THE NINTH DEBT

Chapter Two: The Voice Beneath the Floor

Before his very eyes, the floorboards split open beneath Tavian's feet with a sickening groan. He stumbled backward onto his heels as a black crack tore violently through the wooden planks, grinding to a halt a mere inch from the toes of his soaked leather boots. Deep beneath the house, something massive shifted—not in the manner of a creature crawling or digging through the soil, but rather rolling slowly, as though the entire structure had been built atop the spine of a sleeping beast.

"Mother!" Tavian cried out.

Mara Rook remained on her knees in the shadow of the table, clutching her injured hand tightly against her chest as tears glistened down her pale face. Yet, her terrified gaze was not fixed on the splintering chasm in the floor, but rather on Hadrik Voss. The debt collector had abandoned every shred of his usual arrogance; his face was drained of all color, and the brass token clutched in his trembling hand clicked repeatedly against his heavy rings.

"Put it away," Mara whispered, her voice laced with a lethal coldness.

Hadrik froze, incapable of movement.

"Put that cursed thing away right now!" she demanded again, louder this time. For the first time since he had crossed their threshold, the ruthless collector looked genuinely terrified of her.

Then, echoing up from the darkness beneath the floorboards, the strange voice spoke once more. "Tavian," it called.

It bore an uncanny resemblance to Mara’s voice, yet it sounded far younger, softer, and almost playful. Tavian felt his stomach tighten into a hard knot. He knew his mother's voice better than he knew his own breath; he knew the sharp edge it acquired when she was angry, the gentle, rhythmic hum she fell into when she thought he was asleep, and the heavy, exhausted silence that inevitably followed another day of unpaid debts. This voice carried traces of all those familiar sounds, but it was underlined by a chilling patience, sounding as though it had been waiting in the dark for him for a very long time.

"Don't answer it," Hadrik warned through gritted teeth.

Tavian turned his head toward the man, his pulse racing. "What is that thing?"

"It is something your mother should have buried years ago," Hadrik hissed.

Mara flinched at the words, and that single, instinctual movement told Tavian more than any lengthy explanation ever could. Before he could demand answers, the fissure in the wood widened further, releasing a burst of freezing wind that swept through the room and blew out the very last candle flame.

In the sudden obscurity, the brass token in Hadrik's palm began to emit a faint, sickly luminescence. Nine circles were visible on its face: eight remained utterly dull and lifeless, but the ninth pulsed with rhythmic light, resembling a living eye staring back at them.

"Give me the document right now," Hadrik ordered abruptly, turning his sharp gaze onto the boy.

Without thinking, Tavian's hand moved instinctively toward the hidden fold inside his coat. Hadrik caught the subtle gesture immediately, his expression contorting into pure venom.

"You little fool," the collector snarled before lunging across the small space.

Tavian ducked low to avoid the blow, but the heavy collector caught the collar of his shirt and slammed him violently against the wall. A sharp bolt of pain exploded across Tavian’s shoulder, forcing a gasp from his lungs as the folded Treasury document pressed painfully into his ribs, its heavy wax seal digging directly into his skin.

"Where did you get it?" Hadrik hissed, his face inches away.

Tavian thrashed against the crushing grip, digging his heels into the floor. "Get off me!"

"That suspension order was sealed long before you were even born!" Hadrik spat, his grip tightening. "No one outside the high ranks of the Treasury should even know it exists!"

"Then perhaps you should stop leaving your precious papers where ordinary people can find them!" Tavian shot back.

Hadrik struck him hard across the mouth with a backhand, sending a surge of metallic blood into Tavian's mouth. Mara screamed at the impact, a sharp sound that was immediately answered by a tremendous bang from somewhere deep beneath the foundation.

The entire apartment shuddered violently, sending thick showers of dust pouring down from the ceiling joints. Hadrik released his grip on Tavian and staggered backward to keep his balance as something hammered relentlessly against the underside of the house. It struck once, then twice, and on the third devastating strike, every single glass window pane in the building shattered outward into the night.

Beyond the ruined windows, the heavy city bells began to chime. Yet, the deep ringing was not originating from the high towers above the city, but rather echoing up from deep beneath the cobbled streets. Tavian had listened to Veyr's bells every single night of his life; they were the regular cadence that signaled curfews, public executions, Treasury tax collections, and the gray dawn of each new day. But these bells were grotesquely different. Their notes rolled through the timber frame of the house in reverse, each sickening toll seeming to swallow the sound that had come before it. Tavian felt the heavy vibrations reverberating deep within his teeth, while outside in the streets, chorus after chorus of human screams began to erupt.

Hadrik scrambled over the debris to the open doorway. "Stay inside the house!" he shouted out into the alley to his waiting men.

Neither of his assistants replied. One man stood frozen completely still beneath a streetlamp, staring at his own outstretched hands in absolute horror, while the younger assistant was frantically scratching at his own face as if trying to tear away his skin.

"What in the world is happening out there?" Tavian demanded, wiping the blood from his lip.

Hadrik ignored the question entirely, turning back and seizing Mara roughly by the arm. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"

She jerked her arm out of his grasp with surprising force. "I tried to stop it!"

"You were explicitly ordered to destroy every last record!" Hadrik bellowed over the noise.

"I destroyed every single copy I could lay my hands on!" she screamed back.

"Evidently not every copy," Hadrik muttered, his sharp eyes darting directly toward the bulge in Tavian's coat. "And apparently, not every child either."

Tavian felt the air leave his lungs entirely. Every child?

Beside the table, Mara's defiant expression completely crumpled into despair. Realizing he had let slip far too much, the collector reached for her once more, but Tavian immediately stepped between them, blocking the man's path.

"Explain what you mean by that," Tavian demanded, his voice shaking with fury.

"Get out of my way, boy," Hadrik growled.

"Tell me what happened to the children!" Tavian shouted back.

For a brief, agonizing moment, the surrounding room seemed to shrink down around the three of them as the air turned unnaturally heavy. Then, Mara reached out and tightly caught Tavian by the wrist.

"Please," she whispered, her eyes wide with desperation. "Whatever you end up hearing tonight, you must promise me that you will never let them take you into the Treasury."

"Mother—"

"Promise me, Tavian!"

The sheer terror in her voice was far worse than any shouting. Tavian had watched her endure years of starvation, relentless humiliation, and constant threats from debt collectors who wanted to harvest her remaining lifespan, yet he had never seen her look at him as if he were already a corpse.

Before he could give her an answer, a blood-curdling cry echoed from the street outside. Hadrik spun back toward the open doorway just in time to see that one of his assistants had vanished. The man was not dead, nor had he fallen to the ground; he was simply gone. His dark woolen clothes lay in a hollow heap beside the curb, while the dark cobblestones beneath the fabric had turned a stark, blinding white. The remaining assistant stumbled backward in a panic, screaming a name that Tavian couldn't quite decipher over the din.

The man suddenly looked directly at Hadrik, his eyes wide with confusion. "Who are you?" he whispered.

Hadrik stared back at his subordinate in sheer disbelief. "It's me, you idiot—Hadrik!"

The assistant shook his head violently, tears streaming down his cheeks. "No... I know that face," he sobbed, backing further into the dark street. "I know I know that face, but I can't remember why!"

A silent shadow swept across the street, though nothing stood between the stone houses and the pale moon above. In a fraction of a second, the second assistant vanished entirely, leaving only his empty clothing to collapse onto the white stones.

Hadrik slammed the wooden door shut and threw the heavy bolt, his chest heaving. A suffocating silence hung over the ruined room for several long seconds, until Mara began to laugh. It was a fragile, broken sound that was almost impossible to distinguish from weeping.

"The Hollowing," she murmured, staring blankly at the floor. "It has finally started."

Tavian had heard dark rumors about the Hollowing ever since he was old enough to listen to street chatter. Everyone in the lower districts knew the legends—stories of entire villages disappearing overnight, of a merchant returning home from a trading journey only to discover that his wife had never existed in any record, or of an entire city district being scrubbed clean from municipal maps, leaving behind nothing but empty stone foundations where busy streets had once stood. The Ninth Treasury always dismissed these incidents as necessary administrative corrections, the temple priests referred to them as divine judgment, and the local poor spoke of them in hushed tones as warnings. Yet none of those childhood tales had truly prepared Tavian for the horror of watching a living man vanish while his empty clothes dropped to the ground.

He reached out and took hold of Mara's uninjured hand. "We are leaving right now."

"There is nowhere left to run, Tavian," she answered softly.

"We can make it down to the river," he urged, pulling her toward the back threshold. "We can hide beneath the arches of the old bridges until morning comes."

"There isn't going to be a morning." She stated the words with such cold, terrifying certainty that Tavian paused to look at her.

Mara swallowed hard, her voice trembling. "Tavian, you need to listen to me carefully. The Hollowing doesn't simply destroy a place; it completely erases it from the fabric of the world. When it claims something, reality itself rewrites itself to smooth over the loss."

"Then we will just stay ahead of it," he insisted.

"You don't understand," she wept. "If it claims someone you love, you won't even be left with the memory that they ever existed."

"Then I will hold onto the memory for both of us," Tavian vowed firmly.

Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she looked up at him. "Oh, my brave, foolish boy." She reached up with her good hand to gently stroke his cheek, and for one brief, fleeting second, Tavian felt like a protected child again. The world outside could crumble into ash, the Treasury could burn to the ground, and the debt collectors could choke on their precious brass coins—so long as his mother was standing beside him, he believed he could withstand anything.

Then, her expression faltered, and she whispered, "I should have told you the truth when you were much younger."

The brief warmth in Tavian's chest evaporated instantly. "Told me what?"

Mara cast a fearful glance down toward the widening fracture in the floor. "About the night you were actually born."

Before she could utter another word, the entire house lurched sideways with a sickening crunch. Tavian lost his footing and collided heavily against the wooden table, sending stacks of cracked crockery smashing onto the floorboards around his feet. The ceiling beams groaned under immense pressure, and a long fracture raced rapidly down the plaster wall, exposing an endless, void-like darkness behind the bricks. Something massive was pulling the entire building apart from below.

Hadrik scrambled forward, seizing his brass token and pressing it desperately against the spreading fracture on the wall. "By the first covenant," he roared, his voice cracking with desperation, "I command this threshold to remain sealed!"

For a brief second, a brilliant web of golden light spread across the cracking wall, but the power was short-lived; with a sharp snap, the brass token split cleanly down the middle. Hadrik stared at the broken metal in his hands, utterly horror-stricken.

From deep beneath the floor, a sound like a thousand whispered voices echoed upward all at once. Though the individual words were blurred together, Tavian could feel them settling directly inside his skull like a cold weight. He heard his own name called out clearly, followed immediately by a second name—a name he had never been taught in his life, yet one that nevertheless made his heart leap with instant, terrifying recognition.

Mara slammed both of her hands over his ears, shielding him. "Don't listen to it!" she screamed.

But the whispered name had already penetrated his mind: Tavien Ar—

The final syllable of the ancient name was utterly drowned out by a thunderous crash as the floor completely gave way beneath them.

Tavian reached out blindly and caught Mara's wrist just as the room dissolved into absolute darkness. For one agonizing heartbeat, he held her suspended above the widening, pitch-black abyss, his grip failing as her slippery fingers began to slide against his.

"Don't let go of me!" he screamed into the dark.

She looked up at him through the gloom, trying her best to smile. "I love you," she whispered.

Before Tavian could pull her up, something seized her from the void below with unnatural force, pulling her downward until her fingers tore completely free from his grip. Tavian plunged headfirst into the darkness after her, reaching wildly into the empty air as the house vanished into nothingness above him. He could hear Hadrik screaming somewhere in the dark, could hear the sickening reverse tolls of the subterranean bells ringing out, and could hear his mother's voice frantically calling his name from the depths.

Yet the very last thing Tavian heard before losing consciousness was not his mother's voice at all. It was his own voice—calm, eerily familiar, and waiting for him somewhere far beneath the foundation of the world.

"Finally," the voice whispered inside his head. "You've come home."

And with that, the blackness swallowed him whole.