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Rain never truly touches the deepest halls of the City of Tears. It drums its endless beat upon broken spires and eroded bridges high above. But below? Little more than mist and sound. An endless sodden murmur that soaks stone and bug alike. Quirrel wandered in solitude through the corridors of these lower reaches. The great gates he passed no longer barred the way but stood open, their rusted hinges frozen in place.
He had done what he had sworn himself to do, yet in the aftermath he felt disquiet rather than rest. Monomon’s voice lingered in the corners of his mind, guiding, correcting, judging. The voice was accepting rather than angry or mournful, but her absence was still an ache inside his shell.
Quirrel paused beneath a collapsed bridge where rainwater gathered in a hollow before slipping away into unseen depths. He watched it vanish, each drop forgotten the moment it struck. His own path had been one of return to half-remembered chambers and to words etched by absent hands. He had followed those traces that they might lead him back to himself. Instead, they had led him to a threshold beyond which he no longer knew his place.
A dim lambency shone from the corridor ahead. Quirrel walked toward it. Beyond a shattered arch, a narrow passage descended into a forgotten annex of the City. He regarded walls lined with faded murals, their colors muted by age and damp. Most had lost their meaning to time: crowned figures without names, spires without foundations. He could identify none of them. Yet one image remained unmistakable. Monomon’s sigil stood etched into the stone, encircled by an intricate script scrawled across the surface. The writing lay within a lattice of old mechanisms composed of bronze plates fused with pale crystal. Quirrel lingered at the threshold. The air pressed against his shell, heavy with a stillness that gave him a sense of unease.
Then he heard footsteps beneath the rain, and a hunched figure emerged from behind a fallen column, lantern light trembling across the stone. His shell was dusty from long travel, but his eyes were bright with awe as he stammered “I-I thought this place abandoned.”
Quirrel inclined his head. “I only just arrived, myself. I see you have uncovered a sealed memory. Few would recognize its mark.”
The figure raised its lantern toward the sigil. “I seek what was left behind,” he replied. “To collect it. Collect and understand if I can.”
Above them, the rain sighed through the stone. Quirrel gazed once more upon Monomon’s faded seal. Understanding had once been reason enough, and so he stepped forward.
The lanternlight faltered along the outline of Monomon’s sigil. It seemed not to fall as it should; shadows bent where no angle demanded, and the dark stone drank in the light.
“This seal,” the other bug said quietly. “You know its hand.”
Quirrel inclined his head. “I do.” He did not add that he had once stood in her presence, that her voice still guided his thoughts, molded his beliefs. Such truths did not belong to the air of this place.
They stood together before the hoary seal. Time had thinned its colors, but their meaning remained plain. The script wound outward from the sigil in careful spirals, each line placed with deliberation. Quirrel traced the edge of one curve with his gloved finger. The stone was cold and still.
Fragments of memory returned to him unbidden. Monomon had never said “do not,” only “show judgment.” She spoke as though some knowledge would break you if you regarded it too closely. But she had also taught him that turning away held its own danger. Quirrel did not know which side of the balance held greater weight this time.
The other bug shifted. “Then she sealed it to hide it?”
“No,” Quirrel said. “She sealed it to protect those who would come after.”
The lanternlight dimmed for an instant.
“I have spent many years among what remains,” the other said after a moment. “There are so few voices left that speak of what was. I thought… perhaps this was meant to be found.”
Quirrel turned toward him. The hope in the other’s gaze felt uncomfortably familiar.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Lemm,” the bug replied. “I gather what history I can. Relics, tablets, other fragments. I know it is a humble work.”
“Quirrel,” he said. “I once served the one who made this place.”
They regarded one another in silence while the rain whispered through the layers of stone above.
“Would you leave it sealed?” Lemm challenged.
Quirrel returned his gaze to the sigil. Hallownest had lost so much already. The thought of knowledge abandoned, locked away forever, felt like another kind of death.
“I would not see her work forgotten,” he said at last. “If care is taken, I believe this may be opened.”
Lemm nodded his assent, and in the stillness beneath the City’s endless rain, a choice was made.
They did not open the seal at once. Lemm gathered the tools he had collected from forgotten corners of the City, fine chisels and implements, slender keys shaped for locks that no longer existed. He worked with care that bordered on reverence, pausing often to study the interlocking plates before him. Quirrel watched, offering what little guidance he could, though the architecture of the device was unlike anything he remembered.
It was neither door nor vessel, but a lattice of shifting segments, each etched with fragments of Monomon’s script. No single piece could be moved without considering the whole. The design’s intricacy felt deliberate in its resistance.
When the final latch yielded, Quirrel saw no outward sign that anything had changed. There was only the vague sensation that something had twisted in the tenebrous spaces beyond. Then the air grew thin, the space between moments widening. The lantern’s flame bent, not away from any draft, but toward an unseen center, narrowing into a pale quivering thread.
Lemm’s breath faltered. “Quirrel… look.”
The murals shuddered, their figures elongating by a measure too slight to grasp. Lines once carved with certainty softened, then returned to form. Quirrel could detect no movement in the floor, but his steps fell short or long by turns, causing him to stumble. Sounds shifted, reverberations arriving before the sounds that produced them or stretching into silence. A low susurration drifted through the chamber. It had no direction, no source. It pressed against the mind like a memory trying to surface. Quirrel’s breathing slowed a fraction.
They turned back toward the seal in unspoken agreement, hurriedly sliding the plates back into place. When the last mechanism settled, the unnatural sound faded along with its pressure upon Quirrel’s mind, but the chamber did not return to itself. Effulgences lingered where they should have faded. The air felt thin and preternaturally still. All motion snuffed like a candleflame.
Quirrel felt a constriction in his shell as he laid his hand against the cold stone. The City endured, but now it carried something that did not belong to it. And he did not yet know what it would demand.
Quirrel and Lemm stood apart now, both unsettled by something they could not name.
At length, Lemm broke the quiet. “It has not undone itself, I think.”
“No,” Quirrel said. “It has only withdrawn.”
They did not touch the seal again.
Lemm’s hands trembled as he gathered his tools and fitted each piece back into its worn case. The metallic clink echoed too sharply in the chamber, as if the sound had been waiting for an excuse to exist. He paused once, glancing toward the murals, then toward the archway.
“I have spent my life searching among remnants,” he said. “None have ever felt as though they were watching me in return.”
Quirrel inclined his head. “Not all that have been forgotten wish to be remembered.”
They turned from the chamber together.
The corridors beyond felt narrower than before, though neither could say why. The rain’s distant patter had thickened into something heavier, a veil drawn across the City’s cyclopean bones.
Lemm lifted his lantern higher. “Do you feel it?”
“Yes,” Quirrel said. “As one feels a change in the air before a storm.”
They paused beneath a broken arch where water dripped from a crack in the stone. The drops struck the floor, yet no ripples followed, only a dull, viscous dribble. Lemm stared at the place where the water fell, his disquiet written plainly by his stance.
Quirrel considered. “Hallownest has carried too much for too long. It knows the weight of what it cannot release.”
They continued on.
Lemm halted at the base of a long stair. Above them, the broken spans of the City rose into mist and shadow, their outlines softened by rain and age. Somewhere high above, light flickered faintly, reflected from waters they could not see.
“I will return to the upper halls,” Lemm said at last. “There are records there, fragments that may yet make sense of what we witnessed.”
Quirrel regarded him. The scholar’s voice was steady, but some new restlessness shifted behind his eyes.
“Be cautious,” Quirrel said. “You may find answers better left alone.”
Lemm inclined his head. “But some questions demand an answer despite the cost.”
They parted without ceremony, each carrying the weight of the same unseen disturbance. Quirrel watched until the lantern’s glow faded into the mist. Only then did he turn back toward the deeper passages of the City. Behind him, the sealed chamber remained - quiet, displaced, waiting. And somewhere within the stone, something listened.
The air in these corridors felt… delayed. When he moved, the faintest afterimage of himself seemed to linger behind then fade. Quirrel slowed, unsettled, but did not stop. Whatever had been stirred did not pursue him. Monomon’s voice rose unbidden in his thoughts. “Patience. Measure. Restraint.” He lowered his head and sighed. He had believed he could honor her by ensuring her work was remembered. That belief had felt like duty, like reverence. Now it felt like presumption. Or was he just seeking an excuse for his fear?
Quirrel rose and continued on. The passage descended into warmth. Isma’s Grove had always been a living place. Its air was thick with spores and sweetness, its waters luminous, its roots curled like sleeping limbs. It was a sanctuary, once, a place that remembered how to grow. The pools still shone with their soft, golden light. Vines draped themselves across the cavern walls, their leaves broad and glistening. Spores still drifted lazily through the air before settling upon the water’s surface.
Yet even here Quirrel could see that something had gone awry. Yes, spores drifted, but they hesitated too, pausing long seconds in their slow descent. He caught a faint inorganic foetor in the air. He stepped forward and crouched at the edge of a pool, careful not to disturb the water. The surface reflected him in slick iridescent patterns, his shape appearing in a multiplicity of impossible colors no living eye should behold, and yet Quirrel perceived them. Where this grove still teemed life, an almost imperceptible distortion clung to it, a world slightly askew.
The realization stilled Quirrel’s breath. This was not the City’s burden alone. He closed his eyes. There was no voice nor whisper to interrupt his thoughts, only a sense of something pressing gently against them, a question that demanded a response. He had believed the seal’s disturbance contained. Now he saw how mistaken he had been. Whatever they had awakened was not bound only to its chamber. Quirrel rose slowly, the truth settling into him with quiet certainty. He understood, now, what he had set in motion. Neither Grove nor City had chosen this. Neither, perhaps, had whatever they’d released.
He turned from the glowing pool with resolve. Lemm must know. Together, they would have to face what had been set in motion.
Quirrel did not hesitate when he left the Grove. He no longer searched the air for signs, nor studied the stone for subtle shifts. What he had seen was enough. It would not be undone by watching.
“Patience. Measure. Restraint.” The words marked his steps. He had learned too late what they demanded. Now he would deal with the consequences. He set his feet toward the upper halls.
The climb felt longer than it should have. He passed through galleries half-remembered, where murals clung to walls worn by time and rain. At the crossing near the scholar’s galleries, he slowed. Lemm would have gone upward, toward records still untouched by the City’s decay, toward light.
Quirrel found Lemm in a high gallery overlooking the City’s broken spans. Rain drifted through the open arches, wan light reflecting from distant waters. The scholar stood beside a long stone table scattered with implements, tablets, and fragments of etched shell. His lantern burned low, its flame steady but small against the cavern’s vastness. He looked up as Quirrel approached.
“I had not thought to meet you again,” he said.
Quirrel inclined his head. “I saw something I could not ignore.” They stood in silence, rain whispering through the arches above. “The Grove has been touched,” Quirrel said at last.
Lemm’s grip tightened on the edge of the table. “Isma’s?”
Quirrel nodded. “The water lingers. The light hesitates. It is small, but it is there.”
Lemm lowered his gaze. “Then it has traveled farther than we thought.”
“Yes.” Another pause as the lanternlight quavered, throwing shadows across the table.
“I have been sorting what remains,” Lemm said quietly. “Trying to understand where we went astray.”
Quirrel turned toward the dark stair that led downward. “We did not go astray,” he said. “We went too far, too quickly.” Lemm looked up, and Quirrel met his eyes. “I will not leave this as it is. Come with me.”
For a moment, Lemm hesitated. Then he nodded. They gathered their tools in silence.
The stair descended into darkness, and with each step the City grew more and more still. At the chamber’s threshold, Quirrel paused. The lattice of Monomon’s seal waited, but it was no longer the same. Plates that had once aligned with careful precision now hung at impossible angles. The eldritch script squirmed across the stone, curling and uncurling as with indecision. Light did not fall where it should, bending around corners, painting shadows cast by no object. Echo layered atop echo in ways the mind struggled to track.
Quirrel laid his gloved hand against icy stone. The lattice felt wrong, but not inert. It was alive in a way that resisted understanding. Even the air smelled faintly of metal and petrichor, as though the chamber had breathed in something foul in his absence.
“I will guide the work,” he said, voice low, almost to himself. “We proceed with care.”
Lemm moved at his side, tools in hand, eyes wide. “It is worse than before,” he murmured.
Quirrel nodded. “Yes. But it can still yield. Focus on the plates. I will trace the script.”
They began. The lattice shifted under their hands, segments moving unsteadily. Where they had left it, the lines of writing now doubled back upon themselves, spiraling into impossible curves, curling at angles that made no sense. A manic babble just on the edge of hearing pressed against their awareness.
The murals along the walls stretched subtly, figures warping. The limbs of the depicted bugs bent at unnatural angles and beyond natural limits, then snapped back into place as if reconsidering. Each motion of the lattice caused tremors in perception. The walls shivered, and time itself felt misaligned. Quirrel’s breath came in measured pulls; his hands guided Lemm’s, correcting one plate, then another, undoing a minute impossibility, replacing it with deliberate order.
For long moments they worked in silence. The chamber resisted. Every adjustment provoked a counter-motion, the wrongness reacting, stretching, testing. Yet with each small act of alignment, the tremors subsided. The script’s spirals steadied, the plates settled into a repose that was tense but stable.
When the final mechanism clicked into place, a weight Quirrel had not even realized was there lifted. The air stopped pressing. Shadows resumed their natural paths. The sigil’s pallid glow faded.
Quirrel lowered his hand and stepped back, eyes tracing the lattice one last time. He felt the lesson in his shell. It had tested them to their utmost, and they had answered it; not perfectly, but it was enough.
Lemm exhaled, setting down his tools. “Is it steady?” he asked, voice weary.
Quirrel nodded. “For now. But fragile if we are not heedful.”
He turned toward the stair that would lead them upward, lantern held steady. Lemm followed, the chamber behind them still alive, but no longer hostile.
The upper galleries were cool with mist and the scent of stone long washed by rain. Quirrel walked beside Lemm, lantern held low, tracing the worn curves of pillars that had borne centuries of forgotten passage. Lemm moved deliberately, still burdened by the gravity of what they had done.
“I will continue,” he decided, voice low. “More slowly. With care.”
Quirrel inclined his head. “Do what you must,” he replied. “But do not rush.” He drew a slow breath. The lattice had been repaired, but its quiet wrongness had left a mark on his mind.
He could remain here in the galleries he remembered, yet the City offered no solace. Instead, he turned his gaze upward along the stair. Above the City lay the Blue Lake: its waters untroubled in his mind’s eye, pure light glancing from hidden surfaces, wind brushing through quiet reeds. He had not seen it, not yet, but he imagined it peaceful. He longed for rest away from the corridors and shadows he had walked for so long.
“If you need me, Lemm, I will be at the Blue Lake,” he said at last, voice calm, but firm.
Quirrel lifted his lantern and stepped onto the stair. With each step he carried the weight of what had been done, but also the quiet thrill of what awaited.
Above, rain drifted through the arches, catching on stone and spire. Quirrel’s mask reflected fragments of the world around him. Ahead, the path to the Blue Lake stretched bright with promise.