Chapter 3: Bloodrise!
The pit listened.
Bloodrise came through torn knuckles, burst mouths, and the wet shine under Kael’s nails. The pit had taught everyone to hide pain; this pressure made hiding useless.
HISS!
A loose chain knocked once above bloodrise, then went still. Nobody relaxed; in Furnace Sink Nine, stillness usually meant something had finished choosing where to hurt.
CLANG!
The next danger did not need to announce itself. It was already in the angle of the floor, the sour taste behind the tongue, and the way Kael’s hands stopped hanging loose. The blackened nail trembled in the floor groove, showing where the room wanted pressure to bite next.
Fear made room for pain.
The drain was too narrow for a man who had just survived being crushed.
Kael crawled anyway.
Black water filled the lower half of the tunnel. It was warm, sour, and thick with flakes of old fat from the furnace kitchens. Every movement dragged his ribs against stone. Every breath scraped something sharp inside his chest. Ahead of him, Renn moved like a frightened rat, one hand tucked against his body, knees splashing through the foul water. Behind them, the rusted bar screamed under pressure.
BANG!
The enforcers were widening the gap.
BANG!
Kael pulled himself forward with one arm that still answered him and one that kept threatening to become useless.
"Faster," he said.
Renn looked back. His face was a pale smear in the dark.
"I am trying."
"Try angry. It helps."
The boy made a broken sound that might have been a laugh if the pit had ever taught him how. A pressure bolt punched through the drain mouth behind them and struck the ceiling.
CRACK!
Stone chips rained down. One cut Kael across the brow. He ducked and kept moving.
The tunnel sloped down.
The heat changed. Less furnace steam. More rot. Something dead had been left in the lower drain long enough to become part of the air.
Renn gagged.
Kael caught his ankle before the boy could slip into a side drop.
"Eyes forward."
"I cannot see."
"Feel the wall. Count turns. Do not stop."
"Where are we going?"
Kael had no answer.
He knew furnace trenches. Loading ramps. Bone stacks. Press yards. Worker pens. He knew the path between hunger and sleep. He did not know the under routes. Those belonged to corpse traders, rats, leech catchers, and people who could sell your organs while you were still deciding whether to trust them.
Behind them, metal tore.
RIP!
The bar gave.
Voices entered the drain.
"Vorr went through!"
"Light rods!"
"The boy too!"
A harsh blue glow spilled into the tunnel behind them. Kael pushed Renn ahead and forced his body through the next bend. His back scraped the ceiling. His vision pulsed black at the edges.
The Sovereign Root stirred.
It did not speak first.
It waited for pressure.
Kael hated that he was beginning to understand it.
A safe man gained nothing.
A dying man who refused to finish dying became food for the impossible root. The tunnel opened into a round maintenance throat with four exits. Old iron signs hung above them, but three were blank with rust. The fourth had a mark scratched into the wall beneath it: seven short cuts and one long cut.
Renn saw it and froze.
"No."
Kael dragged himself out of the tunnel and stood badly. "What?"
"Black Seven."
"That means something?"
The boy nodded too fast. "People vanish there. Drain girls. Bone thieves. Things with no eyes. Garron used to send debt runners through it when he wanted them gone without paperwork."
The glow behind them grew brighter.
Kael looked at the other exits. One breathed furnace heat. One carried water too fast. One smelled like acid strong enough to sting his eyes from three steps away. Black Seven smelled like old blood and wet stone.
"Good," Kael said. "Maybe the men chasing us hate it too."
Renn swallowed.
"They have rods."
"Then we should not let them stand far away."
Kael pulled him into Black Seven.
The passage dropped almost immediately. Not stairs. Just a slanted chute carved smooth by years of runoff and bodies. Renn slid first with a startled yelp. Kael followed, heels scraping, one hand dragging sparks from a strip of exposed metal in the wall.
They hit the bottom hard.
THUD!
Kael’s side exploded with pain. He rolled onto his back and saw nothing for three breaths.
The system did.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: DRAIN ROUTE IMPACT AND INTERNAL RIB STRESS
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND: NONE GIVEN
▶ UPDATE COMPLETE: UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS → 13
====================================================================
"Stop counting," Kael muttered.
Renn crouched beside him. "What?"
"Not you."
That made the boy move away from him again.
Fair.
Kael forced himself upright.
The lower tunnel was wider, lined with pipe bones and old cable roots. Pale fungus grew in broken patches along the ceiling. It gave enough light to show footprints in the black slime.
Fresh footprints.
Small ones.
Kael raised a hand and Renn stopped.
Something clicked ahead.
The sound lacked the clean click of machinery.
Metal against tooth.
A woman’s voice came from the dark.
"If you brought the press men into my route, I should cut your throat for manners alone."
Renn whispered, "Vaela."
Kael did not look away from the dark.
"You know her?"
"Everyone knows of her."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the answer."
The woman stepped into fungus light.
She was lean, wrapped in dark cloth that had been patched too many times to have an original color. Two crescent blades rested in her hands. Not big. Not ceremonial. Short enough for drains, curved enough to open tendons and leave a man standing while his legs forgot him.
Her hair was tied close to her skull. Her eyes moved over Kael’s body with fast, cold attention.
"You are bigger in the rumors," she said.
Kael looked down at himself. Blood, mud, torn wrap, one arm bound in stolen red cloth.
"They had little time to improve me."
Vaela’s mouth twitched.
Kindness had no part in it as amusement with a knife was under it.
Behind them, boots hit the chute. The first enforcer slid into the lower tunnel and raised his rod before his feet settled.
Vaela moved.
Her breath cut out once.
HAAH!
Not fear. Timing. The sound told Kael she had already chosen the knee before the man understood he had landed.
She did not charge straight. She crossed the side wall, one foot on stone, one hand catching a cable root, body low and fast. Her crescent blade flashed through the back of the man’s knee.
RIP!
The enforcer screamed and fell. Before he hit the ground, Vaela’s second blade punched under his jaw and out through the soft meat below his ear.
Blood sheeted down his collar.
She withdrew the blade and let him drown on the floor. The second enforcer crashed down after him.
Kael caught that one.
Not cleanly. Not well.
He took the rod across the shoulder.
BANG!
The blow drove him sideways, but his right hand closed on the man’s wrist. The Sovereign Root dragged the impact into his bones. Kael stepped in and slammed his forehead into the enforcer’s face slit.
CRACK!
The helmet dented. The man staggered.
Kael drove his elbow into the same spot.
CRACK!
The face slit collapsed inward. Blood sprayed through the narrow hole. The man dropped to both knees, choking. Vaela watched Kael for half a heartbeat longer than she needed to.
"You really did kill Garron."
"He helped."
More boots scraped above.
Vaela pointed one blade deeper into the route.
"Move. Both of you. If they bring lamp hounds, this tunnel becomes a mouth."
Renn obeyed without question.
Kael did not.
"Why help?"
Vaela looked at the two dead enforcers.
"I did not help. I defended my route. You are still a price with legs."
"There is a price already?"
"There will be by the time the corpse markets wake."
A horn sounded through the pipes. Closer now. Lower. Vaela’s expression changed.
For the first time, Kael saw irritation become concern.
"They started purge bells."
Renn went still.
Kael asked, "Meaning?"
Vaela turned and moved fast. "Meaning they are not hunting one worker anymore. They are clearing witnesses, routes, helpers, sellers, and anyone poor enough to blame. Congratulations, press ghost. You made the pit nervous."
The three of them entered a long throat of stone where the fungus had been scraped away. Behind them, the purge bells changed rhythm. Vaela stopped for half a breath and listened with her head tilted. Kael heard only metal noise and men shouting through tunnels.
"What?" he asked.
"They split the hunt," she said. "One crew stays behind for workers. One crew follows blood. One crew seals sellers. That means Garron’s death is already worth more than anger. Someone above him wants the story buried before morning."
Renn hugged his broken hand tighter.
"My mother is in east wash."
Vaela did not look at him. "Then hope she lies well."
Kael watched the boy’s face collapse and felt the words land inside his own chest. Not because Vaela was cruel. Because she was probably right. In Furnace Sink Nine, survival was often a talent for sounding dead before someone made it official.
He forced himself forward.
In the dark ahead, wet things shifted.
The shapes were too wrong for men.
Many legs dragged through water.
Renn whimpered.
Vaela lifted both crescents.
Kael felt the black root tighten behind his eyes. From the ceiling, pale bodies began to drop.
One.
Then five.
Then dozens.
Marrow leeches hit the floor with soft, hungry sounds.
PLOP!
Vaela sighed like the day had become personally rude.
"Of course," she said. "Black Seven is feeding tonight, and it had heard fresh blood arrive."
One leech opened its mouth across the whole underside of its body.
SKRRK!
Renn made a strangled sound and clamped both hands over his own mouth before panic could become noise. Kael saw the effort. The boy was learning that fear could still obey.
"Fresh blood does not get to choose us," Kael said.
Kael measured the next three steps without moving his eyes. Step, strike, cover. If the room objected, the room could bleed. The rust bead slid toward his boot and stopped where his next step would land.