Chapter 63: The Deal Below
They moved through the Quiet Tongue.
The fog had rolled in thick that night, curling around Karihad’s slums as if it were a hungry thing.
No one loitered in the alleys. No drunks stumbled from the taverns. Doors were shut, lanterns dimmed. The only light came from the soft glow of smoldering ash in the barrels outside—a flicker of fire amid the silence.
Lan walked at the center of the group, cloaked in a dark overcoat, his face entirely obscured by a lacquered black mask with no markings.
Only his pale eyes shone from within, cold and unreadable. Bragg followed at his right like a moving wall of fur and muscle, his own mask carved with the jagged teeth of a beast.
Venom, who had led them here, moved with casual confidence, the only one among them who wore no full mask—just a crimson cloth tied across his face.
They said nothing. No names were spoken.
Here, in the Quiet Tongue, silence was safer than breath.
Venom stopped at a rusted door nestled between two collapsed shrines. It bore no markings, save for a single iron triangle nailed into the center.
He knocked once. Waited. Knocked again—two short taps.
The door creaked open without a word, and they stepped inside.
The corridor beyond was dim and narrow, lit only by strips of phosphorescent moss embedded in the walls. The floor sloped downward as they descended into the earth, each step muffled by thick dust and silence.