Page 104 of Property of Scar

One of seven so far.

Mordain has been busy.

Roxy moves two steps behind me, her magic already alive in her hands, that quiet shimmer that sits just below visible when she’s keeping it controlled. She hasn’t spoken since we dropped into the tunnels.

Neither has Cali.

I can feel Cali at my back without looking. Something in my blood registers her the way it hasn’t registered another living thing, a warmth that moves through me even down here, in the cold, in the dark, and in the thick of whatever is coming. The bracelet she pressed into my palm last night sits on my wrist, tucked beneath my jacket, something old and quietly powerful, carrying her lineage in its weave.

A dhampir’s gift to a vampire who forgot what morning felt like.

I haven’t forgotten now.

“Ward.” Roxy’s voice drops low enough that it cuts clean through everything else, and we stop without anyone needing to be told.

She moves forward with care, like she’s approaching something that might react if she gets it wrong. Her hands come up slowly, and when her fingers press into the space in front of her, they meet resistance that isn’t visible but is very much there.

I don’t see it.

But I feel it immediately.

The air tightens around us, pressure shifting in a way that doesn’t belong, like the space itself is being compressed. The sourness hits next, sharp and chemical, settling at the back of my throat, coating it in a way that has nothing to do with breath and everything to do with instinct, a warning that registers deeper than thought.

Roxy doesn’t react to it. Her focus stays locked on what is in front of her as her fingers begin to move, slow at first, testing, tracing the outline of something that shouldn’t exist. Her hand drags slightly, like it’s catching on an edge I can’t see, and there’s a faint tension in the air that pulls tight with the movement, not a sound, just the sense of something stretched too far.

She adjusts her grip, changes the angle of her wrist, and presses again, more certain this time, and her fingers slip through a fraction farther.

Like she’s found a seam.

“That’s it,” she mutters under her breath. Her other hand comes up to join the first, and now both are working in tandem, moving in small, precise motions, pulling at something layered, something that resists being touched, let alone undone. The pressure builds with it, tightening around us, the sourness deepening into something bitter that settles under the skin, a quiet alarm that presses at instinct rather than logic.

Roxy’s shoulders tense as she leans into it, applying steady, deliberate pressure, like she knows exactly how much this thing can take before it snaps back. Her fingers hook into something I still can’t see, and when she pulls this time, there’s real resistance behind it, something that pushes back hard enough to make the air hum, like it’s been drawn to a breaking point.

“Almost,” she says, her voice controlled.

The seam widens under her hands, like it’s being forced open rather than giving willingly.

She shifts her grip, twists her wrist with sharp precision… and something gives.

It isn’t loud, but the impact is immediate.

A sharp release rolls through the space, like pressure snapping loose all at once, and the change is instant. The sourness pulls back, draining out of the air, leaving the corridor clearer, the tension that had been sitting under everything suddenly gone.

Roxy lowers her hands and steps back a half pace, her shoulders loosening as the resistance fades. “It’s open,” she says. “But they know these wards were set. Someone’s going to know they’ve been crossed.”

“Then we pick up the pace,” Wreck drones from behind us.

Nobody argues with Wreck. When a wendigo speaks with that harrowing register, with all the emptiness of something that feeds on fear given a human voice, nobody argues.

He rolls his massive shoulders as we push forward, the faint groan of his skin hardening, threading under the steady drip of water from the ceiling. Stone creeps up from his fingertips in a slow, deliberate crawl, spreading across his forearms with a patience that feels almost inevitable, as though it has all the time in the world to become what it needs to be. By the time we reach open ground, it’s already taking shape, already settling into something that belongs to him.

The tunnel widens ahead of us, and the first abandoned station emerges, the darkness pulling back in layers to reveal broken tiles, rusted rails, and the hollowed-out remains of something that once carried people through this city. Now it just sits there, silent and waiting, the kind of place that should feel empty… but doesn’t.

My attention shifts automatically, tracking lines of sight, entry points, the blind spots between columns, the angles of the platform edges, and the stairwells rising at either end. Everything about it should read as abandoned, but something in the way the space holds itself catches at instinct, a tension sitting just under the surface that doesn’t belong to decay.

It takes a second to fully register because it isn’t movement that gives it away.

There’s a stillness threaded through the station that feels intentional, the kind that comes from things holding position rather than the absence of life. Shapes sit where they shouldn’t, shadows that carry weight instead of emptiness, and once I see the first one, the rest follow, resolving out of the dark in pieces that slot into place too neatly to ignore.