The ritual chamber settled into silence. Copper lines ran from the grathok’s opened chest to the stone table, silver needles rested in shallow grooves around the focus, and six vessels stood in precise rows beside the carcass, some empty and others holding dark tissue or cloudy fluid drawn from places Lira had stopped asking Malakar to identify. Chalk and etched markings covered the floor in a pattern that crossed beneath boots, braces, table legs, and the grathok itself. Every piece had been measured, adjusted, and checked until Malakar finally seemed satisfied. Around him, the others held the positions he had assigned. Thane gripped the iron brace near the grathok’s shoulder. Tako steadied the skull between his hands. Elora kept the linen, oil, mirror, cord, and holy emblem arranged within reach. Zerai crouched beside the inner markings with both hands tucked against her knees. Lira suspected that was the only reason she had managed several minutes without touching anything.
Lira remained outside the outer circle with her bow lowered across one thigh. Malakar had given her the broadest instruction of anyone in the room: watch. So she watched Thane shift his weight from one foot to the other, Elora check the placement of the mirror for the third time, and Zerai follow the copper lines with her eyes until they disappeared beneath the grathok.
“How long are we standing here?” Thane asked.
Malakar adjusted one silver needle by the width of a fingernail. “Until everything is where it belongs.”
“It’s been where it belongs.”
“No. You have been where you belong. The distinction matters.”
Zerai glanced toward Thane. “I’ve been told where I belong eleven times.”
“Twelve,” Malakar said.
“You’re counting?”
“I am documenting a recurring problem.”
Thane’s beard twitched around a suppressed grin.
Malakar stepped behind the stone table, and the small release of tension vanished. He surveyed the working from one side to the other, following each copper line to its destination before inspecting the grathok’s restraints and the surrounding marks. His gaze passed over every member of the group before stopping on Lira. She nodded.
He raised two fingers above the focus. A thin gold line appeared beneath them. Malakar drew a narrow figure through the air, then crossed it with a second stroke from his opposite hand. Each mark remained suspended where he placed it, clean and bright against the white stone. He completed the pattern, pressed his thumb into its center, and the whole construction folded inward. The focus took the light.
A groove beneath the table illuminated. Another answered near Thane’s boots, followed by a third beneath the grathok platform. The glow moved through the working in measured sections, pausing at each junction before continuing along the next line.
The grathok’s forelimb pulled against its restraint. Tako tightened his hands around the skull.
“Hold,” Malakar said.
“Tako holds.”
Malakar reached for the first silver needle and lowered its point toward the focus.
“From this point forward, follow every instruction exactly.”
For once, Zerai had nothing to add.
The needle touched the focus with a faint metallic click that carried across the quiet chamber, followed by a tremor in the copper lines running toward the grathok. Thane’s brace pulled against his hands. Tako shifted one foot to keep the skull aligned, his shoulders tightening while Malakar watched the response travel through the working.
“Keep it there.”
Tako tightened his grip.
The gold beneath the focus dimmed, then gathered again along one edge. Malakar lowered a second needle into a neighboring groove and rotated it between two fingers. The light changed direction. One branch of the pattern brightened toward Zerai, another toward Elora, while the lines beneath Thane remained dull.
Zerai leaned closer without moving her feet. “It split.”
“I can see that.”
“Two paths.”
“Three.”
Her eyes moved faster across the floor. “The third is weak.”
“Which is why you missed it.”
Zerai opened her mouth, reconsidered, then pointed toward a faint line beneath the worktable. “There.”
Malakar gave no acknowledgment beyond shifting the second needle half a turn. The faint branch strengthened until the focus answered. A voice entered the room.
It came without breath, without resonance, without any sense of a mouth behind it. The sound had been worn down to its barest components, consonants arriving hard and dry while vowels stretched thin between them, every trace of age, accent, and emotion scoured away by whatever residue the focus had preserved. It was recognizably a voice only because the mind insisted on assembling the pieces into speech. Beneath the words ran a faint doubling, the same sounds arriving a fraction apart, one slightly deeper than the other, an instruction repeated through two rooms and caught somewhere between them.
There was authority in the cadence even after everything human had been stripped from it. Each fragment landed with the clipped certainty of something accustomed to being obeyed. No anger sharpened it. No urgency hurried it. Whoever had spoken these words had expected the command itself to be sufficient.
“…take…”
The single word surfaced cleanly before its edges frayed. The final consonant dragged into a rough whisper, then dissolved beneath the low vibration running through the floor. Lira kept her eyes on the focus. For half a heartbeat, another word stirred beneath the first, spoken in the same dead cadence but too damaged to separate from the noise.
Then the voice was gone. The word dissolved into static and was replaced with the smell of wet fur. Lira’s grip tightened on the bow before she could stop herself. Damp earth followed, then smoke, old blood, and the sour animal stink she remembered from the gnoll den. None of it belonged in the white chamber, but each scent arrived with enough force to put the forest around them for half a breath.
Elora looked toward Malakar. “Are we supposed to be seeing this?”
“Receiving it.”
A flash crossed Lira’s vision. Trees at night. A hand gripping rough wood. Something pale tied around a wrist. Darkness again.
Thane swore under his breath. “Saw somebody.”
Malakar kept his eyes on the focus. “Describe them.”
“Couldn’t. Only got half a heartbeat.”
“Then give me the half you had.”
Thane’s jaw tightened. “Human hand. I think. Leather around the wrist.”
Zerai shook her head. “Cloth. Dark cloth, maybe wrapped twice.”
Thane looked across the working at her. “You were staring at the floor.”
“I have peripheral vision, Thane. It is one of several advantages afforded by having eyes that cooperate with each other.”
Malakar raised one finger before Thane could answer. “Enough. Both descriptions may be useful.”
Another fragment pushed through.
“…north… wait… three…”
The last word came from somewhere else.
Lira looked up.
So did Elora.
The voice had changed. Same broken quality, different weight behind it. Lower. Closer. The second presence lasted only a moment before something scraped across the focus and the gold lines shivered.
Malakar adjusted the needle.
A rush of impressions followed: wagon wheels over stone, a door closing, torchlight reflected in water, hands passing something wrapped in hide from one person to another. No face remained long enough to hold. No location remained coherent. Each image arrived detached from whatever came before it.
Lira thought of Kal. Warehouses. Transfers. Cargo entering under one name and leaving under another.
Elora’s eyes narrowed. “That was more than one person.”
“Yes,” Malakar said.
“How many?”
“I cannot tell yet.”
The focus pulsed beneath the needles.
This time the fragment came with direction rather than image. A pull moved through Lira’s chest, vague at first, then firm enough that she could have pointed toward it without understanding why.
Malakar watched the nearest line flare.
“There,” Zerai said quietly.
He turned the first needle.
The pull vanished, then returned from somewhere else.
It came through the working with enough force to draw Lira’s attention toward the far wall, though nothing there had changed.
“Three traces,” Zerai said. “Maybe four.”
“Three worth following.”
“So there is a fourth.”
“There is always more residue than meaning.”
Malakar shifted the second needle. Images broke across Lira’s vision in rapid succession: a road at dusk, mud churned by many feet, a lantern swinging from a hook, hands closing around the focus and another pair taking it. Dark wool. A leather cuff. Fingers stained black around the nails. No image lasted long enough to reveal a face.
Elora watched the impressions disappear. “Different handlers?”
“Possibly.”
“How many people touched the damned thing?” Thane asked.
“More than enough to ruin a simple trace.”
Malakar lowered a copper filament into the nearest vessel. Gold spread through the cloudy fluid in branching veins, then contracted until two narrow paths remained. Wet leather and smoke came through one; stone dust, lamp oil, and a metallic taste through the other.
The voice surfaced again.
“…move… west…”
A second voice crossed beneath it.
“…hold until…”
The words collapsed into a harsh scrape. Malakar lifted one needle, waited for the brighter branch to weaken, then lowered it against another point along the groove. The first trail returned immediately. The second flickered through the copper without settling.
“There.” Zerai pointed toward the weaker branch. “It keeps breaking apart every time you pull on it.”
“Because we are no longer reading physical contact.” Malakar turned the needle a fraction.
Elora looked from the focus to the copper lines. “Then what are we reading?”
“Instruction. The command impressed into the focus.”
Gold gathered beneath Malakar’s palm, brighter than before, and the grathok’s body pulled against the braces hard enough to make the chains groan. Thane planted his boots and leaned into the brace while Tako locked both arms around the skull. The copper lines quivered where they entered the exposed tissue.
Thane shifted one boot farther back. “Still holding.”
“Keep the shoulder exactly where it is.”
The resistance traveled through the carcass in a slow wave. One hind leg kicked against the platform. Elora reached toward the linen at her feet, but Malakar lifted one finger.
“Wait.”
The movement ceased.
He lowered his hand toward the focus until only a narrow gap remained between his palm and the stone. The brighter trail bent toward him, dividing around older impressions before separating again.
Zerai tracked every turn. “You’re stripping out everyone who handled it after the order was put in.”
“I am separating transmission from command.”
“So the couriers and warehouse hands become noise.”
“For the question we are asking, yes.”
Another fragment tore free.
“…take the boys…”
Lira’s fingers tightened around the bow.
The next words came through damaged, one syllable swallowed by static.
“…bring them…”
The voice disappeared beneath a burst of torchlight, running feet, gnoll breath, and the stink of the den.
Color drained from Elora’s face. “They were told to take Tomas and Niko.”
Malakar moved the needle again without answering. The remaining line pulled backward through the working while the gold light around the focus darkened at the edges.
A crack opened through the chalk near Zerai’s knee. She looked down. “Malakar. That line was intact.”
A second crack split the neighboring mark before he answered.
Thane looked across the carcass. “Tell me that’s expected.”
The turn of the needle slowed. “The resistance is increasing as we approach the source.”
“That sounds suspiciously different from expected.”
“It is.”
The copper lines tightened.
Malakar set the third needle into place. “Hold your positions.”
The gold lines nearest him drew inward until they formed a narrow path through the larger pattern. Older impressions still surfaced around it, hands, roads, torchlight, voices worn down by repetition, but their strength diminished as Malakar followed the surviving thread.
Lira watched the line tighten. “Can you give me a direction yet?”
“Once the remaining transit residue clears.”
A pressure gathered behind her ribs and pulled toward the wall. She fixed the bearing against her mental map of Kaethar above them.
“Southwest.”
“Approximately.”
Zerai traced the illuminated lines with her eyes. “Southwest from here crosses the river.”
“Only if the residue is giving us a direct bearing,” Malakar said. “We are still accounting for where the focus traveled after the command was placed.”
“So the direction is lying.”
“No. You are asking it the wrong question.”
Thane glanced toward Zerai. “He somehow made that sound like your fault.”
“He practices.”
Malakar shifted the third needle. The pull sharpened and swung several degrees. Lira adjusted with it, laying the city over the stone in her mind: the market district, the river, the southern gates, then open road beyond Kaethar. Whoever had issued the command could have been outside the city while handlers and couriers carried the focus inward.
“The source is fixed. The focus was not.” Malakar turned the needle another fraction. “Each correction removes distance traveled, intermediate handlers, and movement after the command was impressed.”
Zerai’s gaze jumped between the focus and the floor. “So we’re peeling away everywhere it’s been since.”
“Yes.”
The adjustment stripped away another layer of residue. The smell of lamp oil vanished. Wagon wheels clattered once inside Lira’s head and disappeared. The pull swung west, then southwest as Malakar worked backward through the focus’s journey.
Thane looked between Malakar and Lira. “Where does that put us?”
“Outside Kaethar.”
“How far?”
“I can’t tell.”
The grathok convulsed beneath the restraints. Tako bore down with both hands while Thane caught the sudden pull at the shoulder. Copper rang against iron. One of the vessels cracked from rim to base, spilling dark fluid across the table without breaking the line Malakar held.
The trail swung south.
Lira’s mouth tightened. She knew that road. They had walked it coming here.
Zerai looked up from the illuminated lines. “Hold on. That’s the road we took out of Kaethar.”
Malakar turned the needle another fraction.
The pressure settled south by southwest.
Thane stopped watching the carcass long enough to look at Lira. “That’s our road.”
“I know.”
The gold path contracted until only a handful of lines remained illuminated across the floor. Resistance returned with it. Chalk split. A copper filament snapped loose from the grathok and whipped against the platform. Tako caught the skull before it shifted, both hands locking around the horns as the carcass strained beneath him.
Malakar continued pulling backward through the trace.
The direction held.
Lira mapped the road through the Veldtwood, then the scattered farms and crossroads beyond it. Other settlements lay along the same bearing, enough possibilities that she refused to name the one already taking shape in her head.
The trail narrowed again.
Its pull settled firmly.
Elora looked toward her. “Lira?”
She counted the roads once more, followed the bends she remembered, and tested every alternative she could place along the line.
Malakar made the final adjustment. The bearing held.
Lira knew it. So did Thane.
His hands stopped moving on the brace. “Dunmoor.”
Malakar studied the fixed line for another moment. “Yes.”
For several breaths, nobody spoke. Gold still burned through the markings on the floor, and the grathok remained locked beneath iron and copper while Malakar kept one hand above the focus to hold the trace in place.
Lira stared at the fixed line.
Dunmoor.
Someone had impressed an order into the focus, passed it through however many hands Malakar had just stripped away, and sent it toward the same village where Tomas and Niko had been taken.
But the hands stayed with her. Different people taking the focus, different handlers moving it from one stage to another.
“The preserved creatures.”
Thane looked over. “What about Kal’s warehouses?”
“The same signet passed through three warehouses. Every time it appeared, a preserved creature went in under one name and came out under another.”
Zerai shifted her attention from the floor. “River drake. Something bear-adjacent with too many joints. Devotional statuary that bled.”
Thane gave her a look.
“I remember useful details.”
Elora turned toward the focus. “And someone knew about our grathok before we reached Spice Row.”
“They knew it entered Kaethar,” Lira said. “Vale reacted to it. The market office reacted to it. Kal was already following the same transfers.”
Malakar adjusted the nearest needle, and the gold thread flickered. An image surfaced above the focus: a crate lifted from one wagon and set onto another while markings on its side disappeared beneath fresh chalk. The image vanished before anyone could read what had been covered.
Zerai stared at the empty space. “So that wasn’t storage. Somebody was moving the cargo through.”
“Correct. The image confirms a transfer between stages.”
“Different handlers at each stage?”
“Possibly. The residue cannot tell us how many.”
Elora’s eyes moved toward the grathok. “Then Gilderoy’s reagent belongs somewhere in this too.”
Thane’s head turned sharply. “Gilderoy gave us one ingredient for one ritual. That does not put him in the warehouses.”
“No,” Elora said, meeting his look. “But he knew exactly which kind of creature would give us the cleanest trace. I want to know how much else he knew when he sent us hunting for it.”
Malakar glanced toward her. “He knew the conventional reagent.”
“That distinction is going to matter quite a lot when we speak to him.”
Lira looked over the arrangement again. The focus. The grathok. Copper threaded through dead flesh. Kal’s transfers. A gnoll raid in Dunmoor. Gilderoy’s ritual. Varna preserving the grathok. Vale appearing after they dragged the carcass into public view. Warehouses changing names on cargo nobody wanted examined too closely.
Different cargo. Same pattern of movement.
“The gnolls were part of the system,” she said.
“Likely,” Malakar replied.
“And the creatures move the same way. One person gets them. Another transports them. Someone else preserves them. Warehouses pass them along under different records.”
Zerai sat back on her heels. “Nobody needs to know where the whole thing starts or where it ends.”
Thane looked from the focus to the grathok beneath his hands. “You’re saying the gnolls and Kal’s warehouses belong to the same operation.”
Lira studied the carcass.
“I’m saying we finally know what to look for.”
The iron brace had stopped fighting Thane, though his grip remained tight. “We killed this thing because Gilderoy told us we needed magical flesh for the trace.”
“A heart,” Elora said. “He wanted the heart.”
“And when we refused the sylphid, we found something else.”
Zerai followed the copper lines running into the carcass. “Then we dragged our something else halfway across the countryside.”
They had hunted the grathok themselves, hauled it to Kaethar, found specialists to preserve it, argued over who could use it, and carried it through the city in plain sight. Each decision had solved the immediate problem. Taken together, those decisions followed many of the same steps Kal had described.
“Varna preserved it,” Lira said. “We supplied the transport. Vale found us because we put it in the street. The market office tried to take custody. Kal followed the signet because preserved creatures were already moving through the same warehouses.”
“And then we brought it here.” Thane’s attention shifted fully to Malakar. “You already knew people were moving magical creatures through Kaethar.”
“I knew specimens and remains were being traded through channels designed to conceal their origin and destination. That is neither rare nor automatically criminal.”
A crease appeared between Zerai’s brows. “You found a very expensive way to say ‘black market.’”
Malakar finally looked at her. “There are several markets. Some of them even pay taxes.”
Elora stepped closer to the edge of her mark. “Kal said you had been buying pieces of this problem for months.”
Malakar’s hand paused above the focus.
Thane caught the hesitation. “There. You know what she means.”
“I know what your thief implied.”
“Then tell us why he was wrong.”
“I have purchased specimens connected to unusual magical traffic because unusual magical traffic interests me. Your thief appears to have mistaken curiosity for confession.”
Lira kept her eyes on him. “Did you know where those specimens were coming from?”
“Several places.”
“Dunmoor?”
“No.”
The answer came without hesitation. Lira found no obvious calculation in his expression and believed him, but that still left months of unexplained purchases between them.
Zerai lowered her gaze to the focus. “Whoever built this can spread the work out. Hunters find the creatures. Somebody buys them. Somebody preserves them. Wagons move them. Warehouses hide them. Clerks change the names. Half the people involved might never know what the person before or after them is doing.”
“And nobody has to ask what happens at the other end,” Elora said.
Silence settled over the working while Lira pictured the road into Kaethar. The grathok had ridden lashed to the sledge behind the mules, with Tako walking alongside to keep the carcass steady. They had brought it through the city gates themselves while merchants, guards, clerks, thieves, and whoever else had an interest in magical cargo watched them pass.
“We did almost everything a handler would have done. Found the creature, killed it, preserved it, transported it, and put it in front of people already watching for magical cargo.”
Thane’s jaw hardened. “We were trying to stop whoever did this.”
Lira looked at the grathok stretched across Malakar’s table. “And we still carried the same kind of cargo through the same city.”
The remaining gold line continued toward Dunmoor while Malakar lowered his gaze to the focus.
“Then I suggest,” he said, “you determine what they intended to do with it.”
If this pulled you in, a rating or review on Royal Road helps the story get in front of more readers:
Once you’re caught up, head over to Patreon
to vote for the direction of the next installment.
Always free to read. Always free to vote.
Discover more from Harvey Moreno
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
