Odessa smoothed her velvet skirts, entirely unbothered by the woman sobbing against the floorboards. She flicked a glance at Jessamine, whose grip on the fire poker pressing Nyssa’s throat had tightened, knuckles stark white. “The Obsidian Exchange’s central vault,” Odessa mused, tilting her head. “A pity. I was rather hoping to monopolize that particular supply myself.” Her tone held an airy dismissiveness toward the prospect of a soul-consuming pyre. Lord Garrick Fenlow, however, had no such luxury of detachment. Garrick rubbed a thumb over his signet ring. “We move now. If Yuric has gathered the syndicates, the rite begins as soon as they seat themselves. The lower vault is a maze. Infiltration won’t be clean.” He moved to pull a heavy broadsword from its display on the wall, the dull gleam of its pommel catching the lamplight. “Oh, Garrick, my dear, when has anything truly worthwhile been clean?” Odessa flashed sharp teeth. “Besides, I despise being herded. It is high time we taught Maester Yuric who shears the sheep.” She nudged Nyssa’s cheek with a kidskin boot. “Every patrol route,” Odessa said softly. “Every sluice gate, every acolyte’s crooked grin. Persuade me your treason has a shred of utility left.” Nyssa rattled off directions between ragged breaths. She pointed out service chutes abandoned since the Great Blackening that fed straight beneath the sales floor. She named Yuric’s enforcers—the Black Mastiffs—and sketched the chalk sigils carved across the flagstones. Armed with Nyssa’s frantic intel, the trio moved with brutal efficiency. Garrick’s carriage, a black beast pulled by silent, shadowy steeds, cut through the perpetually fog-choked streets of Morrowbeck. They navigated the labyrinthine back alleys near the Obsidian Exchange, its gargoyle-lined facade looming through the mist like a monstrous guardian. The air grew colder, heavy with the scent of damp stone and the faint, unsettling perfume of unspun Gloom-silk. They located the grate Nyssa indicated: rusted iron choked by dead lichen behind an abandoned clove vendor’s cart. Garrick gripped the bars, veins corded across his forearms as he wrenched the grate back. A chill updraft rolled out, bitter with the metallic tang of curdled dream-ichor. “After you, my pet,” Odessa said, nudging Nyssa forward with the tip of her boot. Nyssa scrambled down the narrow, twisting shaft, a whimpering shadow disappearing into the gloom. Jessamine followed, her face set, a small, dark lantern clutched in her hand. Odessa slid down last, a faint, almost amused sigh escaping her lips. “This certainly beats a ballroom exit.” They dropped into an expansive chamber, damp basalt weeping black water down jagged walls. Basalt ribs arched fifty paces overhead, spiked with calcified spurs. Stacked to the ceiling, swallowing the lantern’s yellow circle, lay endless bales of Gloom-silk. Raw, uncombed yardage pulsed with curdled light—viridian, bruised violet, pitch-tar darkness. The room hummed with trapped screams stitched into the weave. “By the Void’s maw,” Garrick breathed, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword. “The entire reserve.” Jessamine, her eyes scanning the perilous stacks, pointed. “Look! Along the walls, woven into the piles…” Odessa followed her gaze. Strands finer than cobweb, black as wet coal, crisscrossed the chamber floor, lacing every stack into a central glyph cut into the rock. Sparks jumped along their lengths like flint strikes, whispering of cold incendiary fuel. As they moved deeper, the air grew hotter, heavier. Jessamine, ever the meticulous scholar, noticed something amidst the Gloom-silk. Tucked between bales, serving as perverse kindling, were stacks of documents. She plucked one free, paper rustling stiff in her fingers. “The Vossen land grants,” Jessamine said, running a thumb over the wax seal. “To Evergloom Manor. To our peat holdings. Yuric extorted these from my uncle, not Dallion. He brought them down here to incinerate our bloodline’s claims alongside the silk.” Her knuckles went bloodless around the poker. A raspy breath broke from behind a pallet of pitch-dyed silk. Three guards in charcoal wool stepped into the open, faces hidden behind brass muzzle-plates. Yuric’s enforcers slid forward, daggers angled low. “Company,” Odessa said, her voice dry. “Pity. I rather thought we’d slipped in unnoticed.” Garrick drew his sword with a rasp, its edge catching a glint of light. “Stay behind me, Odessa!” He charged, a whirlwind of steel against shadow. Jessamine, surprisingly agile, darted low, sweeping the legs of one acolyte with the fire poker. Nyssa, terrified, cowered behind a bale of Gloom-silk, whimpering. Odessa, however, didn’t stay behind. She moved with a strange, almost joyful abandon, using the Gloom-silk bales as cover, her movements fluid and unpredictable. One guard skirted Garrick’s parry. A brass blow-tube came up; a steel quill, dipped in luminescent venom, hissed straight toward Odessa’s throat. Odessa saw it, a flicker of surprised fear touching her audacious facade. But before she could react, Garrick moved. A blur of motion, a desperate, lunging dive. He threw himself in front of her, his body a shield. The dart found its mark, sinking deep into his shoulder. Garrick let out a choked gasp, his sword clattering to the stone floor. His gaze held hers, stark and resolute, before the paralytic dropped him across the stone, his sword skittering away. The remaining guards stepped back, lowering their blades toward the archway. Through the curling yellow mist walked Maester Yuric, his slate-gray robes trailing over the wet floor, his mouth curled in satisfaction. “Odessa, my dear,” his voice resonated, thick with an unholy glee. “So eager to join the pyre. How very considerate of you.” He snapped his fingers. Iron winches shrieked in the dark ceiling. Heavy grates corded with Gloom-silk cordage plummeted like falling portcullises, slamming down around Jessamine, Nyssa, and the fallen Garrick. A hexagonal cage of braided shadow dropped directly around Odessa, trapping her boots against the stone. Its woven bars flared sulfur-blue, ticking with heat that made the hair on her arms lift. Ozone and burnt pitch flooded the damp air, waiting for the killing spark.

The Nightmare Vaults