Chapter 32 of 32·5 min read·Several minutes after the knock
The Hand on the Key
The knock came a third time.
Neris kept her palm against the return cut. The students’ paired voices carried unevenly through the chamber, each name followed by a memory and, where needed, a witness. Sella listened for the gathering current. Ilyra kept the pairs from rushing to fill every pause.
The deeper groove gave no light now. Its thin line had vanished after the knock.
“Can you hear anything?” Neris asked the wardens.
“We hear the key,” one answered. “And the pressure against it.”
“From which side?”
The warden’s voice faltered beneath the living voices. “The seal hides the hand.”
A student missed their next name. Ilyra picked up the pair for them, speaking steadily until they could begin again. Neris felt the return tug at her wrist, drawing the channels toward the deeper groove. Sella lifted one finger.
“Gathering,” she said. “Hold there.”
The group slowed. The tug eased, but didn’t leave.
Then the Sleeper spoke through the return.
“She let go of the stone. The channel trembled.”
Neris’s hand went cold against the groove. It was true. Her numb fingers had begun to fail in the last exchange, and she had eased her palm back when Sella caught her wrist. The return had trembled. The Sleeper had found a memory close enough to touch.
For one sour moment, Neris wanted to pull away completely. If she made no contact, it could not use her hand to reach through. The thought lasted only until she saw the wardens’ names dim along the cut.
“It’s mine,” she said.
The Sleeper repeated her words in her own voice. “It’s mine.”
Sella’s hand closed around Neris’s forearm. “What is?”
“My choice to ease off. I did it because my fingers were going numb.” Neris swallowed. “I’m still here.”
Ilyra answered before the Sleeper could. “She’s here. I saw her make room for the rest of us.”
A student beside Ilyra added, “And we took the current when she did.”
Neris glanced down the line. No one was looking at her as if she’d failed. Renn had his pair again. One of the younger students had a hand pressed to the shoulder of the person beside them, their voices finding a common pace.
The Sleeper repeated the memory once more. Its words did not vanish, but the channel no longer leaned toward them.
Next
Edrun is holding the key against the Sleeper, but Neris will have to decide whether to open the deeper groove further before his grip fails.
Neris let her arm rest in Sella’s grip. “The groove is underneath this return. If I can lift the cover without breaking the channel—”
“You’ll be putting your mark closer to whatever’s on the other side,” Sella said.
“I know.”
“No, you know it’s there. That’s not the same.” Sella’s voice had gone rough. She shifted against Ilyra and stopped before she could sit up. “I can watch the current. I can’t catch you if the lock takes hold.”
“Then don’t try.” Neris looked at Ilyra. “Keep everyone paired. If I stop answering, you keep the return steady.”
Ilyra’s mouth tightened. “I’ll keep it steady. I’m not promising to leave you there.”
“Fair.”
The deeper groove ran straight beneath the return, its edges too clean to be a crack. Neris laid her numb hand across it. Sella watched the flow and counted the rise and fall with small motions of her fingers. Ilyra began a warden’s name, waited through the required silence, then gave the next pair their turn.
Neris touched the cover of the groove with the edge of her magic.
It didn’t feel like a rune. There was no command to silence, no academy design to unmake. The cover was a thin layer of something older, fitted over the deeper channel to keep it closed. Her magic could loosen it, but the return ran just above it. One careless pull might tear both.
“Slow,” Sella murmured. “It’s gathering under your thumb.”
Neris stopped. The group let the current pass through the paired answers before she tried again.
A knock sounded below her hand. The cover jumped against her skin.
Neris flinched, and the red-gold mark beneath her throat tightened hard enough to steal her next word. Sella caught the shift in the current. Ilyra called for a pause, and the students held their names without forcing them through.
“Neris,” Sella said. “Look at me.”
Neris did. Sella’s face was pale; her attention was not. She raised two fingers, then lowered one. The current was thinning.
“Now.”
Neris eased one narrow edge of the cover loose. Her magic slid into the seam. She didn’t try to open the groove, only to lift enough of the layer to see what lay beneath.
Stone grated against stone.
A strip of dark bronze appeared. Beyond it, something struck once, sharp and close. The key was there: long, dark, and wedged into a channel cut deep beneath the seal. A hand gripped its end. The fingers were scraped raw, blood darkening the joints.
The hand forced the key backward.
The stone resisted. Another knock shuddered through the groove, and the hand slipped. The key turned a fraction toward the open position.
“Stop!” someone shouted.
Neris didn’t know which of them had said it. She pulled at the cover to close it, but the pressure from below caught her magic. Her mark flared. For an instant, the key, the groove, and the return seemed to join in one line beneath her skin.
The Sleeper spoke in her voice. “I let go.”
“I did,” Neris said. Her own voice shook. “Then they held the channel. I’m here because I chose to stay.”
“Here,” Ilyra answered.
“Here,” said Sella.
The students took up the word in pairs, each answer grounded by a name. Neris felt the pressure stop traveling straight into her mark. It spread across the return, divided among the living voices instead of pressing her toward the empty center.
The hand below steadied. The key stopped moving.
A man’s voice came through the narrow opening, strained by distance and the grind of stone. “You have to close that.”
“Who are you?” Neris asked.
“Edrun.” The hand shifted. Its grip held. “I sealed this groove. I’m turning the key back.”
Neris stared at the scraped fingers. “The knock was you?”
“Yes.”
“Then what was pushing it forward?”
Edrun didn’t answer at once. The key gave a small, grinding turn under his hand. He shoved it back into place. Blood welled along one knuckle.
“The Sleeper,” he said. “It has hold of the other end.”
The wardens spoke through the return, their answer arriving in a staggered murmur. “We could not reach him.”
“Now you can,” Neris said.
“Through you,” Edrun replied. “That’s why the cover was sealed. Don’t lift it further.”
The return trembled under her hand. Sella’s fingers went still, reading the shift. The force beneath the groove had not withdrawn. The key remained caught between Edrun’s grip and the pressure on the far side.
Neris had wanted a name she could carry back to the others. She had one. She also had a living hand bleeding in the dark, and no way to know whether the person attached to it was their ally or simply the last thing keeping the door shut.
“Can you hold it?” she asked.
“For now.”
The key gave another thin scrape.
Neris began easing the cover back into place. Her fingers barely obeyed. Ilyra kept the paired voices moving, and Sella guided the current away from the groove as the narrow opening closed. The bronze strip vanished. The return stayed open, and the Sleeper remained on the other side of it.
Before the cover met the stone, Edrun spoke again.
“Don’t open this for me,” he said. “Open it when you’re ready to hold what comes through.”
The seam shut beneath Neris’s hand. The key kept turning below it.