing a thing I have no precedent for. Not the blankness. Not the battle-focus. A look that has no name in any vocabulary I use for reading people, nothing to do with management or assessment. Nothing I have seen in all the time I have been watching him, and I have been watching him constantly.

Varek steps forward. His expression has the specific flatness of a man who has been through something and has decided to be useful first and process it later. “The hall cleared when the floor stopped moving. All seven went at once.” A pause. “We heard it from three levels up.”

He reaches out and puts his hand against the side of my face.

His palm is warm and bloody and it covers my jaw completely. His hand is enormous and it simply stays there.

He just looks at me.

“The sigil.”

“Gone.”