Chapter 4The Locked Codex

The market screamed.

Riven's boots slipped on crushed fruit as Mira yanked him sideways, past a stall collapsing under the weight of panicked bodies. Somewhere behind them, metal claws scraped stone. The hounds had found their trail.

"Faster," Mira hissed, her scar catching the lamplight as she glanced back.

His side burned. Each breath pulled at the wound like a hook. He pressed his palm against the blood-soaked fabric and kept moving.

Mira veered left, ducking under a collapsed awning. She grabbed a crate stacked with rotting vegetables and shoved it aside, revealing a rusted iron ring set into the floor. She hauled it up—a trapdoor, barely wide enough for a man's shoulders.

"Down."

Riven didn't argue. He dropped into darkness, landing hard on wet stone. His knee buckled. Pain shot through his ribs. Above him, Mira slammed the trapdoor shut just as something heavy crashed against it.

The barking became muffled. Distant.

They lay in the dark, breathing hard.

---

The tunnel stretched for what felt like miles. Water trickled somewhere ahead. Riven's blood left a dark trail on the stone, but there was no helping it. Every step cost him.

Mira walked ahead, silent, her silhouette sharp against the faint light from rusted grates overhead. She didn't look back. She didn't offer help.

Finally, she stopped at a ladder bolted to the wall. She climbed. He followed, pulling himself up rung by rung, each movement a negotiation with his own body.

The hatch opened into a small room. Dusty. Forgotten. A cot in the corner, a table covered in yellowed papers, and a single lantern.

Mira lit it without a word.

Riven collapsed onto the cot. The world swam.

"You're bleeding on my father's maps," she said flatly.

He looked down. Under his hand, a detailed sketch of a fortress—towers, gates, corridors marked in faded ink. The Inquisition's dungeon.

He tried to smile. "Adds character."

She grabbed a roll of bandages from a shelf and tossed them at him. "You'll be dead in an hour if you don't stop that."

He caught the roll with one hand, barely. "Then maybe you should help me."

Mira stared at him. Her scar pulled tight as her jaw clenched. For a long moment, she didn't move.

Then she knelt beside him and tore open his shirt.

---

She worked fast, efficient, her fingers pressing hard against the wound until he gasped.

"Hold still."

"Easy for you to say."

She didn't respond. She wound the bandages tight, her movements practiced. When she was done, she sat back on her heels and met his eyes.

"Old Corvus is my father. He's been in that dungeon for thirty years. I've tried to get him out twice." She touched the scar on her cheek. "The first time cost me this. The second cost me three friends."

Riven said nothing.

"Orin Vale was his apprentice. My father taught him everything—the old scripts, the cipher methods, the real history of the prophecies. When the Inquisition came for my father, Orin betrayed him. Took his work. Buried him in that hole."

She reached under the table and pulled out a leather tube. She uncorked it and slid out a roll of parchment—a map. But not of the dungeon. This one was older, the ink faded, the lines drawn by a steady hand.

"The original prophecy doesn't say what Karim claims it says," she said. "My father knows the truth. The codebook has the key to decoding everything—the scrap you carry, the real prophecy, all of it."

Riven's hand went to his pocket. The scrap was still there, damp with sweat and blood.

"Help me get him out," Mira said, "and I'll give you the truth."

Riven studied her. The scar. The steady hands. The desperation she tried to hide beneath the hard voice.

"Show me the dungeon."

---

She spread the map across the table.

The Inquisition's fortress was a maze of concentric walls, each layer more fortified than the last. The dungeon sat at the lowest level, buried beneath the central tower. Guard posts marked every junction. Dead zones where patrols overlapped.

But Mira's finger traced a thin line running from the eastern edge of the fortress, curving beneath the outer wall, skirting the guard barracks, and ending at a small chamber marked *Old Archives—Sealed*.

"This supply tunnel was sealed thirty years ago, after a structural collapse. They never reopened it. Too expensive, too dangerous."

Riven leaned closer. "Where does it lead?"

"Into the lower levels. Two corridors from my father's cell." She looked up. "But I don't know the current guard rotations. My last contact inside died six months ago."

Riven's mind raced. The tunnel was their only shot. But a blind entry into a fortress that had held Old Corvus for three decades? Suicide.

"We need outside help," he said.

Mira's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

He thought of Sera. The way she'd held a blade to his throat and offered a deal instead of a death. She knew the fortress. She knew the Inquisition's patterns. She was the only person in the city who might help them.

Before he could answer, something tapped at the window.

Mira tensed. She crossed the room and cracked the shutter. A messenger bird—gray, hooded—hopped inside. She unrolled the cylinder from its leg and read the note.

Her face went pale.

"What is it?"

She handed him the paper.

*By decree of High Inquisitor Karim Voss: the Unchosen is condemned to execution at dawn. City-wide lockdown in effect. All gates sealed. All ships impounded. Citizens are ordered to report any sighting, on pain of contract forfeiture.*

Riven read it twice.

Dawn. Less than twelve hours.

Outside, distant but growing closer, he heard the baying of hounds.