The air was warmer here... not much, but enough that the cold in Gavril's ribs eased a fraction. The scent shifted too... less of damp stone and rot, more of something crisp and sharp.
Old brick pillars rose in rows, square and thick, holding up a ceiling veined with blackened runoff channels. This had been a drainage once, a place where storm floods had been guided beneath Whitehold and out toward the river. Now it felt like the hollow inside a ribcage.
The woman's gaze flicked over the newcomers. She took in weapons, posture, how they bunched or spread. There was no fear in her eyes. No arrogance either.
"The Hallow Swords," she said. "Good. I was hoping we weren't alone down here."
Gavril's brow ticked. "You know who we are?"
"Baron Edric sent a commission to my tower. Along with he sent us your profiles... names, habits, last known assignments." Her tone was matter-of-fact. "Kaavi, Gavril and the kid. Veyl. Liran. Corren. Joren. Tannic." She nodded.
Tannic blinked once. "That's unsettling."
She gave him the faintest hint of a smile. "It means the Baron takes this seriously."
Kaavi's gaze stayed on her hands ... empty now, relaxed at her sides, but he'd seen the char around the puppets. "You're the mage."
"Asha," she said. "Of Amber light Tower. Some call it the Amber Tower, if they like their names shorter."
"She found me before the puppets did," Viktor added
Gavril straightened, grimacing as his ribs complained. "You're late for someone that should be here first."
She replied calmly. "I had to take the long way around. The Baron requested fire specialists as a last measure, in case Whitehold fell too quickly. By the time I reached the northern pass, your lines were already drawn."
"Then why aren't you with them?" Corren asked. "With the Baron?"
"Because," Asha said, "someone decided to move pieces behind his back."
Her tone didn't sharpen, but the air around her seemed to.
"A convoy on the western mountain road. Hired blades, the sort of sigils merchants borrow when they want to look more important than they are. Bandits hit them from above. Sloppy ambush. Loud. Visible. I almost kept riding."
She spoke. "I burned the bandits off their ledges. All that should have been left was frightened men counting their losses. Instead, I saw what was inside the broken crates."
She let that hang for a beat.
Gavril's fingers tightened unconsciously on his axe haft. "Let me guess. Not grain."
"No," Asha said. "Bodies. Dressed like minor nobility. Some with family crests, lips sewn. Joints treated. The same glass behind the eyes you see in the puppets here, but what raised my suspicion was a body similar to Baron."
Veyl's jaw clenched.
"Replacements," Asha corrected softly. "The mercenaries weren't guarding a caravan. They were guarding an infection. When I asked questions, they panicked. Tried to kill me. That went badly for them."
A brief, dry understatement that made Corren's mouth twitch.
"I kept two alive long enough to talk," Asha continued. "Their employer paid well and asked for silence. But they spoke about nobles going quiet in other towns. About orders to deliver 'cargo' to estates. And they mentioned Whitehold by name as a model."
Kaavi's eyes cooled. "A test run."
Gavril spat on the stone. "We saw some of the same filth under the granary. Crates full of half-built things, bodies on tables. Someone's been busy."
"And your ravens saw the crates marked for the south road," Veyl added.
Kaavi gave a short, grim nod. "Bodies loaded with more care than the rest. Silk. Boots. Rings."
Asha listened without interrupting, then drew the threads together with one quiet sentence.
"Then what I burned on the road was just one limb of the same body."
Silence settled for a heartbeat. The faint drip of water echoed somewhere deeper in the system.
"So, you left the convoy," Kaavi said. It wasn't a question.
"I burned the cargo," Asha said simply. "I made sure they were in no condition to continue. Then I rode for Whitehold. If this is where the roots coil deepest, this is where they have to be cut."
Gavril gave a short, approving grunt. "Could've used you an hour ago."
"You are still breathing," Asha said. "So, you did well enough."
Asha's gaze moved over the group again, slower this time. Not tallying weapons now, but faces. Lines of exhaustion. How they carried themselves.
She murmured. "Where is you captain? He isn't here yet."
Kaavi held her gaze. "Joren stayed at the forge courtyard. He held the puppets while we broke away to find Viktor."
"For how long?" Asha asked.
"Long enough," Kaavi echoed.
Asha's lips pressed into a thin line. "You left him alone"
Kaavi didn't rise to the implied judgement. "He chose the ground. I chose to let him keep it."
Gavril shifted his weight, biting back a hiss as his ribs protested. "If that light you threw up was yours, you were closer to him than we were. Did you see the courtyard?"
Asha shook her head once. "By the time the boy and I reached this level, the worst of the noise had shifted. Whatever is happening there now, it's buried under too much stone and distance for me to feel it clearly."
She went quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, the warmth in her voice hadn't gone, but something harder had settled beneath it.
"I don't like loose ends," she said. "Not in my work."
Kaavi watched her steadily. "You intend to go back for him."
"Yes," Asha said. "You have one man holding a courtyard. You have a Baron whose line is stretching thin." Her eyes flicked to Viktor for a heartbeat. "You can't afford to lose any of those pillars right now."
"We're not arguing his worth," Gavril said. "We're arguing distance. Those tunnels backtrack under half the ward, and we don't know what's between here and there anymore."
"I will move faster alone," Asha replied. "You all move as a unit. Your strength is in the way you cover each other. Mine isn't."
Corren folded his arms. "So, we wait here and trust someone we've just met to bring our captain back from a courtyard full of puppets."
Asha met his look without a flicker. "If it helps, I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm telling you how this ends cleanest."
Liran let out a slow breath. "You're confident, I'll give you that."
"If I wasn't," she said, "I'd have stayed in the tower."
Tannic glanced toward the deeper tunnel, where the old drainage channels sloped further under the city. "There are junction chambers ahead," he said to Kaavi. "We saw them in the files ... wide caverns, four exits, dry platforms around the main run. Easier to defend than this."
Corren nodded. "Secondary canals. Old flood routes. Half the council forgot they existed. We didn't."
Asha inclined her head. "Then use them. Push deeper, find one of those chambers, and hold it. You need rest, even if none of you want to admit it. The Baron will need bodies that can still stand when we reach him."
Veyl's voice was low. "You're that certain we'll reach him?"
"Yes," Asha said. "Because the alternative is leaving him to fight this war alone, and I don't make a habit of wasting effort."
She turned back to Kaavi. "Move your people. Take the boy. I'll go back, cut a path where I can, and drag your missing man out of whatever corner he's still breathing in."
"And if he isn't?" Gavril asked, the words rough.
Her eyes didn't soften. "Then I'll make sure nothing that killed him walks away from it."
No bravado. Just a promise stated like a practical detail.
Kaavi's hand flexed once at his side. He looked at Viktor, at the others, then back at Asha.
"You don't owe us this," he said.
"No," she agreed. "I owe it to myself. To the tower that sent me and to Baron."
Silence settled again, held tight between brick and stone.
Then Kaavi inclined his head. It was not a bow. It was something closer to acknowledgement between equals.
"Very well," he said. "You bring him back; we move for the Baron together."
"That's the shape of it," Asha said.
Viktor stepped forward before he could think better of it "Bring him back," he said.
Asha's eyes warmed. "That's the plan."
She took a step back from the group, toward the tunnel that angled up and north. Her cloak brushed lightly against the charred patch of floor. For a moment, the only sound was the drip-drip from an unseen pipe.
"Rest," she said, looking over them one last time. "Sharpen blades. When I return with Joren, we don't get another pause. From there, we go to your Baron and finish what we started."
Gavril snorted. "You sound awfully sure we'll live that long."
She raised her right hand.
Heat swelled from nowhere, gathering along her fingers. Not wild, not screaming; a controlled bloom, like a forge opening its eye. Flames twisted up around her palm in a tight spiral, bright enough that the nearby stone flashed gold for a heartbeat.
For an instant, the chamber felt less like a cistern and more like a hall lit for something sacred.
"Wait for me," she said.
Then she turned, and the fire went with her, trailing a faint afterglow as she ran into the dark, a moving ember swallowed by the old bones of the city.