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I flinch, waiting for the impact. But it never comes.

The air thickens, turning into a wall of resistance so thick my ears pop. The silence is ripped away, replaced instantly by a roar of sound that hits me like a physical slap to the face.

The world explodes into a bloody red. We’re standing on a metal gantry overlooking a sprawling, subterranean pit, teeming with thousands of bodies. The smell hits me next—rust, meat, and exhausts—so strong I taste it on the back of my tongue. Below us, stalls are carved into the walls of the pit like honeycomb, glowing with neon sigils, while demons haggle, scream, and fight in the crush below.

The spiralling, rusted, metal staircase screams under our weight, shifting and groaning with every clattering footstep.

“Welcome to the bottom of the barrel,” Malachi says, tightening his grip on my hand.

We pass a stall where jars of severed fingers are crammed tight in cloudy brine, the nails scratching incessantly against the glass with a sound like a thousand trapped beetles. Another vendor’s selling strips of what looks like dried leather, but I all-out gag into the back of my free hand when I notice the 'leather' has faded tattoos on it.

He takes a sharp left, pulling me toward a darker, quieter corner of the Slag Heaps where the red neon lights flicker and die in quick succession, and there’s a stall that looks like a nursery for a serial killer’s spawn.

It’s draped in moth-eaten lace that’s grey with decades of grime, and instead of cute mobiles spinning in the draft, there are strings of hollowed-out finger bones clacking together dryly.

Behind the counter sits a creature that looks like it was knit together from dried apple skin and malice. She’s hunched over, her eyes milky and blind, polishing a pacifier with some kind of rag that looks suspiciously like a tongue.

“Customers,” she croaks, her gnarled, fungus-thick nails stopping their moving. “I smell... fresh blood. And sulfur. An odd pairing.”

“We need a rattle,” Malachi says, cutting through the pleasantries with his usual sledgehammer tact. He steps up to the counter, his massive frame dwarfing the hunched crone. “Stasis-grade. Heavy duty. I don't want the cheap tin crap that breaks after one tantrum.”

The crone’s head snaps up, her neck cracking audibly. She sniffs the air, her nostrils flaring. “A Stasis Rattle? Expensive taste. Effective for silencing... energetic spawn.” She tilts her head, a sly, toothless grin splitting her face. “You are a father, then?”

Malachi stiffens. “Fuck n—” He stops dead. “Yes,” he corrects. “Yes. We have a... babe. A son.”

The idea of having a child at all, let alone a child with Malachi almost makes me choke on my own spit.

“He is... spirited,” Malachi continues, his voice dropping into a register of exhausted parenthood that’s so convincing it’s actually scary. “Loud. He has his mother’s lungs and a temper that could level a city block. We haven't slept in three moons.”

The crone cackles. “Ah, the joys of rearing.” She reaches under the counter, her yellow claws scrabbling in the dark, and pulls out a silver rattle. “This will paralyze his vocal cords for six hours at a time. Guaranteed silence.”

“Perfect,” Malachi says, reaching for the velvet bag at his hip.

“That will be twelve,” the crone hisses, her milky eyes locking onto the bag. “Molars. Human preferred. Roots intact.”

He upends the velvet sack onto the counter, and a cascade of white teeth spills out onto the rotting wood with a sound like falling hail. He counts out twelve bloody, root-heavy molars with a casual flick of his silver finger, sliding them toward her like poker chips. Then he snatches up the rattle and shoves it into my cracked leather bag.

“Come on, darling. We need to get back before the little terror wakes up and eats the nanny.”

He moves faster now, his tension ratcheting up like a coiled spring as he practically drags me into the deeper, darker arteries. I scramble to keep up, but my boot skids on a patch of slick, unidentifiable slime. As I topple forward, Malachi’s hand clamps onto my bicep like a vice at the exact second Chain-Chewer crowds his bulk against my side, sandwiching me between them in a wall of protective force.

“Eyes up,” Malachi hisses, and for the first time, there’s a legitimate tremor in his voice. “We’re entering the Butcher’s Quarter.”

Now I get why he didn't want me here.

The first part of the market wasn’t so bad—just loud and weird. But this? This is horrific. It’s a hunting ground that stinks of rotting meat, copper, and unwashed sex.

“Don't stop,” Malachi snarls, shoving me forward toward a stall draped in blood-spattered plastic, positioning his body to block my view of the writhing mess of limbs pressed up and moaning against the brick wall beside us.

We skid to a halt in front of a counter that gleams with a terrifying, clinical cleanliness amidst the filth. Standing behind it is a man. Not a monster, not a beast—just a man. He’s got the jawline of a movie star and the build of a linebacker, wearing an apron drenched with so much fresh blood it looks like wet paint, and when he looks up, his eyes are empty. No whites. No irises. Just two pools of obsidian oil.

“I need a Void-Glass scalpel,” Malachi demands, slamming his hand on the metal counter.

The butcher wipes a cleaver on his thigh, leaving a fresh smear of red on the fabric and chuckles wetly.

“A Void-Glass scalpel?” he muses, tilting his head. “My, my. Someone is looking to make an incision that doesn't heal. That’s a very specific, very expensive piece of hardware.”

He reaches under the counter and produces a slender scalpel that seems to drink the light around it.