bookandnovel Chapter 60: How to NOT get in home after a long night in a manhole (4)
Chapter 60: How to NOT get in home after a long night in a manhole (4)
Chapter 60: How to NOT get in home after a long night in a manhole (4)Each step was a sentence.
The water on the ground had turned into thick mud, mixed with blood, fur, old urine, and whatever else had been festering there for decades.
My feet sank like shovels into coagulated sewage. Every pull of my legs came with a wet pop, and the weight of Thalia on my shoulders—though not unbearable—created a new kind of urgency in my chest: the urgency not to fall.
Because if I fell, she’d fall too.
And if she fell... she might not get back up.
She was trembling. Breathing weakly, her fingers clutching at my shirt like the claws of a disoriented bird. No more screaming, no more crying. Just panting.
A kind of silence born from shock, not peace.
And behind us, the sound that never faded: paws. Dozens. Scratching at the tunnel, gnawing at the ground, chewing through the trail we left behind. A sea of teeth and eyes.
The darkness ahead was just as thick as behind, but I
I turned my head. Slowly. The words formed before the visual confirmation. As if my brain had recognized the pattern before my eyes.
He leaned forward. A smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. And his eyes—ah, those eyes hadn’t changed. Still carrying that sharp calm. That confidence of someone who knows exactly where to strike to make it hurt for longer.
"Wasn’t for lack of trying," I finally murmured.
I sat down. Rested my head against the stone and closed my eyes for a moment.
He continued:
"So what’s the crime this time?"
"None. Just the crime of being in the wrong place. With the wrong face."
He nodded, like someone who’d heard that story a hundred times.
"That’s always the worst kind."
The silence returned. But it wasn’t the same as before. Now it pulsed with memories. With fragments of sentences left unsaid. With the kind of past that doesn’t fit on any criminal record.
But even without a record...
My whole system reacted.
Because now I knew exactly who I was talking to.
The light hit the side of his face. Just enough to reveal the scar on his jaw, the ancient runes tattooed onto his freshly shaven scalp.
The same ones I’d last seen while bleeding out in an Ashveil alley, fire in my lungs, and the sound of a laugh I’ve never forgotten.
Mordrek.
"What the fuck is this."