The corrosive water clawed at Vashni’s skin as he thrashed towards the nearest support piling. The air above still echoed with Bhaimin’s enraged cry, sharp and brittle like a snapping bone. His lungs burned, tasting of mud and a metallic tang that wasn’t blood. Every muscle protested, but the alternative – being dragged back to that gilded cage, to have the curse forced upon him – was a far greater torment. He gripped the moss-slicked wood, hauling himself out of the inky, putrid water, gasping. His clothes, already threadbare, clung to him, heavy with silt and the toxic residue of the shallows. He scrambled onto a narrow, sagging plankway beneath the lowest tier of Osham, a shadowy labyrinth of rotting timber and hanging roots. The sounds of the town, usually a dull thrum of activity, were muted here, replaced by the creak of stressed wood and the drip of stagnant water. He moved like a creature of the swamp, silent and low, his body aching from the fall. The slivers of light filtering through the gaps in the platform above were just enough to navigate the treacherous path. “Vashni!” A low, urgent whisper cut through the gloom. It was Oriya, huddled in the shadow of a particularly thick, ancient piling, his ledger clutched to his chest like a shield. His eyes, sunken and red-rimmed, darted around nervously. “You survived. I saw… the window. The fall.” “Barely.” Vashni rasped, collapsing onto a splintered beam beside him. The raw ache in his joints and the burning itch of his skin were secondary to the sheer exhaustion. “Bhaimin tried to make me his heir. To transfer the curse.” Oriya gave a single, sharp nod, his mouth a thin line. “Expected. He is desperate. The stone spreads under his skin, Vashni. It’s… thin. Like parchment over bone.” He gestured with his chin towards the higher levels. “He’s running out of time, and out of untainted fools. You were his last hope.” “Hope for him, perhaps. Not for me.” Vashni peeled a strip of slimy weed from his arm. “Why here? Why are you hiding in this rat’s nest?” “Because it is the only place left where the echoes of the town above do not carry the ballast of their accumulating sin.” Oriya shivered, pulling his threadbare cloak tighter despite the humid air. “And because you would come here. The mud-dredger always returns to the muck.” He paused, then his voice dropped further, a new urgency hardening his tone. “I’ve been tracking it, Vashni. The records. I learned more. About the terrapin. The shell.” Vashni grunted, leaning his head back against the damp wood. “More horrors, then. Speak quickly. The smell here is making my teeth ache.” “Bhaimin’s luxury barge,” Oriya began, his voice barely audible over the distant groans of the stressed pilings. “The one he carved from the Pearl-Silt Terrapin’s carapace. He didn’t keep it whole, Vashni. Too much evidence. Too much… bad luck, even he must have sensed it.” Vashni pushed himself upright, a sliver of cold comprehension replacing his apathy. “He broke it up. To hide what he’d done.” “Precisely.” Oriya’s eyes gleamed in the dim light. “After the initial chaos of the beast’s slaughter, when the first whispers of the curse began to circulate among his closest advisors, he ordered the barge dismantled. The hull, the decking, the intricate carvings… all of it was broken into pieces, then distributed. Gifted, bought, traded. Ostensibly as payment for services, or as grand tokens of appreciation to his most loyal cronies. Each piece a small, seemingly innocuous shard of the beast, embedded into the estates and possessions of Osham’s elite.” A new chill, colder than the foul water, settled in Vashni’s gut. The beast hadn’t simply cursed those who took its gold. It had cursed the very objects of its desecration. “So the curse isn’t just on the gold,” he murmured, the realization forming a hard knot in his stomach. “It’s on the shell itself. And anyone holding a piece of it.” “Yes! That’s it!” Oriya hissed, relief flooding his face. “The gold was merely the blood-offering, the initial spark that drew the beast’s wrath. But the true tally, the deepest, most potent infection, clings to the physical slivers of its carapace. Each piece, no matter how small, acts as a locus for the hardening. A miniature, compounding ballast.” Vashni thought of the shuddering town, the cracking beneath the central square. The burden wasn’t just the people, then. It was the butchered shell, adding its own unnatural density to Osham’s slow descent. His original goal, to simply escape the town, now seemed ludicrous. The town was sinking because of this. And if it sank, he, too, would be dragged down. “The swamp-gods,” Vashni said, his voice rough. “They demand recompense. The terrapin was sacred. The only way to appease them… to stop the stony crust, to stop the sinking…” He looked at Oriya, the solution clear, yet terrifying. “We have to gather the pieces. All of them. And put them back. Into the deep.” Oriya’s expression was a mixture of fear and grim satisfaction. “That was my conclusion. The register is clear. The karmic debt must be paid, returned to its source. But it will not be easy, Vashni. These slivers are not just objects; they are symbols of status, hoarded by the most powerful, and now, the most petrified, residents of Osham. They will not part with them easily.” “Then we’ll take them,” Vashni said, a new resolve hardening his eyes. His apathy was finally beginning to chip away, replaced by the cold calculation of survival. He had to save himself, and the only way was to save this rotting town. “Where’s the first piece? Who has it?” Oriya pulled his ledger closer, flipping through the ink-stained pages. His finger traced a frantic line of calculations, his lips moving silently. “The structural drag… the increase in subsidence… I’ve been calculating the stress on the primary pilings. The rate of bone-rot thickening among the elites… we have less than three days, Vashni. Perhaps two, if a major support beam gives way tonight.” He looked up, his face pale. “The first piece… it’s with Narvaja, the Harbor Master. A massive, ornate section of the lower carapace, carved into his office desk. He is utterly paranoid, Vashni. Convinced everyone seeks to steal his 'luck', as he calls it. He guards that desk like a dragon guards its hoard.” Three days. Two, if they were unlucky. Vashni looked out at the distant, shimmering surface of the toxic shallows, then up at the dark, looming silhouette of Osham, groaning under its impossible burden. The clock was ticking, and the first piece was with a madman. His escape had become a hunt.

Tracing the Carapace