Chapter 97 The Underbelly
The city’s underbelly was never meant for sunlight, and the deeper Xeris delved, the more it felt as if the bricks themselves recoiled from the idea of dawn. He moved with a practiced indifference through alleys that stank of cold lard and the piss of desperate men, his borrowed form drawing little notice save for the occasional beggar or newsboy who took one look and decided, wisely, to see nothing. It suited him; this part of the city had always suited him. If Brightwater’s surface played at civilization, its roots remembered a more honest brutality.
He paused beneath an overhang where the mortar had been replaced with strips of old cloth, charms strung at even intervals. One had snapped and fluttered limply, ink run to illegibility by the last night’s rain. Xeris reached up, tore it free, and ran his thumb over the sigil. For an instant, he tasted salt and copper, a memory of magic in the residue. Not dangerous, but not entirely benign.
He let his vision slip, not into the true sight of his other form but enough to catch the shimmer that clung to the stones: Veilseeker work, recent and amateur, layered over with spells thin as old soup. They’d left it as a marker, a claim. The arrogance of it stoked something familiar in his chest, a heat that, if he let it, would have burst through his fingers and set the whole street alight.
He kept walking.
The first ritual site was in an abandoned bakery, the front windows painted with the word "plague" in three languages. Xeris slipped in through the rear, the door giving way with a whine that reminded him of the dying during the Sable Years, weak, full of hope that someone would care. Inside, the air was thick with yeast and rot, and the floor was dusted with a fine, gray powder that clung to his boots.
In the main room, they’d set the daisies on the counter, three of them, perfectly spaced, white petals dipped in something that looked like ink but was not ink at all. The centers pulsed faintly, an imitation of life. Xeris crouched and examined them, feeling the thrum of the chain in the core of each blossom. He recognized the spellwork, though it was diluted, Veilseeker, certainly, but borrowed from a much older source.
He touched one, expecting resistance, but the magic folded under his scrutiny, petals drooping and not meant for defense, a beacon.
The memory hit him unbidden: a ring of daisies, real this time, with petals flecked red from the blood of a child’s scraped knee. He’d watched the Veilseekers kneel and perform the ceremony, binding the wound, closing the rift between worlds with a single unbroken chain. It had been beautiful, once. Before hunger and ambition made them parasites.
He pocketed one of the flowers, stood, and moved on.
The next site was in a forgotten attic, accessible only by a ladder that no human would trust. Xeris ascended with careless ease, his body remembering the old balance, the muscle memory of a being that never truly feared falling. Up here, the air was sharp with the ammonia reek of pigeons, but underneath that lay the unmistakable trace of aether-burned flesh.
He found the ritual circle scribed in what looked like chalk but carried the metallic sheen of ground bone. At the center sat a single, perfect daisy, no ink this time, but the veins in the petals traced out a spiral, tight and endless. The spiral glowed, faint as moonlight on new snow.
He recognized the intent: amplification. Whoever made this circle wanted to draw power up and out, to send it farther and make it louder. The resonance was already fading, but Xeris could feel its echo bouncing through the city’s leylines.
He reached out, finger hovering just above the flower, and let his senses dip into the old mode, draconic, infinite, the part of himself that remembered the bones of the world. In the echo, he saw what the Veilseekers intended: to make a net, a web, binding every point of magic in Brightwater into one system. And at the heart of the web, always, the chainbearer.
Daisy.
Xeris felt a flicker of pride and disgust, a reminder of his own capacity for both. They’d underestimated Daisy, of course. Everyone did. But the Veilseekers’ plan was not crude; it was genius. He had to admire the audacity.
He straightened, and for a moment the world tilted; he was no longer in the attic, but in the long memory, the fire and blood of the old world, watching the Veilseekers in their original form. They had been beautiful, once, in the way a landslide is beautiful: inevitable, devastating. They had been the custodians of the threshold, not its destroyers.
A hand clapped onto his shoulder, breaking the vision. He spun, teeth bared, only to find a boy, no older than ten, bare feet black with soot, staring up with eyes full of dread and awe.
“Mister?” the boy whispered. “You’re the one who fixed the south bridge?”
Xeris blinked, then remembered the form he wore, the face borrowed from an old painting of one of Brightwater’s long-dead heroes.
“I am,” he said, letting a bit of the dragon’s authority into his voice.
The boy nodded, then pointed down at the alley. “There are lights at the old glassworks. We’re not supposed to go, but…” He shrugged.
Xeris knelt, making his eyes level with the boy’s. “Did you see who made the lights?”
The boy shook his head. “Only heard. They said they were making a chain, but there are no chains there. Only flowers.”
Xeris smiled, but the gesture didn’t reach his eyes. “Good. You did right, telling me.”
The boy stood rooted, uncertain. Xeris reached into his pocket, withdrew a copper token from the bakery, and pressed it into the boy’s hand.
“For luck,” he said.
The boy’s face split into a smile that, for a second, made the whole city seem less doomed. He scrambled down the ladder, leaving Xeris alone with the daisy and the growing certainty of a city under siege from within.
He pocketed the second flower and left by the eaves, following the rooftops to the old glassworks. The place had burned twice and been rebuilt once, the last time by desperate hands using whatever could be scrounged from the rubble. Xeris dropped into the shadows by the loading doors, scanning for magical residue.
He saw it immediately: a line of ceramic daisies, set in a ring around the foundation, each one painted with a different sigil. The flowers resonated in harmony, vibrating with a magic that was both familiar and utterly alien. At the center of the ring, visible through a shattered window, a group of Veilseekers stood around a table piled high with scrolls.
Xeris recognized the script. Ancient, forbidden, the language of the first chain.
He slipped into the building, blending with the shadows, and watched. The Veilseekers spoke in a low chant, their leader drawing symbols on the table with a blade dipped in blood. Each time he finished a rune, one of the daisies on the ring outside flickered, then pulsed brighter.
They were making a circuit and charging it. And the power source, he realized with a jolt of cold, was Daisy herself. Or would be, once the ritual is completed.
He let his gaze roam the room, cataloguing weaknesses. The Veilseekers were strong, but overconfident. They hadn’t warned against someone like him.
He let the old power rise, just a whisper. The heat of it was a homecoming, a promise. He could end them, here and now.
But the cost would be. Daisy would be caught in the backlash, her magic fueling the final burst.
No. Not yet.
Xeris retreated, watching as the Veilseekers closed the ritual, the lead sorcerer pressing his thumb to the center of the last daisy. The flowers dimmed, then went inert, the magic banked for later.
He made his way to the lowest level of the glassworks, following the leyline's hum to a bricked-up alcove behind the old furnace. He shattered the wall with a single push, dust billowing around him in gritty clouds.
Inside was a long-forgotten chamber, the floor inscribed with the same spiral motif as before. But here, in the silence, Xeris found what he had come for: a cache of scrolls, untouched by time, the writing etched in gold.
He unrolled the first and read:
"When the chain is forced, the realms bleed. Only the sacrifice of the bearer can close the wound."
He read it twice, then three times, the meaning settling into him like a stone into a well. The Veilseekers didn’t just want Daisy; they wanted her broken, her magic opened wide, so the city would never heal.
He rolled the scroll and tucked it under his arm. It was time to warn Daisy.
Or, if she could not be saved, to decide which world would burn for her.