Chương 44: The Price of a Voice

Zayn watched. Through the narrow gap in the panel, the room was split in two by a line of shadow. Harven was crawling across the floor, one arm stretched toward the passage, his face twisted by a fear so pure it was almost insulting. The weaver approached him without hurrying. It did not have the grandeur of a legendary demon. No flames. No wings. No roar powerful enough to make the world tremble.

Just that body too thin, those fingers covered in hooks, that smile stretched too far at the corners, and that way of looking at a living man as though he were a rope that had not yet been pulled tight enough. Harven tried to crawl backward.

"No… no, please…" The weaver tilted its head. Then it spoke in Harven's voice.

"No… no, please…" Exactly the same. The same broken breath. The same tremor. The same shame at being afraid. Harven froze. So did Zayn. Not because the imitation was perfect. Because it was more than that. It contained something else. A trace of the person. An imprint taken from the throat, from the spasms, from the way pain had bent the words. The weaver was not copying a voice. It was harvesting it. Harven may have understood at the same moment, because he tried to scream. Too late. The weaver's fingers spread.

Black filaments shot from its nails and slid into the scout's mouth. The scream choked off. His body arched. Zayn remained motionless inside the passage. He could have come out. Attacked by surprise. Tried to save the man. That was the kind of story Elias might have wanted to write, if Elias had been there. A dangerous, noble action, impossible to ignore. But Elias was not there. There was only Zayn, a dagger, an injured shoulder, a soul strength of 29, a demon at 47, and a passage too narrow to fight properly.

So he watched. Harven shook while the filaments slowly withdrew. The weaver placed one hand on his forehead, almost gently, then pulled. Not physically. Something was pulled all the same. The value above Harven flickered. 9 6 3 Zayn felt his fingers tighten around the dagger. Not out of compassion. Out of frustration. The weaver was draining something Zayn might have taken himself. Ridiculous. Even at the bottom of a mine ruled by an amateur voice-stealing demon, he apparently still had to deal with competition.

Harven collapsed face-first. His value went out. No message. Obviously. Not his kill. The weaver remained bent over the corpse. Then its mouth opened. Harven's voice came out.

"There… then left… always left until the cold draft…" Zayn understood immediately. Bad. Very bad. The weaver had heard. Or rather, it had taken the sentence along with the voice. The passage was no longer a secret. The demon slowly raised its head toward the panel. Zayn drew back without a sound. Not quickly. Not yet. The weaver spoke again in Harven's voice, softer this time.

"Don't leave me…" Zayn almost closed his eyes.

"Too late." Then he started crawling. The passage was narrow, slanted, lined with black dust and old fragments of metal. Impossible to stand up. Impossible to turn properly. His injured shoulder scraped against the stone at times, sending bursts of pain all the way into his neck. Behind him, the panel moved. The weaver could not get in easily. Too large. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Good news.

The smaller beasts, though, could probably slip through. Bad news. Rhel-Fosse had the admirable habit of providing problems in several sizes. Zayn forced himself to move faster. The passage descended at first, then angled upward slightly. He followed Harven's instructions: left at the first split, left again at the second. One part of him expected it to be a complete trap. Another knew that even a trap could lead somewhere. What mattered was arriving before the enemy finished setting the stage.

A value appeared ahead of him. 5 Small. Too close. Zayn stopped. In the darkness ahead, two pale eyes shone just above the ground. A tunnel-beast. Smaller than the others, but in exactly the worst possible place: a passage where he could neither dodge nor raise his arm properly. The creature hissed. Behind him, a scratching sound answered it. Another value. 6 Of course. Front and back. Zayn stayed flat on his stomach, his cheek almost pressed into the dust, and felt a nervous laugh scrape at his throat.

"Wonderful. I'm trapped in a pipe with demonic rats. My whole life has been preparing me for a stupid death, but I thought I'd at least get better staging." The beast in front lunged. Zayn raised his bandaged forearm. Its teeth sank into it. Pain exploded. He smothered a curse, pinned the creature against the wall with his elbow, then stabbed it over and over with the point of his dagger until it let go. [Soul strength absorbed: +0] The second was already coming from behind. He could not turn around.

So he did the only thing he could. He shoved backward violently. His back slammed into the beast, crushing it against a jut of stone. It clawed at his ribs, reaching for his neck. Zayn jammed his dagger backward, felt the point catch something soft, then ripped with all his strength. The creature convulsed against him. [Soul strength absorbed: +0] Nothing. Again nothing. He remained wedged between two tiny corpses, blood on his arm, breathing too short. The system's stinginess was almost spiritual. He kept going.

Faster. At last the passage opened into a vertical shaft where the air was colder. The cold draft. Harven had not lied. Not completely. The shaft rose toward the surface, but the iron rungs had been torn out over several meters. Higher up, a grate blocked the opening, and behind that grate, Zayn thought he could see a very faint light. Not daylight. A lamp. Maybe an upper gallery. Maybe another trap. He tipped his head back, calculating the climb. Impossible in his condition without a rope. He searched the satchel.

Chalk. Bandage. Nails. Bread. No rope. Of course. Because surviving wasn't difficult enough: he also had to deal with the inventory of a soldier who had apparently packed for a school trip to die underground. He searched around. The shaft had two other openings: one at chest height, narrow, descending toward a damp lower section; another higher up, reachable by climbing a pile of metal debris. He chose the higher one. Not because it was safe. Because the air moved through it more clearly.

And because the nearest values were coming from the lower passage. 8 10 7 No thank you. Strategic courtesy sometimes meant letting the little monsters enjoy their corridor without him. He climbed over the debris, nearly slipped, caught himself on a rusted ring that split his palm open, then hauled himself into the upper opening. The passage led to an old ventilation chamber. There, at last, he found something resembling a real shelter. Not comfortable. Not safe.

But with only one main entrance, a secondary duct too small for a medium-sized creature, and an old cracked cistern in one corner. Zayn almost rushed to the cistern. A shallow pool of water still stood inside. Murky. But less dark than the droplets from earlier. He smelled it. Then drank. Not much. Enough for his body to remember that it was not merely a sum of calculations and bad decisions, but also a fragile thing that needed water in order to keep being detestable. He filled the waterskin.

Only then did he examine the room. Human traces. Old ones. A moldy blanket. Two skeletons against the wall. A rusted helmet. An overturned toolbox. An inscription carved into the stone with a knife-point: DO NOT FOLLOW THE VOICES Zayn stood before it for a moment. Then he exhaled.

"Helpful advice. A little late, but the effort is appreciated." Below it, a second sentence had been carved in shakier lettering: IT KEEPS THOSE WHO ANSWER There. More useful. The weaver did not always kill immediately. It kept. Voices, survivors, gestures, perhaps even certain memories strong enough to bind into its traps. Zayn sat with his back against the wall, dagger across his knees. Time lost its shape. Impossible to know how many minutes passed. Perhaps an hour. Perhaps less.

Inside Rhel-Fosse, the dark devoured distance and duration with the same cold appetite. He ate a little bread. Very little. His hunger protested. He ignored it. Hunger could complain all it wanted. In his personal system of government, internal complaints had not yet been granted representation. He wrapped his palm with a strip of cloth torn from his sleeve, checked his forearm, then marked the room with a chalk cross. Not to come back. To know, if he started moving in circles, that the mine had begun to win.

Just as he finished, a voice rose up through the shaft. Not Harven. Not Lena. Mira.

"Zayn." He froze. The voice was low, sharp, harder to imitate than the others because it carried almost no useless emotion.

"If you can hear me, don't answer." Silence. Zayn remained still. This version was better. Much better. The voice continued:"Three knocks on the stone if you're alone. Two if you're being pursued." Very good. Too good? Zayn placed his hand against the wall. If he answered and it was the weaver, he would give away his position. If he did not answer and it was really Mira, he might lose a real contact. The choice had nothing moral in it. Only risks. Mira's voice came again, still calm.

"It imitates. I know. That's why I'm not asking you to speak." Zayn almost shut his eyes. Damn. That really did sound like her. Not comforting. Not gentle. Just competent. He took one of the nails from the satchel and struck the stone. Three times. A long silence followed. Then, very far away, through the shaft, two knocks answered. Not a voice. Two knocks. He exhaled slowly. Mira was alive. And close somewhere above him or through a neighboring passage. Then a third knock sounded. Not from the same place.

Lower down. Another. Then three knocks again. Then two. Then three. From multiple directions. Zayn went still. The mine had heard the code. And now it was repeating it. Brilliant filth. The weaver might not have understood the meaning at first, but it understood the use. Signal. Response. Hope. It did not need to know what the knocks meant in order to turn them into poisoned noise. The real Mira struck somewhere again, faster this time. A different pattern. Zayn did not have time to interpret it.

A value appeared in the secondary duct, the one he had thought too small. 12 No. Not too small. Just small enough for a sufficiently motivated problem. Zayn recoiled as an elongated creature slid into the room, flat-headed, its mouth lined with fine teeth, its body almost serpentine with four ridiculous little limbs scraping the stone. Ridiculous, yes. Dangerous too. He threw the nail. Missed. The beast lunged. He caught it with the moldy blanket wrapped around his arm.

The teeth tore through the fabric, but not completely through the skin. He struck with the dagger. The beast twisted, slipped, tried to reach his thigh. Zayn followed it to the floor, pinned its body beneath his knee, and this time did not kill it immediately. He needed to know. The knocking in the walls continued. The creature writhed under him, hissing, biting at the cloth. He looked at its value. 12. He slowly pressed the handle of the dagger against its throat. The beast struggled harder.

Not for pleasure this time. For silence. He wanted to see whether the weaver reacted to its pain. Whether the walls answered. Whether other beasts came. He pressed harder. The creature let out a strangled whine. In the shaft, the knocks stopped for a second. Then resumed farther away. Not linked. So this beast was only a scout, not a major relay. Information. He cut its throat. [Soul strength absorbed: +1] Current soul strength: 30 Thirty. The number stayed in his mind. A threshold made uselessly symbolic.

Not enough to make him strong. Enough that he was no longer exactly what he had been that morning. He remained crouched over the corpse. The room smelled of old water, blood, black bread, dust, and the ancient fear of men who had carved warnings into the walls before dying. The knocks in the walls were still going. Some real, perhaps. Most false now. Mira was somewhere in there. Or no longer was. Impossible to know. That was the weaver's simple genius: it did not merely erase paths. It fouled signals.

Zayn looked at the inscription. IT KEEPS THOSE WHO ANSWER So he stopped answering. He stayed seated in the ventilation room, the dagger against his thigh, his soul strength at 30, his stomach hollow, his nerves stretched taut, his mind calmer than it should have been after using a prisoner, watching a man be emptied of his voice, tormenting a beast for information, and waiting in the dark while the world imitated his allies.

And that absence of total panic, more than fear itself, made him understand that Rhel-Fosse was not changing him. Not yet. It was only stripping away, layer by layer, the reasons to pretend he had not already been capable of surviving like this.