Chapter Text
In the night, the clouds were opening up with their sorrows, streets slick with darkness. Most streetlights didn’t dare reach their light into this borderline slum of an area, and Zani was left stumbling through the pitch black. Murky water in the gutters reflected only the red-and-blue of the police sirens. She ran until the sound of her own boots drowned out the rest, until her breath clawed raw at her throat. Behind her, the city howled– shouts, whistles, and the echo of gunfire ricocheting between brick walls that leaned too close. Ducking into a narrow street, her chest heaved, she found only two officers, rifles raised. She moved back, flattening herself against the damp wall– it seemed just enough.
Her hand twitched toward her weapon, but she knew the maths of it already. Too many eyes, too much blood spilled in the open.
Heart hammering, she waited. Rain slicked down her cheek like sweat, her breath shallow in her chest. She could hear the scrape of a rifle sling against a coat, the way one of them sniffed against the air.
Zani pressed tighter into the wall, praying the shadows clung to her the way they did to rot and mould. If one of them so much as turned his head—
A gloved hand seized her arm, firm and quick. Reflect snapped through her faster than thought– she started jabbing at her attacker blindly. She caught the edge of loose cloth, the warmth of someone’s torso, but they only grunted and shoved harder, dragging her sideways.
The door, a solid, splintered thing, gave way with a shove, and they spilled into darkness. It shut fast, a muted thud and click sealing her into a suffocating black.
Zani unsheathed the knife waiting above her ribs, ready to fight whatever adversary that lay in the unlit dimness. But then, she heard a scattering of heavy boots close outside the door. She froze, chest heaving, ears straining.
Flattening against the door, she pressed her ear to the damp wood. Muffled voices cut through the rain.
“…nothing here. Thought she went left.”
“Too damn dark and wet! Forget it— let the rats chew ‘er if she’s hiding in this dump.”
“Orders were to sweep. You want to be the one to tell the captain you missed her?”
A scoff, followed by the scrape of a boot heel turning. “Fine. But if she’s in there, she’s already dead.”
Their footsteps receded, swallowed by the storm. Silence seeped back in, thick and dripping. Zani’s shoulders slumped, and the knife hovered in her hand, but her pulse slowed just enough to think. She was still alive, at least for the moment.
She turned from the door. Darkness breathed around her, heavy with mildew and stone. Whoever had pulled her in was gone– or waiting.
The surrounding darkness pressed around her like damp, clammy cloth. Knife raised, its blade admittedly no more useful than a stick in this black, she moved anyway, hand brushing a trail against the rough walls. Mildew clung thick to the air, and narrow, uneven passages cut into the earth, lined with brickwork long since bled into mud.
The passages bent strangely, corners where no corners should be, angles that seemed sharper than they had any right to be. She kept her steps light, but each one slapped back at her in a dozen echoes, as though more boots followed a half-step behind.
The more she walked through these tunnels, the more it seemed to her a warren– like a rabbit’s nest, or those winding catacombs that lay under cities, hungry for poor lost souls. The stink of rusted metal reached her, and something scuttled out of sight. Rats, she told herself. Big ones. She kept walking.
The passages stretched and folded, brick ribcages swallowed by moss. From here onwards, the once-craggy walls had chipped away into a smooth, pale sandstone, and the all-suppressing darkness had given way to merciful shards of light, piercing from somewhere impossibly far. Her boots scuffed across patches of grit, then the yielding softness of mould. Once she thought she stepped on a pebble, until it gave a hollow crack beneath her heel. She kept walking.
Columns rose in the gloom, their capitals broken and eaten by moss, and between them, faces eroded, and eyes scooped out by time. Zani felt a shiver trace itself across her body.
She paused in a chamber where the ceiling soared out of sight, held aloft by crumbling columns furred with moss. A pale suggestion of light spilled from grates far above, gilding the water in fractured stripes. Puddles mirrored the arches and vaults, so that for one brief moment, she could not tell if she stood above or beneath the ground.
The deeper and further she went, the more deliberate, and all the more common, those statues came to be. They emerged from alcoves, from pools of water, in the smallest corners– eroded saints, their features worn smooth, their arms broken, yet standing sentinel in the gloom. Their many eyes, yet none at all, seemed to watch her pass. Silence pressed at her ears until it throbbed, broken only by her own footsteps.
Pillars rose, trunks of drowned trees, their crowns lost in shadow, and in front of them– statues lined the walls, row after row of figures carved in solemn poses, their robes stiff, their eyes faceless hollows. Some had crumbled to their torsos, others were missing heads entirely, yet still they stood, silent as a congregation frozen mid-prayer.
And then Zani heard it.
She first thought it was air, wind funneling through some obscured grate. Low at first, a single line, then swelling into dozens. A chorale, wordless and slow, the kind of sound that seemed to seep from the stone itself. It surrounded her, above and around, echoing in ways that made it impossible to tell where it truly came from. One moment it seemed to rise from the water pooled at her boots, the next from the black vaults overhead.
Her chest tightened. Every hair on her arms rose. It was not loud, yet it filled the chamber with a presence she could not ignore. She found herself straining toward the sound, if only because it reminded her she wasn’t entirely alone down here.
Her hand drifted to her weapon again. But what blade could cut through such a sound?
Then there was a faint bloom ahead, golden and flickering, breaking the monochrome dark. She stilled, muscles locked. The glow grew stronger, closer, until it resolved into the steady flame of a lantern.
The bearer stepped into view, her outline sharp against the black. White fabric, faintly scuffed from dust; a pleated skirt brushing against her knees; a wide-brimmed hat she now carried at her side, forgotten in her other hand. Her hair caught the lantern glow like threads of pale fire, curling gently against her shoulders.
Zani’s shoulders sagged before she realized it– relief, raw and embarrassing. After endless stone and silence, the sight of another person almost felt like salvation. She nearly said so aloud, some rough-edged joke about angels in cellars, but then her eyes sharpened.
Gloves. The woman wore thin white gloves, the kind that caught lamplight in a faint sheen. Zani’s stomach knotted.
Her gaze slipped lower, and she saw it; the faint disarray of fabric along the side of the skirt, a crease where it had been seized, hard. The hand that had yanked her into the dark– gloved, and gone, just like that.
The woman tilted her head, pale lashes lowering, as though studying her. “You don’t belong here.” Her voice was soft. It reminded her of marshmallows dripping from a stick.
Zani shifted her weight, every muscle tense again, braced between instinct and exhaustion. She wanted to laugh, to curse, to demand– but the words tangled. All she could manage was a rough exhale, her hand inching toward her coat pocket.
“Yeah,” she muttered, eyes narrowing at the lantern, at the gloves, at her. “No kidding.”
“Who are you…” Her voice was soft but edged, eyes narrowing. “Montelli rat.”
Zani bristled. “What– no. Who the hell are you? You dragged me in here!”
The stranger tilted her wrist, adjusting the lantern so it threw its glow higher, revealing more of her face.
“Kidnapping is a strong word. I saved you, didn’t I? From the sbirri. Those cops. Or would you rather be bleeding in the street right now?”
Zani’s laugh bubbling out of her, bitter. “Some rescue.. where the hell are we anyways..” She took a step back, eyes skimming over the girl– the gleam of a pin at her lapel, the careful press of pleats, and most damning of all: the signature big hat dangling at her side.
“You’re Order.” The words spat out before she could choke them back. “So tell me why someone like you bothered to help me.”
The lantern tilted, its glow running up the curve of her cheekbone. “Maybe I didn’t feel like watching you get riddled with bullets in a gutter.”
Zani snorted, harsh and humourless. “Don’t tell me the Order’s suddenly grown a conscience.”
“Conscience?” The stranger’s pale lashes dipped, then lifted. “Call it curiosity.”
Zani’s jaw clenched. “You risked blowing your cover to save me– why?”
“Maybe I wanted a closer look at the Montelli’s big rabid dog.”
Her blood pricked hot. “Watch your mouth.”
The stranger only tilted her head, cool as water slipping down stone. “You lot always bite when cornered.”
A silence stretched between them, taut. Zani’s gaze lingered on the Order’s pin, the hat carried careless in her hand. A priestess, an acolyte, or something close enough. No mistaking it.
Finally, Zani rasped, “If you’re so eager to play saviour, you could at least tell me where the fuck we are.”
The lantern swung slightly, scattering shadows across the statues’ hollow faces. The girl glanced around, as though at home in this crypt of stone and silence. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Her lips parted for a second, but then she shook her head, sharp. “Doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t be here.”
“No shit.” She gestured with the knife toward the looming walls. “But unless you’ve got another door to shove me through, looks like I don’t have a choice, do I?”
At last, she said softly, “Then you follow me. And keep your blade lowered, Montelli. You won’t need it– not yet at least.”
She tilted the lantern away, light dragging shadows back across the chamber, then without another word, turned on her heel. The skirts of her uniform ruffled as she started up a narrow staircase carved into the wall, steps slick with moss.
Zani blinked, then swore under her breath, shoving her knife back into its sheath. “Wait—hey!” Her boots scraped as she scrambled after, unwilling to be left alone in the bowels of hell. The lantern’s glow bobbed further ahead, the only anchor in the smothering dark.
She took the steps two at a time until she caught sight of her again, and was walking just a step behind her. Even with the lantern lifted, her shoulders sat well below Zani’s line of sight– if she wanted to, she could reach out and grab her by the collar. The idea lingered for a few seconds before she shook it off.
They climbed into a hallway where the dark pressed closer, lantern light snagging on half-rotted beams and walls tattooed with damp. The air reeked of mildew and candle smoke. The Order girl walked like she belonged here, like the shadows knew her name.
Speaking of which, Zani didn’t even know what her name was– not that she cared. Names weren’t going to matter if she didn’t make it out alive tonight. What mattered was getting back to the Montelli safehouse, filing a report, maybe even wringing some overtime pay out of this nightmare. Though, she thought grimly, they’d probably just laugh in her face.