The question makes me pause just long enough to consider the honest answer. “Not tonight,” I say.
Behind me I hear Varek shift slightly. It’s a small movement, barely more than a shift of weight against the floorboards, but everything about him carries presence whether he intends it to or not. The air changes when he moves.
The boy notices immediately. Kids always do. His eyes widen slightly as he looks up at the towering Nyxerian standing near the wall, horns nearly brushing the low rafters.
“That one’s on our side,” I add.
The boy studies Varek with intense concentration, clearly weighing this information very seriously. After a moment he nods. “Good.”
I stand. “Everyone ready?”
The adults nod, though no one looks relaxed. No one ever does when running for their lives.
The parents are pale with fear but determined—like people become when staying put is no longer survivable. I recognise it.
Not the situation—this place has its own particular brand of nightmare—but the feeling of being somewhere that never quite fits, no matter how long you stay.
Funny thing is, I don’t feel that here. Not really.
Terrafeara doesn’t pretend I belong. It doesn’t pretend I don’t. It just… is. And somehow that’s easier than a world that smiles at you while quietly reminding you where you don’t fit. Back home, it was always there. Subtle. Polite. Until it wasn’t.
The adults exchange a glance that carries the quiet understanding of people who know exactly how dangerous what they’re doing is. I pull back the rug covering the trapdoor and lift the wooden hatch. Cool air rises from the darkness below, carrying the familiar scent of damp stone and stagnant canal water.
The tunnels always smell the same—old earth, cold iron, and history.
Originally this was meant to be two runs. Two small groups, spaced half an hour apart. That’s the safer way to do it—fewer bodies in the tunnels, less noise, less chance of someone panicking in the narrow sections.
But the patrol routes shifted again this afternoon.
Olek sent word just before dusk that the canal watch had doubled their sweep near the western exits. Two runs would mean opening the route twice, risking the gate, risking the watchers, risking someone noticing.
So we merged the groups. There are seven of us now. Seven bodies moving through passages that were designed for half that number. Which means the margin for error has gone from thin to practically nonexistent.
Varek insisted on coming.
He wasn’t meant to.
The plan was for him to stay above ground and keep the district quiet while we moved people out, but the moment he heard there were children involved—and that we’d had to merge the groups—he’d made up his mind.
He didn’t argue. He simply offered that calm Nyxerian certainty that means the decision is already made. So now the tunnels are about to get very crowded.
Varek steps closer. Not too close. He’s careful about that now.
I glance sideways at him. “You remember the route?” I ask quietly.
“I do.”
“Good,” I say, lowering the lantern into the opening. “Because you’re following me.”
A faint glimmer of approval touches his expression. “Of course.”
I descend first.
The ladder creaks softly under my boots as I climb down into the dark. The lantern throws shifting shadows across the narrow stone corridor below, revealing slick walls carved decades—maybe centuries—ago when the canal system still served as the backbone of the city’s trade network.
Now it’s just forgotten infrastructure, which makes it perfect.
One by one the others climb down after me.
