The door clicked shut behind him, swallowing the blue mist and the noblewoman's coiled presence. The tunnel's silence was deafening—thick, damp, and empty. No whispers. No phantom screams. Just the drip… drip… of water on stone and the frantic hammering of his own heart.
Jay sagged against the clammy wall, Tom's watch clutched so tightly the brass edges bit into his palm. "Her mind was silent throughout." The realization echoed, colder than the stones. She hadn't just hidden her thoughts; she'd been a void. A deliberate absence in the cacophony he'd learned to dread. What kind of power did that?
He pushed off the wall, legs trembling. "Alright, Jay," he muttered, the sound swallowed by the dark. "Just listen. Just… walk."
He didn't head for the chapel's exit. Instead, he closed his eyes, not against the dark, but against the overwhelming *nothingness* of the tunnels. He focused inward, past the pounding headache, past the lingering scent of bergamot and jasmine that clung to his clothes like a taunt. He reached for the familiar, ugly hum beneath the city's skin – the low thrum of fear, greed, exhaustion.
There.
A dull roar, distant at first, then swelling: a tangled river of thought.
"—gotta make rent, gotta make rent—"
"—bastard cheated me on the flour—"
"—One more roll for the win—"
The sheer, crushing normalcy of it was almost a relief. It hurt, scraping against his raw nerves like sandpaper, but it was real. Painfully, mundanely real. He followed the current of mental noise, letting it pull him like a lifeline through the twisting dark.
---
Blinding light.
Jay stumbled out of a crumbling sewer grate hidden beneath a butcher's stall, blinking furiously. The late afternoon sun sliced through the market's reek of offal and overripe fruit, hitting his eyes like shards of glass. Noise crashed over him – vendors hawking, carts rattling, children shrieking – amplified tenfold by the minds behind them.
"—rotten batch, gotta sell it quick—"
"—pick his pocket when he's distracted—"
"—wish Pa'd come home from the docks sober just once—"
He flinched, raising a hand as if to ward off physical blows. The watch in his pocket tick-tick-ticked, a fragile anchor in the sensory storm. Focus on the anchor. One foot. Then the other.
He moved through the throng like a ghost. People jostled him, their fleeting thoughts brushing against his consciousness like cobwebs: annoyance, indifference, fleeting pity for the gaunt veteran swaying on his feet. He kept his head down, eyes fixed on the grimy cobblestones, mapping the familiar path towards the dim cabin he called home – a cramped room above a chandler's shop, smelling perpetually of cheap tallow and despair. It wasn't the smoky bar. Not tonight. The bar meant noise he couldn't control, faces he couldn't bear. The cabin meant… silence. Or as close as he could get.
As he turned down a narrower alley, the stink of the canal rising thick and green, a flicker of familiar warmth brushed his mind. Unbidden, an image surfaced: Cole's scarred hands grinding dried roots in his dim workshop, Lira watching with wide, curious eyes. A thought, clear and sharp, cut through the mental fog – not his own:
"—hope the stubborn bastard took the full dose this time. Gold vial ain't cheap, and the girl asks too many damn questions—"
Jay froze. Cole. Thinking about him. Thinking about the gold vial. Thinking about… suppressing him? Protecting him? Or something else? The thought vanished as quickly as it came, leaving a residue of bitter confusion.
He leaned against a soot-stained wall, breathing hard. The noblewoman's warning echoed: "It knows you now." Did that include Cole's thoughts suddenly piercing the noise? Was his control slipping? Or was it – the Serpent King, the thing wearing his skin– already prying?
He pushed off the wall, the watch a cold weight against his thigh. Home. He just needed to get home. Bar the door. Try to sleep. Forget the blue mist, the silent noblewoman, the thing in the dark that knew his name.
But as he climbed the rickety stairs to his room, the last sliver of sunset catching the dust motes in the air, one clear, terrible thought cut through the exhaustion:
Tom would have known what to do.
The watch ticked on in the sudden, hollow silence of his room. Answering nothing.
---