Arun stopped so hard his shoes skidded on wet stone.
The chamber was round, old, and wrong in the deliberate way everything important in this world seemed to be. Blue fire burned in shallow iron bowls set into the walls, giving off no heat Arun could feel. Their light made the bars in the middle of the room shine like damp bones.
Behind those bars crouched six children.
Not huddled together—arranged. Two older ones in front, three smaller behind them, one curled in the back with both hands over his ears. They watched Arun with that sharp, feral stillness frightened children sometimes developed when adults had failed too often to deserve noise.
And through Arun's skull, clear as if spoken beside him:
Arun. If that is you—don't you dare move.
Lena.
His breath left him in one ragged piece.
He turned sharply, half-expecting her to step from the passage behind him with that familiar expression—furious first, relieved later, both delivered with precision. But the corridor behind him held only dark, blue fire, and the distant violence of claws against metal somewhere deeper in the ruin.
No Lena.
Just her voice.
Or something wearing it.
Arun's throat tightened. "Lena?"
The smallest girl behind the bars flinched as if he had shouted.
One of the older children, a narrow-faced boy of maybe twelve with a split lip and eyes too old for him, pressed his fingers to his temple and winced.
Not so loud, came the thought. This time it was not Lena. Boy. Thin, exhausted, annoyed. You're terrible at this.
Arun stared at him.
The boy stared back with the withering disappointment of someone forced to rely on an adult.
That, more than the telepathy, made him believable.
"You did that?" Arun asked.
The boy's mouth moved a second after the thought arrived. "Mostly her."
He jerked his chin toward the girl beside him.
She sat cross-legged despite the cage, dark hair shorn unevenly at the jaw, face streaked with dirt and ash. Nine, maybe ten. Her eyes fixed on Arun with a kind of clinical dread, as if he were both rescue and contamination.
She did not speak aloud.
But Lena's voice came through her again, sharper now.
If you are actually Arun, then listen for once in your life before you improvise us all into a grave.
He closed his eyes for one beat.
That cadence.
That specific marital disgust.
It hit him so hard he almost laughed.
Almost.
When he opened them, the girl was still watching him. Not Lena. Never Lena. But she had caught something of the rhythm, some imprint transmitted through whatever hidden network these children shared.
"How do you know her?" Arun asked.
The girl blinked once.
I don't. I know what you know when it leaks. That voice is loud in you. She's… angular.
Even now, even here, Arun thought, that would have pleased Lena enormously.
A crash sounded back down the passage. Stone dust drifted from the ceiling.
The older boy at the bars spoke aloud this time. "If the Hound loses, the metal one comes. If the metal one loses, the priests come. Either way, standing there thinking about your wife is weak strategy."
Arun looked at the lock.
Iron. Old but thick. Hinges outside. Mechanism inset into the wall, probably opened by key or lever.
He glanced around the chamber for tools and found only old altars, hooks, chains, a cracked basin, and one skeleton in the corner wearing the remains of ceremonial robes.
"Promising room," he muttered.
The boy frowned. "What?"
"Nothing useful."
That was not entirely true. A lot of nursing was the dignified application of nothing useful until it became enough.
Arun stepped closer to the cage. The children tensed as one.
He stopped immediately.
That old instinct returned—the one that kept panicked patients from escalating, the one that reminded him fear could become contagious faster than infection. Move slowly. Let them keep dignity. Don't reach first.
"My name is Arun," he said. "I'm not with the Order."
The smallest child in the back sent a trembling thought into the room.
That's what they all say first.
Fair.
Arun nodded. "Yes. That's fair."
The girl using Lena's voice tilted her head.
You're bleeding.
He looked down at his palm, still cut open from the spear. Blood had mixed with rain and grime down his wrist. "I've had better shifts."
The older boy's eyes narrowed. "You really are from somewhere else."
"How can you tell?"
"Because you make jokes when you should be making rank."
That stung a little.
Another impact echoed through the passage. Then a sound like metal being peeled apart.
The children went rigid.
The girl's borrowed-Lena voice sharpened to a knife.
No more questions. Right wall. Third bowl. Under it.
Arun turned to the blue fire bowl set into the third niche of the right wall. No visible switch. No latch.
"Under it how?"
With your hands, Arun. You are not decorative.
He nearly smiled then hated himself for nearly smiling.
He shoved his fingers under the rim of the iron bowl and hissed as heat—not from flame but from metal—bit into his skin. It did not budge.
"Excellent," he said. "Magical hardware."
The older boy rose and gripped the bars. Sweat shone on his face. He shut his eyes.
Suddenly six frightened minds pressed against Arun's.
Not entering. Leaning.
A boost.
A pressure like extra hands placed around his own thought.
And among them, faint but unmistakable, was the remembered shape of Nikhil's warning:
Don't tell them.
Arun braced and pulled.
Something in the wall gave with a deep internal clunk. The bowl tore free in his hands, blue flame guttering out without smoke. Beneath it sat a stone lever blackened by age.
"There," said the older boy.
"Good design," Arun panted. "Hide the children behind the fire."
"No," the girl said aloud for the first time. Her voice was low, flat, and much younger than the one she had used in his head. "Hide the fire behind the children."
He looked at her.
She held his gaze without blinking.
There it was again—that Chrysalid wrongness this world hunted. Not monstrous. Just different enough to terrify the faithful.
Arun pulled the lever.
The lock snapped once. Then again. The bars groaned upward three inches and stopped.
Not enough.
The children recoiled at the sound now coming from the corridor: slow metal footsteps, dragging slightly.
Not the wolf.
The other one.
Arun shoved both hands under the bars and heaved. The cut in his palm split wider. His shoulders screamed. The gate lifted another inch, then trembled.
"Come on," he snarled at it, at himself, at every unfinished thing he had ever been.
The older two children dropped and crawled under first, then pulled the smaller ones through. The girl waited until the last moment, watching Arun with an expression far too steady for her age.
"You heard her because you miss her," she said quietly.
Arun kept lifting. "That's not exactly deep magic."
She crouched to slide beneath the bars, then paused.
"No," she said. "That isn't why I said it."
The footsteps stopped at the chamber entrance.
A long metal shadow fell over the blue-lit floor.
And a voice like scraped iron said, almost pleasantly,
"You've opened the wrong cage."