Hours pass. I think.

  It’s hard to tell with no sun or clocks, just light from the sconces above, shifting every so often—too smooth to be sunlight, too warm to be real.

  William’s out, fully. His thoughts are muffled, I would’ve thought he was drowning if we were underwater. But I’m still here, just not in control yet. I try to jerk my way back to my body, but nothing works. It’s a weird thing—watching a room you can’t feel. Like being buried alive in a glass coffin. How did William switch with me? (’Tell me to switch with you’) was it? If that’s so, William obviously can’t say yes to my requests, no matter how many times I yell. Damn it. At least we’re comfortable; The ceiling is high, vaulted, like a chapel, but the owls are a bit too life-like for my tastes. There’s a soft hum sometimes. Faint. Every few hours—or maybe less—I hear footsteps. Two sets. One light, one heavier. They don’t speak to me. They talk around me. About me, or, William, in this case. A few times, I feel something weird, a warm fire from head to toe, I think. Even my own fatigues are melting—and I hear my own body coaxing my bones back into place. Someone’s healing us. Not all at once, like feeding a dog small scraps to keep it from dying. Sometimes I hear a muttered chant—words I don’t know, but the sound settles strangely in my chest. Sometimes they stop mid-spell. Are they waiting for permission?

  “She’s being reckless again,” an older voice; it’s the sister.

  “She’s being grateful,” it’s… someone I don’t recognize, a boy. Is it from the one who’s healing me?

  “The other houses will hear about this if we keep him here. I’m telling you, this is dangerous.”

  “And what if the underground hears about this? I’d take our chances with the houses, at least we know how to deal with them.”

  A pause.

  “You’re thinking with your gut again.”

  “No. I’m thinking about my debt.”

  The footsteps fade.

  We’re left alone again, or rather, I am. I can tell when William twitches; maybe a bad dream? His nerves are remembering what the skin forgot— wait, no, he is dreaming: he’s seeing a room, clean and orderly. There are chairs in a neat arrangement; they face a sort of wide board at the end of the room. I wonder what this place is for? He’s seeing trees, a road, some sort of device and other people richer than I could ever be. A field, a… carriage? It isn’t drawn by any creature by the looks of it. Then he sees a boy, younger than either of us. They’re walking through a glass tunnel surrounded by water, I… I think there are plants too—colorful and branch-like—nothing I've ever seen before. There are creatures swimming around the tunnel as well; what are they? William and the boy are enjoying it though…I can hear the word “brother” echoing.

  I see.

  Eventually, he wakes up, groggy and confused. His thoughts slosh around before his eyes even open.

  “Where…?” He says. “What is this place?”

  I sigh. (Don’t talk. Just listen.)

  I walk him through the parts that matter: the healing, the voices, some debt hanging in the air like perfume, the room full of velvet and holy owls, the bed he’s lying on, so clean it makes me itch just looking at it.

  He goes quiet. For a moment I think he passed out again.

  ‘We have to go,’ he thinks.

  (Yeah.)

  “How?”

  I glance to the side. There’s a window, big enough for our—my body. The city below glows faint in the night fog, all roofs broken and not, and soft firelight. It’s a long drop. But I’ve done worse.

  (Bed sheets.)

  He pauses, “Like a movie?”

  I… I condense my confusion into one thought: (What?)

  “N-nevermind.”

  William ties the sheets in knots, then throws them out the window. The length is just enough to flutter in the breeze. We sit still for a minute. I try coaxing William along, but he says something before I could.

  “I… I don’t know parkour.”

  (What the hell is parkour?) I think.

  “It’s… running. On walls. Or buildings. Jumping between stuff.”

  I snort. (You mean climbing.)

  “No it’s— never mind.”

  Another beat. Then I say it: (Let me take over.)

  He hesitates. “You sure?”

  (I’d rather be bruised than dead.)

  That’s enough to convince him. The shift is smoother this time. Less like falling, more like handing over the reins. The world tilts. My blood feels mine again. I blink. I’m back. I pull the sheets tight. William did a good job—the twists, loops, anchor to the frame. It creaks. I test it with a tug, and it holds. The walls are angled. Carved with dumb ornaments and jutting ledges. Slippery, maybe, but better than nothing.

  ‘Oh God.’ William thinks.

  I swing a leg out and begin a slow rappel, the wind hits my face like ice. The air’s thinner up here, and my fingers go numb fast. I hook a foot on stone carvings—some kind of sun with wings—and pace myself until the sheets run out. William’s quiet. I think he’s scared; good, because I am too. The sheets run out three stories too soon. I suck in a breath. The ledge below is just far enough to hurt if I botch it.

  ‘You sure about this?’ William asks.

  (No,) I think. Then I drop.

  Boots hit stone. My knees buckle, but I roll to the side, spreading the pain. My elbow scrapes, and my left wrist jars, but I keep moving. I duck behind an owl statue as a guard walks the balcony below. That was too close. We wait, listening to how the wind howls. How the distant lantern sways. He doesn’t look up. We keep going, and the climb lasts a few minutes more. Somewhere down the line, I slip—a flake of stone that snaps off underfoot. My heart lurches.

  ‘Shit!’ William screams for me, because the mistake takes the breath out of my lungs.

  We hit the ground three feet later, onto a garden bed of flowers. We… dirt is in my teeth. We both go quiet for a second. I… well…

  ‘Fuck…’ William takes the thoughts right out of my mind.

  By the time we actually reach ground level, the city’s quiet again. Lamp-lit alleys. Chimneys smoking in the distance, no one looking up. We move fast either way. Shoulders down, steps quiet. I cut through the textile quarter, then over the salt canal, then past the tannery I hate because it always smells like inedible broth. William doesn’t say much. But he’s there, perhaps watching the angles I couldn’t focus on. When we finally duck into the side alley behind the butcher’s, I pull the crate aside and crawl into my corner. My corner. My spot. It’s still cold.

  But it’s ours.

  The city doesn’t care that we almost died last night. The chimneys still smoke, the bread still burns, the bells still ring in the upper tiers even if no one down here listens to them. William wakes me up early. I couldn’t tell what he was saying through my grogginess but I am able to pick up his relief.

  ‘Oh thank God! You were shaking so much, I thought you were getting hypothermia.’ he thinks.

  “What?” I stretch my arms, test my ribs. Still sore, but not broken. I think. (I… I’m fine. It’s not even that cold.)

  ‘That’s the problem. Feeling warmer is not you adapting to the cold. We need to find a better place for you—us—to sleep under.’

  I scoff, (You have any ideas?)

  ‘…No, but we have to try. We are not sleeping here anymore.’

  (And what if I don’t care what you say?)

  ‘I bet you’ll care if I give you another headache.’

  “…Fine,” I mutter.

  But first: food. The butcher’s stall in the market square is too open, too clean. He’s got actual glass jars on the shelf behind him—stuff only nobles get away with. I pocket the button I was sucking to make room for the breakfast I’m about to have. I sneak up, but I hear the baker himself wagging his jaws while his apprentice prepares another batch inside: a fawn stained with blood up to his forearm.

  “—top floor of the Archivum, I’m telling you. Just went up like tinder,” he says, voice half-whisper, half-performative stage croak. “One flame, then poof. Gone. But not the whole thing—just the warded floors. You know, the locked ones. The 'forbidden stacks.'”

  The woman he’s talking to gasps. “But those floors are sealed. Triple-scripted. You can’t even sneeze near them without someone from the ring coming down on you.”

  “That’s what I’m saying!” the butcher says. “No fire crew called. No alarms. Just a flicker, then nothing. And now they’ve got clerics roping off half the tower like it’s cursed.”

  William stirs. ‘That true? Who’d set fire to a book tower?’

  (Don’t know. But it’s not just a book tower,) I think. (It’s where they keep things. Scrolls. Ritual matrices. Spell logs from the old wars. Banned, rare stuff. Like the kind they’d use to do something like, oh, I don’t know... summon someone across time and space.)

  He doesn’t say anything, but I feel the shiver under my skin that isn’t mine. We’re both thinking it. Whatever burned up there—it wasn’t an accident.

  The butcher keeps going, breathless now, slicing the air with a sharp cleaver. “My cousin says they’ve got the entire upper wing silenced. No light. No sound. Says it felt like the building itself was listening.”

  I tuck a few fishes into my coat and move on. Back into the stream of morning noise.

  ‘You believe him?’ William asks.

  (I believe the smoke,) I reply. (People don’t risk setting fire to a holy library for nothing.)

  I duck into the alleys, seafood tucked under my coat, still cold from the display racks. I look for somewhere quiet—dry, dark, and not crawling with rats or watchmen. That’s always the balance: warm enough not to freeze, hidden enough not to be chased out. Eventually, I find a broken alcove behind a defunct tannery chimney, still kicking out some ghost-heat from the night shift. The smoke’s thin here, faintly acrid. Good. No one's bored enough to patrol near a stink like this.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  I tear into the fishes, chewing slowly. Its uncooked stench is staining my breath. No one talks. Not even William.

  Eventually, he does.

  ‘So…’ he starts, careful-like. ‘You knew what that place was. The Archivum.’

  I grunt.

  ‘But you’re… what, a thief? A squatter?’

  (Yeah.)

  ‘How does a squatter know about sealed tower floors and magic storage rooms?’ he asks, with that insistent tone people use when they already think they’ve caught you lying.

  I chew slower.

  William keeps going. ‘You’re not just some kid with good ears, are you? I’ve been here a day or two, and I still don’t know what’s happening other than that I’m stuck in your head and body, and that I need you to survive.’

  (Well here’s what I know about you: you met Ymos—Ymos—and you’re from a place I’d trade everything to see, even once. So don’t act like I’m the only one holding cards. I AM just a kid who’s got good ears, and for all I know, with how you seem to be all buddy-buddy with the gods, how do I know this wasn’t all random? For all I know, you could be hiding things too.)

  We both stay quiet; I tear off another chunk of bread. I can tell William is sighing.

  ‘Good point,’ he relents, ‘Look, I’ll tell you what happened when I met Ymos, but you have to tell me what you know too—anything at all; I just need to know what the hell is happening.’

  A deal. Finally, something I’m familiar with.

  (Deal.)

  ‘Alright then, where do you wanna start?’

  (Who you are, where you come from; I… I saw your dreams, it was in my face… I couldn’t help myself.)

  William takes a breath, and when he speaks again, it’s softer, like he’s remembering something too far away to touch.

  ‘I’m from Earth. A place… not like this.’

  (Earth.) I repeat. I’ve heard the name before, murmured in the circles that trade in knowledge like stolen jewelry. One of the outworlds. One of the real ones.

  ‘I lived in a city. Big. Loud. Clean, mostly. We had these things—cars, trains—machines that moved without horses. Lights that never ran out of fire. Things to talk to people miles away. And schools. Hospitals. Hot water. Heat in the walls. You’d love it. There were places where people just gave you food if you were hungry. Whole programs.’

  I stare at the bony carcass of a fish in my hands. He doesn’t have to say it, but I feel the words anyway: This place is broken. I don’t blame him.

  (So why’d you leave?)

  ‘Didn’t mean to. One minute I was at home, the next, I was standing in some sort of ocean, I think? I remember clear skies.’

  That gets my attention. I glance up.

  (Ymos?)

  ‘Yeah. 7 feet tall, hovering just above the water, I think they were wearing a sleek robe. The wings! God, they were wide… They looked at me like I was a tool in more ways than one. I was told about my blessing—I wish I actually listened—and then I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in your head.’

  I sit with that for a while. My fingers tighten around the rest of the fish bones.

  (That’s… a lot to take in.) I think.

  William doesn’t say anything.

  (You didn’t say anything about how you died.)

  ‘Because I didn’t.’

  I keep quiet again. That’s not what—from what I’ve heard—outworlders are supposed to be when the rituals are cast. Whatever. I’ll keep the end of my bargain.

  (You said you want to know what’s happening? I’ll show you.)

  I finish the rest of my meal in minutes and stand, brushing the crumbs from my coat. The sky pales a little bit more—foggier now. The tannery chimney wheezes its last breaths behind me. We move quickly through back streets and dead alleys, past butcher shops and shuttered taverns. William stays quiet while I navigate, but I can feel him thinking.

  ‘Where are we headed?’

  (Old Quarter. Under it.)

  I think of the mazes under it, the battle oton-sized grates that lead to the city’s rivers.

  ‘The sewers?’

  Ah, we can understand each other through ambient thoughts.

  (Not just any part of the sewers. There’s a place they don’t clean. Too many tunnels, too close to the base of the city wall. You only go there if you want to disappear—or if you want to watch others disappear.)

  The tunnels are several heads higher and wider than the grate I’m opening; it’s rusted, half-covered in ivy and mold, it leads to an obscure part of the sewers. I pry it open with a crowbar I stashed in a crack two turns away. When I climb down, the light vanishes fast. The air changes—thick, wet, sharp with iron and mold. My boots splash into shallow runoff. I call this part of the sewers ‘the veins’. I didn’t know thoughts could cough too until William did it alongside me.

  ‘Jesus. Smells like death.’

  (It’s worse when you know what you’re smelling.)

  We walk. The brick walls narrow and then widen again. I take turns I’ve memorized years ago, past chalk marks and glyphs drawn by smugglers and corpse haulers. Eventually, we stop in a long, low channel that opens just beneath a drainage sluice. There’s a grate at the far end—wider than most—and behind it: torchlight.

  (Now we wait.) I crouch, pressing myself into shadow.

  A procession passes through on the other side of the bars. Two robed figures at the front. Four soldiers flanking a group of maybe six or seven people. They’re not dressed for this world—shirts with printed art, footwear that aren’t heavy enough to be boots but they cover up their feet well enough, and pants of unknown materials. One girl is wearing something that covers her ears; it has strings that hang loose, disconnected from anything. Her eyes are blank.

  William goes very quiet.

  ‘They’re from Earth…’

  (Is that what you look like?)

  ‘Why are they—’

  (Marked. You see their backs? Glyphs.)

  And sure enough, the backs of their necks and between their shoulder blades glow faintly with red-branded symbols—slave glyphs, done while the skin was still fresh.

  (They branded them as soon as they got here...)

  ‘What the fuck…?’

  Another movement. One of the group stumbles. A boy—older than us, maybe. Tall. Unshaven. His shirt’s torn at the shoulder. Then he bolts.

  “Run!” someone hisses behind him. One of the guards shouts. The boy darts down a side corridor. One of the soldiers breaks formation to pursue.

  I freeze. (No. No. We can’t get involved again.) I’m not even sure who I’m trying to convince—him or me.

  But William speaks, and there’s no hesitation in him this time.

  ‘We can’t let them take him back.’

  (Why? He’s no one to us.)

  ‘Neither was I.’

  Damn him.

  I curse and break into a run. We cut around the corner, sprinting parallel to the chase. I know this part of the tunnels. I know where the soldier will have to slow, where the path narrows. I can cut him off. My legs burn. My lungs sting, mostly from the stench. I leap across a split trench and catch the guard mid-stride, slamming into him from the side. We both hit the wall hard, and I roll out of the way before he can swing.

  The boy stares. He doesn’t run.

  “Go!” I yell, and finally, he moves—limping, but moving.

  The soldier regains his feet. I think he’s about to shout for backup, but William screams something in my head—

  ‘Left hook!’

  And I duck and swing on instinct. The soldier hits the wall again, this time dazed, and we don’t wait around to see if he gets back up. I take the lead again, this time with purpose. The boy—the outworlder—runs ahead of us but limps hard, pulling at the wall to stay upright. Behind us: shouting. Echoing. At least two more armored boots hitting water.

  “Keep going,” I snap at the outworlder, and he nods, breath ragged. I veer off at the next split, doubling back through a tighter tunnel only I know.

  ‘They’ll cut us off.’

  (Then we cut them first.)

  The next intersection opens into a runoff channel, arched above by old stone. I yank the outworlder into a side niche just before the guards arrive. Two, three. Fully plated. Longswords drawn. They hesitate in the dark, torchlight scattering in the mist. They don’t see us—yet.

  (Now.)

  I make my move, grabbing the first thing I can—rotted cloth, a half-eaten rat, maybe worse—and hurl it at the torch. The fire gutters, then dies as sludge hits flame. The tunnel grows dark, their visors must be fogging from the change.

  “Who’s there—!?” one of them barks.

  I slide low under their voices, my boots splash shallow. The first guard pivots toward the sound—too slow. I’m already behind him. I leap, not high, just enough to hook my arm around his helmet and slam his head against the tunnel wall. Steel rings. He staggers, growling, but doesn’t fall.

  ‘Armor’s too thick.’

  (I know.)

  I trip him instead: I drop down, yank at the back of his greaves and kick his knee from the side. His balance breaks, and I scurry around like a rat just before a set of hands find me, but not before I get my own hands on his belt. Fingers find leather. A sheath. I pull the knife free and skitter off towards the many holes in the wall leading to the crawl spaces between the walls of the sewers. Voices overlap. Footsteps blur. I lose track of how many guards there are, but I can hear the sheening of their swords. Smart. They’re listening.

  ‘He’s going to swing blind if you—’

  (I want him to.)

  I feel along the crawl space’s walls and carefully emerge when I feel another hole. In the darkness of the sewer tunnel, I throw the knife, not at the guards, but at the stone around them. The clang echoes loud and sharp. He swings toward the noise, and I’m already driving forward. I come up beside the first guard and drive the second blade—his blade—between the plates at his shoulder seam. He howls. I rip it out and jam the hilt into his face as he turns. He collapses, helmet askew. The second guard realizes what’s happened. Too late. He charges blindly. I scramble back and grab at the shallow waters; I find a small carcass—I hope it’s just a rat—something sludgy, then something metallic and pipe-like. Good enough; I start swinging around me, trying to isolate the footsteps from my ragged breathing. I bump against the wall, I hear the footsteps getting faster. On instinct, I choose a direction and dive out of the way, then—clang—I hear metal, and the strike produces enough sparks to illuminate a silhouette. I take my chances and commit to an overhead swing as fast as I can—bang—the guard is right in front of me.

  I drive my body forward, wrapping my arms around where their knees should be. Then I pull backwards while pushing my head forward; it works, we land on the sewer waters and I try climbing to where their eyes are. The guard is faster though, and I pay by having two large hands around my throat. I am hoisted high, then driven down towards the thick murky water.I dare not breathe, not through my mouth, not through my nose. And I struggle to free myself to no avail. I don’t know how long I was under, even the sounds I hear are blurring by the water in my ears. Then I hear metal hitting metal, maybe even flesh. The pressure disappears, and I immediately raise my head and shake off whatever gunk was caught in my unkempt hair.

  I hear repeated strikes onto metal, then it slowly sounds like squelching, over and over again. I stay silent until it stops. All I hear is my own heavy breathing, and all I could see was darkness.

  Then, "H-hello?"

  I take a chance. “…Hi? Y-you’re not going to hurt me too, are you?”

  There’s a pause—too long.

  “Um…” the voice says, “I—I can’t understand you.”

  ‘What?’ William thinks.

  “What?” I blurt.

  “I’m sorry,” the voice says, more urgent now. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  (I can understand him just fine. You?) I think to William.

  ‘Yeah. Perfectly… Wait—switch with me a sec.’

  I let go. The world pulls back, and I fall behind my own eyes again.

  “We’re both speaking English,” William says—through my voice.

  “…Wait,” the outworlder says. “Now you speak English?”

  “Was I not before?”

  “No. It was something else. Like—whatever the people here use. The guards, the traders. You were speaking that.”

  William stays silent for a second. Then: ‘That—… I see.’

  (What do you see?)

  ‘I—I’ll explain later, let’s get out of here first.’

  (Right...)

  “We should get outta here. Now.”

  “B-but what about the others?”

  William pauses, “I don’t think we—” he shakes his head, “—I can help them right now.”

  The outworlder doesn’t answer right away. His breath hitches, like he’s trying not to cry. “Okay,” he says, small. “Okay.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Elliott.”

  William hesitates, “Kes. Now follow me.”

  “Do you know where to go?”

  “Uh…” ‘Kes?’

  (Take the first left you find, keep going straight until you find a second right, then take another right.)

  William repeats my directions like it’s his; I suppose I don’t mind, considering how hard it will be to explain how there are two of us in one body. Regardless, I keep my ears peeled while I hear William stumble over the sewer’s waters, Elliott right behind us. It takes minutes until we see the rays of light outside coming from the holes of a metal sewer grate. The air is cold, but it’s leyspans better than the stench. I thank the gods I can’t smell while William is in control.

  (Now, find the dye vats, behind it, there’s a wall with moss. Break in the mortar. The crawlspace leads to a burned-out storehouse.)

  William finds it soon enough. He crawls under the space. The air is somewhat damp thanks to the drying tarps and their dye runoffs. We burst out into another back alley not normally accessible unless you enter the buildings on either side. At the far end is a crumbling wall, blotched with moss just like I said.

  (Right there. See the dark line in the mortar? Hit it low. It’s soft—wet from runoff. You can break it.)

  William swings and brick splits. The seam groans. “Come on…” he whispers.

  The hole’s just wide enough. William crawls first. I can still remember how rough the stone is, and I can see William experiencing it—scraping my arms raw. He’ll get used to it. Elliott follows, slower. We then find the remains of an old storehouse. Charred beams. The roof has seen better days. The clouds above are just a sheet of grey. William should be smelling the sea by now.

  ‘What is this place?’

  (Somewhere I know is safe, at least for now.)