The vibration in the stone grew, not just a sound, but a physical pressure against Bronik’s chest, a deep thrumming that rattled his ribcage. Lidyana seized his shoulder, her knuckles pressing through his canvas jacket. “Bronik! What—what is that?” Her voice was strained, barely audible over the pandemonium above them. The *roar* became a *shriek*, then a liquid *smash* as something immense struck the Anvil’s walls. Water, cold and smelling of churned earth, began to seep from the rough-hewn stone in a dozen places, trickling down the ancient carvings, washing over the dead. The watermarks Bronik had just found now seemed to pulse, a silent prophecy come to life. He pulled a sputtering oil lantern from a hook on the wall, its weak flame struggling against the oppressive dampness. “It’s the first wave,” he yelled back, his voice scraping rough against the noise. “It’s here.” They kept vigil while the masonry groaned under the onslaught. Zivtar, roused from his whiskey-soaked slumber in the upper levels, stumbled down to join them, his mouth slack and gray. He clutched an empty bottle like a talisman, muttering about the ‘river gods’ being angered. Bronik ignored him, focusing on the slow, inexorable rise of the water. By dawn, the seepage had become a steady stream, forming shallow puddles on the cellar floor. The air tasted of wet slate and stagnant lime. Two days later, the immediate fury of the initial downpour had subsided into a continuous, heavy rain, a dull curtain of grey. From the highest ramparts of the Anvil, the valley had vanished beneath grey sludge. The Ostran Basin was gone. In its place stretched a vast, turbulent inland sea, dark and churning, dotted with the wreckage of homes and the bloated carcasses of livestock. Where fertile, terraced fields had spread, muddy whitecaps smashed against the lower cliff walls. Bronik peered through his spyglass, a scavenged piece of a derelict ship’s scope, across the expanse. The verdant patch that had been Tomaz’s newly acquired farmlands was a swirling vortex of mud and debris. A splintered barn roof turned lazily in an eddy. A smirk cut across Bronik’s face. It was exactly as he had foreseen. Years of painstaking work, erased in a single night. “Look,” Lidyana said, her voice quiet, pointing a steady finger toward a cluster of distant flotsam. “People.” Bronik adjusted his spyglass. A collection of makeshift rafts, cobbled together from doors, fence posts, and anything else that floated, drifted slowly towards the Anvil. And at the lead of the pathetic fleet, he saw them. Mirzela, her once vibrant dress now a sodden, ripped rags, her hair plastered to her skull, her face pale with shock and exhaustion. Beside her, Tomaz, still attempting to project an air of command even as he clamped bloodless fingers around a splintered table edge. His silk tunic was stained with mud, his swagger washed out by shivering terror. “They’re coming to roost,” Bronik murmured, the bitter satisfaction almost intoxicating. “The vultures have nowhere else to land.” As the rafts drew closer, their occupants, a ragged assortment of farmers, merchants, and common folk, began to cry out. A brawl of shrill shouts, bartered promises, and curses rose from the water. “Bronik! Please! Let us in!” “We’ll work! Anything you need!” “Don’t leave us to drown, you madman!” Mirzela’s voice, though hoarse, cut through the others. “Bronik! You have to help us! Tomaz’s lands are gone! We’ve lost everything!” Her eyes, once sharp with scorn, now stared up in hollow panic. Tomaz, ever the one to demand rather than beg, puffed out his chest as best he could while clinging to his soggy perch. “Bronik! This is an outrage! Open these gates at once! You cannot deny refuge to the people of Ostran!” Bronik stepped to the parapet, a smirk creasing his mouth. The rain plastered his hair to his forehead, but he felt no chill. This was the moment he’d been living for, the vindication he’d craved. “Outrage?” he called back, his voice cutting clearly through the storm, carrying easily across the water. “You call *this* an outrage, Tomaz? I call it ‘Day Three.’ Do you recall, Mirzela, when you told me I was a broken, spiteful madman for exchanging my fertile lands for a barren crag? Do you recall, Tomaz, when you eagerly swindled me out of my future, so sure of your own prosperity?” He paused, letting his words hang in the sodden air, watching Tomaz turn gray and Mirzela drop her head. “Well, look around you now. My barren crag stands. Your fertile lands are a feeding ground for bottom-dwellers. And you, the proud, the powerful, are floating on splinters, begging for scraps from the ‘madman’ you scorned.” He savored the silence that followed, a delicious, bitter quiet. “You should have listened,” he finished, his voice devoid of pity. “I told you so.” He turned, fully intending to leave them to their fate. His long-held vow of isolation, forged in the fires of betrayal, felt righteous and unyielding. Let them drown. Let them understand what it meant to lose everything. Then Bronik looked down through the external iron grating into the flooded sub-chambers, where the dark pool churned against raw limestone. He matched the outer crest, foaming ten feet beneath his boots, against the etched markers. The peak of the deluge, the high-water line etched by that forgotten civilization, was still a good *six man-heights* above the current water line. Six man-heights. The tower, as solid as it was, would be completely submerged. *He* would be completely submerged. He wouldn’t be safe, not even atop the Anvil. Not unless his ark was finished. And for that, he needed more than Zivtar’s shaky hands and Lidyana’s sharp mind. He needed raw muscle. Panic-stricken hands by the dozen. The tower wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a tomb, unless he could complete the buoyant ark. And for that, he’d need every last one of those desperate, untrustworthy souls floating below. His satisfaction curdled into calculating alarm. He needed them. The thought tasted like ash in his mouth. Bronik dug his fingertips into the grit of the coping stones. He looked down at the pleading faces, at Mirzela’s drowned hopes, at Tomaz’s broken arrogance. They were still his enemies. But now, they were also his tools. And his only chance. “Zivtar!” he roared, his voice echoing across the water. “Open the lower gate!” Zivtar crouched behind an overturned lime cask, almost fumbling his flask. “What? Bronik, are you mad? You can’t! They’ll swarm us!” Bronik ignored him. His gaze fixed on the churning waters, already calculating, already planning. Ten days. Ten days until the second surge. He had to build a buoyant ark. And he had to do it with the very people who had betrayed him. Vengeance was a luxury; staying afloat was not. He just had to make sure they understood that when he let them in, their lives were no longer their own. The iron lower grating shrieked along its corroded guide tracks, grinding back against the rock. The first raft, carrying Mirzela and Tomaz, drifted slowly, hesitantly towards the opening, their faces a mixture of relief and disbelief. Bronik watched them from the rim above. He had given them shelter, yes. But he had also just acquired his workforce. And if they thought they were safe now, they were gravely mistaken. The true danger was yet to come, and it was higher, far higher, than any of them could yet imagine.

The First Wave