The Truth Under the Grate

The water here is black. It’s not just the filth of Predymesh; it’s the color of secrets that have been washed away and forgotten. We don't forget. We are the filter of the city. Everything falls down eventually.

I am Ophera. I listen to the vibrations in the pipes. I am Melsani. I watch the reflections in the puddles. I am Nopilai. I smell the fear in the steam.

"They say Corrigan is gone," I whisper, my voice scraping against the brick. "They say he shot himself in a room full of mirrors," Melsani adds, sorting through a pile of discarded jewelry that isn't gold. "They say he was crazy. A man hunting his own ghost," Nopilai grunts, sharpening a rusted piece of metal.

We laugh. It’s a dry, rattling sound that scares the rats. The rats are our friends. They are the only ones who don't call us "slumdogs." They don't look at us like we are broken.

"They are all wrong," we say together.

We aren't from Thornus. We came from the East, from the place where the wind screams in three different voices. We know what a "Mirror Man" really is. It wasn't a delusion. It wasn't a split mind.

"Corrigan found the door," I say. "He found the Soul of Viyu's bastard brother," Melsani whispers. "A shard of the darkness that creates instead of consumes."

The detective didn't kill himself. He didn't even kill a stranger. He killed the part of the world that was supposed to make sense. He shot the mirror, and the reflection didn't break—it escaped. The body they found in the alley off 4th street? It wasn't a man. It was a skin. A discarded wrapper.

"The detective who walked out of the St. Marlowe hotel isn't a detective anymore," Nopilai says, his eyes wide and white in the dark. "He’s a hollow thing. A clock with no hands. Klaude Barral would be jealous."

We hear everything. We heard Aester Cloudwear laughing about the war. We heard Wulf Kosnak whispering about the skulls in his ceiling. We even heard the Sultan crying when the spotlight went out.

But Corrigan... Corrigan is the one who scares us. Because he knows we are watching.

"He’s coming back to Predymesh," I say. "He’s looking for his shadow," Melsani says. "And he knows the shadow is hiding with us," Nopilai finishes.

We huddle closer to the warmth of the steam pipe. We have no home. We have no names that the city recognizes. But we have the truth. And in Thornus, the truth is the only thing that doesn't wash away.