"If you don't lower your voice, Cassian, the seventh-century bureaucracy is going to hear you and slap us with an retroactive surcharge for disturbing the administrative peace," Saphielle muttered, her boots sliding lightly over the slick, grey stones as she slipped behind a jagged outcropping of limestone. Her eyes scanned the towering canyon walls, where sheets of grey ice hung frozen over the dark, weeping mouths of hidden caves. "And right now, the last thing we need is another tax audit."Cassian yanked hard on the reins, hauling Barnaby to a sudden, dusty halt right beneath a colossal overhang of weeping ice. The bronze cylinder in his satchel gave a sharp, violent thrum against his ribs, sending a stinging ripple of blue energy straight through his waistcoat. "I am not the one broadcasting complaints about fiscal mismanagement through natural geological phenomena, Saphielle. I am simply pointing out that this entire ravine lacks basic directional signage.""Dire

"That is not a normal storm," Cassian said, his voice dropping an octave as he instinctively reached for the vibrating bronze cylinder in his satchel. "The barometric pressure is dropping faster than the quarterly revenue reports of a failing municipal bakery.""Stop analyzing meteorological anomalies like they are bad investments and run!" Saphielle shouted, sweeping her staff through the air as a jagged bolt of violet lightning tore through the bruised purple clouds above. The discharge struck the limestone cliff face ten feet to their left, blasting a shower of molten rock and smoking debris directly across their path.Barnaby the mule let out a bray of absolute, unadulterated existential terror, rearing back on his hind legs and nearly tipping the cart over into a deep crevice. Cassian scrambled forward, grabbing the leather reins with both white-knuckled hands. "Calm yourself, Barnaby! Panic is entirely counterproductive to our current survival metrics!""Y

"Keep your heads down and stop looking at the horizon," Saphielle muttered, her hand hovering over the hilt of her blade as the heavy wooden cart rattled to a halt against a waist-high stone fence. "We are in open territory now, and Dorian's scouts are not the only things roaming these flats."Cassian wiped a layer of grey, dried mud from his spectacles, wincing as the salt-crrusted fabric of his suit rasped against his skin. "I am entirely disinclined to look at anything that does not involve a hot bath, a dry ledger, and a guaranteed minimum of three square meals. Where precisely have we washed ashore, Elsinore?"The old intern blinked his milky eyes, his head cocked sideways as if listening to a frequency entirely imperceptible to the living. "We have arrived at the periphery of the settlement colloquially known as the Hollows. The local populace has exercised a very specific demographic choice regarding sensory input.""Sensory input?" Saphielle vaulted over

"You expect us to cross the Black Tarn in that?" Saphielle crossed her arms, her gaze fixed with profound suspicion upon a wooden rowboat that looked as though it had been dragged from the bottom of a swamp a century ago and left out in the sun to warp. "Cassian, the hull is held together primarily by dried resin, stubborn optimism, and what appears to be a very thick colony of river barnacles.""It is structurally viable enough to stay afloat if we maintain optimal weight distribution," Cassian insisted, carefully brushing a layer of grey mud off the sleeve of his thoroughly ruined velvet coat. He turned his attention to the elderly villager standing beside the rickety wooden dock. "Elder Thomas assured me this vessel is watertight, provided we avoid excessive shifting of cargo."Elder Thomas, his eye sockets smooth and healed over with pale, milky scar tissue where his eyes had once been, offered a toothless, unsettling grin. "The Tarn takes what it wants, traveler.

"Benthic layer be damned," Saphielle snapped, her fingers tightening around the wood of her staff until her knuckles cracked. "Something just brushed against the keel, and it wasn't a pocket of mineral gas."Cassian lowered his pocketknife, his spectacles sliding down his salt-crusted nose as the small boat lurched violently to port. "That is statistically improbable unless—""Quiet!" Saphielle hissed, dropping into a low, balanced crouch despite the swaying of the rotten vessel. "Look at the water."The pitch-black surface of the Black Tarn suddenly parted. A massive, pale-skinned head broke through the oily ripples, completely blind and shimmering with bioluminescent fungal patches along its jawline. A low, vibrating hum resonated from its throat, matching the exact metallic frequency of the bronze cylinder sitting in Cassian’s satchel."Oh," Cassian whispered, his administrative composure finally cracking. "That is a severe structural compl