Chapter 30 · Cellar Echoes

"Don't move. It can hear your bones."

Kael froze with one hand on the cellar steps and the other wrapped around Julian's wrist. Julian's skin felt like cold stone under his fingers, but the pulse beneath it still jumped hard and fast.

Something scraped across the ceiling above them.

Not footsteps. Not claws.

A slow, testing drag. Like a knife being pulled over a locked door.

Julian leaned close enough that his breath touched Kael's ear. "You said it was blind."

"I said it doesn't need eyes."

"That is not the same thing."

"I noticed."

The scraping stopped.

Kael tightened his grip. Julian's fingers curled around the edge of Kael's sleeve. The noble heir could break a man's neck with one hand when the plague let him, yet he stood pressed against Kael in the dark, listening for the next sound.

Kael didn't mention it.

Julian would put a knife in his ribs for less.

The cellar smelled of wet stone, old ash, and the bitter powder Kael had burned in the ritual room upstairs. The fire had died when he threw himself through it. The spell had snapped. The house had shuddered.

Then the thing outside had started hunting.