THE NINTH DEBT

Chapter Three: When the Bells Ring Backward

Tavian jolted awake, coughing and choking on suffocating darkness. He clawed frantically at his throat, convinced that some vile thing had crawled down his throat during the endless fall, but his frantic fingers found only sweat-slicked skin and the thin silver chain he had worn around his neck since childhood. Dragging a ragged breath into his burning lungs, he rolled onto his side and vomited a pool of thick, black water onto the cold stone floor beneath him.

Almost immediately, the deep, resonant bells chimed again. They struck a first heavy toll, followed by a second, and then a third, with each vibrating note seeming to physically pull the surrounding world apart.

Clutching his bruised ribs in pain, Tavian staggered unevenly to his feet and looked up, expecting to see broken ceiling beams or the ruined remnants of his mother's house. Instead, there was no hole above him at all—only an endless, starless sky stretching over a surreal landscape that looked like the city of Veyr after a thousand years of decay and abandonment. Buildings leaned at impossible, gravity-defying angles, while cobbled streets ended abruptly in thick walls of pale, swirling mist. Far in the distance, the iconic Treasury tower stood entirely upside down, its needle-like spire buried deep within the clouds while its massive foundations pointed uselessly toward the ground.

Tavian stared at the impossible sight, his mind completely unable to make sense of what his eyes were showing him. Then, the brutal reality of what had transpired rushed back into his memory—the terrifying moment his mother's fingers slipped from his grip, accompanied by the desperate echo of her final words: I love you.

"Mother!" he cried out, but his frantic shout was instantly swallowed by the heavy mist.

He sprinted toward the nearest avenue, stumbling repeatedly over smooth paving stones that felt unnaturally warm against the soles of his boots. Every few steps, he desperately shouted her name into the gloom, but each time he opened his mouth, the echoing bells devoured his voice whole.

Suddenly, he spotted a familiar patch of red fabric caught on the sharp tooth of a broken iron railing. It was Mara's scarf. He snatched the cloth from the metal and pressed it tightly against his face, breathing in the faint, lingering scent of woodsmoke and the cheap soap she always used to wash their clothes. For one agonizing moment, the grief was so overwhelming that he couldn't draw air into his chest.

Then, the sudden sound of hurried footsteps echoed behind him.

"Tavian?" a voice called out.

He spun around on his heel to face the caller. A young woman stood at the far end of the narrow street, clad in the dusty grey uniform of an official Treasury messenger. Her face was deathly pale, and her wide eyes were filled with pure, unadulterated terror.

"Thank the gods," she gasped out, resting her hands on her knees. "I honestly thought I was the only person left down here."

Tavian ignored her relief and closed the distance between them. "Have you seen a woman pass by here? She has brown hair, an injured hand, and was wearing a blue dress!"

The messenger knitted her brows in confusion. "Who?"

"My mother!" he roared.

She flinched violently at his shout, taking a cautious step back. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Overcome by desperation, Tavian grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. "You must have seen her! She was right here just moments ago!"

The woman thrashed against his hold, striking at his chest. "Get your hands off me!"

Horrified by his own loss of control, Tavian released her instantly and stepped back. "I'm sorry," he stammered, raising his hands. "Please... I just desperately need to find her."

The messenger stared at him intently, looking as though he were speaking a foreign language she had never heard in her life. However, her gaze slowly drifted down to the red scarf clutched in his trembling hand, and something subtle changed in her expression.

"Where on earth did you get that?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"My mother gave it to me," Tavian replied flatly.

The woman took two hasty steps backward into the gloom. "There are no mothers here," she whispered fearfully.

Before Tavian could demand an explanation, another single bell tolled ominously overhead. As the sound echoed, the messenger's shadow stretched violently across the cobblestones, lengthening in the completely wrong direction. It crawled up the stone wall behind her, spreading rapidly across the masonry like spilled black ink.

She looked down at her feet, her eyes brimming with panic. "No," she whimpered, shaking her head. "No, please... I paid my debt! I paid everything!"

Without warning, her distorted shadow opened its ink-black mouth wide. The woman let out a blood-curdling scream as the darkness surged upward, rapidly climbing her legs like a tide. Tavian lunged forward to save her, but the moment his fingers brushed the fabric of her sleeve, a violent jolt of icy cold surged directly through his body.

For a fleeting instant, a vision flashed through his mind: he saw a sunlit kitchen, a young girl laughing with golden ribbons in her hair, and a man leaning comfortably beside a warm fireplace. Then, the vision shattered into dust.

The messenger was gone. Only her empty grey uniform crumpled loosely onto the cold stones where she had stood a second before.

Tavian staggered backward, gasping for breath as his heart hammered against his ribs. He could still vividly recall the features of her terrified face, yet he realized with a surge of dread that he could no longer remember a single word she had said to him.

A fourth bell chimed overhead, and somewhere deep within the ruined subterranean city, something let out a low, cruel laugh.

Panic taking hold, Tavian ran blindly through the distorted streets until his lungs burned for air. He crossed an arching bridge constructed entirely from polished white bones, hurried past an ancient stone fountain filled with suspended, unmoving raindrops, and stumbled through an abandoned marketplace where hundreds of wooden stalls stood silent beneath rotting canvas awnings.

Everywhere he turned, the fundamental laws of the world were grotesquely broken. A wooden sign hanging above a bakery altered its carved lettering every single time he blinked his eyes. A row of neighboring houses all featured front doors that opened into the same empty interior room. In one narrow, shadows-draped alley, he spotted a man walking toward him from the opposite direction, only to watch the very same man disappear around the corner directly behind him.

Tavian skidded to a sudden halt, and the stranger stopped in his tracks as well. They stood motionless, staring intensely at one another across the narrow alleyway. Finally, the stranger raised one trembling hand and pointed a finger directly at Tavian's chest.

"You shouldn't have brought that dangerous thing here," the man said softly.

Tavian looked down at his coat, realizing that the Treasury document was still tucked securely inside his inner pocket. The thick black wax seal had completely melted away, leaving a dark, greasy stain across the parchment. Furthermore, the official writing on the page had altered; lines of strange, unfamiliar symbols were crawling across the paper like living insects, constantly rearranging themselves whenever he attempted to read them.

Only a single, chilling sentence at the very bottom remained completely legible: THE NINTH PAYMENT MUST BE DELIVERED ALIVE.

Tavian felt his mouth go utterly dry. "Who wrote this sentence?"

The stranger shook his head slowly. "You did."

"That is entirely impossible," Tavian shot back.

"Is it really?" the man countered.

The stranger took a step out of the shadows, revealing himself to be a young man only a few years older than Tavian, with a deep scar running from his left temple down to his jawline. His eyes possessed the dull, metallic sheen of old copper coins.

"I have been waiting for you to arrive," he stated calmly.

"Everyone down here keeps saying that to me," Tavian snapped in frustration. "What does it actually mean?"

"It means that the reverse bells have begun their toll, and yet you are somehow still breathing," the stranger explained.

"Who are you?" Tavian asked.

The stranger offered a faint, melancholy smile. "I am simply someone who made the grave mistake of remembering."

A swift, unnatural shadow glided across the tiled rooftops above them. In an instant, the stranger's sad smile vanished, replaced by sheer panic.

"Run," he commanded flatly.

"What?" Tavian asked, confused.

"Run, Tavian!" the stranger screamed.

Something heavy dropped from the roof into the alley directly behind Tavian, landing without making a single sound despite the stone floor cracking beneath its weight. Tavian spun around to face the intruder.

The entity wore a sweeping black coat fastened with intricate silver clasps, its head entirely concealed beneath a smooth, featureless porcelain mask. Nine heavy brass rings hung from its long fingers, and in place of a facial structure, thin wisps of writhing darkness shifted behind the mask's hollow eyeholes.

The scarred stranger frantically whispered a defensive prayer under his breath.

The masked creature tilted its head slightly to the side. "An unregistered witness," it observed, its voice sounding like dry paper tearing in half. "How utterly inconvenient."

The stranger bolted down the alley, and Tavian immediately followed on his heels. They plunged through the deserted marketplace as the creature walked steadily behind them, never once breaking its stride or hurrying its pace, yet every time Tavian risked a glance back over his shoulder, the nightmare seemed to be closing the distance between them.

"What is that thing?" Tavian yelled over the noise of their pounding footsteps.

"It is a collector!" the stranger shouted back.

"Is it Hadrik?"

"It is infinitely worse!"

They crashed shoulder-first through a heavy wooden door, tumbling into a cramped, dusty shop. The stranger slammed the thick door shut behind them and desperately dragged a massive wooden cabinet across the entryway to barricade it. For a few agonizing seconds, neither of them spoke as they caught their breath in the dim light.

Then, the heavy cabinet began to slide smoothly across the floorboards. Something on the other side was pushing the massive piece of furniture aside with the effortless pressure of a single finger.

The stranger grabbed Tavian tightly by his collar, pulling his face close. "Listen to me very carefully," he hissed in a panicked whisper. "If that thing asks for your name, do not answer it. If it offers to return your mother to you, do not believe a word it says. And if you happen to hear your own voice coming from somewhere you cannot see—"

The heavy cabinet scraped another inch across the floorboards with a grinding screech.

"—whatever you do, do not answer that voice either," the stranger finished.

A gentle knock echoed through the wood of the door—three slow, impeccably polite taps.

Then, the familiar voice of Hadrik Voss spoke warmly from the other side. "Tavian, my boy. Be a good lad and open the door."

Tavian froze in place, his blood turning to ice. Beside him, the stranger's face drained of every last drop of color.

"That is not Hadrik Voss," the stranger whispered in terror.

The voice on the other side of the door chuckled softly. "Of course it isn't."

A long, hairline crack split down the exact center of the door's thick timber.

"I am the very reason Hadrik is terrified of the dark," the voice added smoothly.

With a deafening crunch, the cabinet was shoved forward, and Tavian stumbled backward into the shelves, clutching his mother's red scarf against his chest. The heavy door burst inward, sending splinters flying through the air.

However, the tall figure in the porcelain mask was nowhere to be seen. Standing in the ruined doorway instead was Mara Rook.

Her injured hand hung limply at her side, her blue dress was torn at the seams, and a smudge of blood streaked her pale cheek, yet she looked precisely as Tavian remembered her.

"Sweetheart," she whispered, extending her good arm toward him.

Overcome with emotion, Tavian took a hesitant step forward, but the stranger immediately seized his wrist in a vice-like grip.

"Look down at her feet!" the stranger yelled.

Tavian lowered his eyes to the floor. Mara's feet were hovering two inches above the stone floorboards without touching them. Furthermore, extending from beneath the hem of her dress was a long, pitch-black shadow that stretched backward out into the street, where dozens of pale, severed human hands were tightly gripping its edges.

Her welcoming smile widened unnaturally across her face. "Come here to me, Tavian."

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run to her, to throw his arms around her neck and never let go again. But then she opened her mouth to speak once more, and the sound that came out was not her soft, comforting voice at all.

It was his own voice.

"Finally," she whispered in Tavian's exact cadence and tone. "You've come home."

Outside, the heavy reverse bells abruptly ceased their tolling. And for the very first time since plunging into the dark abyss beneath his home, Tavian understood the true horror of what he was facing: whatever malicious entity had taken his mother was no longer attempting to masquerade as someone else.

It was actively pretending to be him.