Chapter 10 of 23·6 min read·The same night, minutes after the first attack
The Stair Holds
The first claw struck the hatch while Kaelen was still dragging the dead Skahl-skin away from the door.
Elora looked up from the stair landing. The creature’s black fingers hooked through the gap beneath the hatch, brittle nails scraping iron. Another struck the lower entrance below them. The Spire had two ways in now, and both were being tested.
“Up,” Kaelen said.
Elora held her place. “They’re at the other door too.”
“I heard.” He shoved the dead creature with his boot. It slid across the stone and struck the wall. Its hide flaked where the outer ring’s shock had carbonized it. “Get behind the bell-room door. Bar it.”
She moved, but only as far as the next landing. “The hatch is lifting.”
The iron bow of it rose a finger’s width. Kaelen dropped the bar into its brackets. The wood had split at one end during the first attack. He could feel it give beneath his hand.
Below, the ruined entrance groaned. The Skahl-skin pressed at it from outside, shifting their weight against the broken door. Their claws rasped over stone. The noise came from several points around the Spire now, close together, then farther off. They were feeling for another opening.
Kaelen looked up the stair. Elora had reached the bell-room door, but she had not barred it. She was watching the narrow window on the landing above him.
A shape passed behind the frost-clouded glass.
“Down,” he said.
She ducked. A black hand punched through the pane and raked at the air. The glass broke inward in a burst of cold shards. The creature’s head followed, hide catching on the iron frame.
Kaelen snatched the coal shovel from beside the wall and struck its wrist. The shovel bent. The creature did not flinch. Its arm shoved farther through, dragging flakes of charred skin across the sill.
“Go!”
Elora ran up the last steps and threw the bell-room door shut. The latch caught. Kaelen heard the bar drop into place from the other side.
He backed down one step, keeping his eyes on the window. The Skahl-skin had wedged its shoulder in the frame. Its head turned toward him, blind eyes fixed on the movement of his chest. Another shape pressed against the outer wall below the window, drawn by the warmth leaking through the cracked pane.
The outer ring could kill them. It could also take another small piece, something he had carried without noticing until it was gone. The main bell waited above, its deeper toll reaching for the things he could not afford to lose.
Next
With the lower stair held and the Skahl-skin testing the roof above the Pyre-Chime, can Kaelen keep Elora safe without spending the main bell’s deeper toll?
Kaelen had seconds. He could leave the window creature to force itself through and risk meeting it on the stairs, or ring now and let the shock pass through the Spire while Elora crouched behind a wooden door.
He climbed two steps toward the bell chamber.
“Kaelen?” Elora called through the door.
“Stay there.”
“I can help.”
“Stay there.”
He reached the chain that worked the outer ring. Its links were cold enough to sting his palms. The Pyre-Chime’s body gave a low, living thrum under the stone floor, too faint to hear and too familiar to mistake. He drew the chain tight.
The creature at the window tore more of the frame loose. Its shoulder forced through. The hatch below slammed against its bar hard enough to split the wood another inch.
Kaelen pulled.
The outer ring struck once. The shock rolled through the tower. Frost fell from the walls. The creature in the window burst apart in a rain of black flakes, its body carbonized from the head down. The one below vanished from the narrow view of the landing. The force struck the hatch and made the cracked bar jump in its brackets.
Then the ringing was gone.
For a breath, Kaelen heard only the small sounds the tower made after a blow: grit settling, metal ticking, wood complaining in the cold.
He held the chain and waited for the toll to show itself.
A memory came loose. Yesterday’s meal: a tin cup of barley broth, eaten standing by the furnace. He remembered the cup in his hands and the steam against his face. The taste had gone. He could not say whether it had been salty or thin, whether he had finished it.
He let go of the chain.
The hatch took another hit. The bar buckled at its split end.
“Elora!”
“I’m here.”
“Find the iron brace. The long one beside the bell-room stove.”
She opened the door just far enough to pass it through. She had already dragged the brace from its hooks. Kaelen took it and set its lower end in the notch beside the hatch. The upper end jammed against the stone lintel. He pressed his weight against it.
Another blow came from outside. The brace held. The hatch bowed, but did not lift.
Elora had stayed in the doorway. The broken window behind Kaelen let in a blade of cobalt fog. She watched the black flakes on the landing, then looked at the chain in his hand.
“What did it take?”
“Yesterday’s supper.”
Her mouth tightened. “You ate with me.”
“I know.”
He did know it in the way he knew the written facts on the ledger: she had been there; they had shared the meal. The warmth of the tin cup still sat in his hands. The taste was a blank place.
Elora turned toward the shelf where she kept her record. Her fingers moved over the pages without opening one. She did not ask him what he wanted written down.
The hatch thudded again. The brace rang against the stone. Kaelen planted his boot at its base and leaned harder.
Elora left the ledger and went to the stove. She took a coal rake from its hook and pulled the iron cover aside. A bed of red coals glimmered underneath. There was little fuel left for keeping the tower warm; each coal had been saved for the bell’s tending fires.
She lifted the rake.
“What are you doing?”
“The window.”
“Keep back from it.”
She nodded. She had already noticed the creature at the broken pane had stopped moving. Its arm lay across the sill, black fingers curled. The next one outside would have to come close to follow the warmth through the opening.
Kaelen kept his weight on the brace while she carried the rake to the landing. She used the iron tool to push three glowing coals across the stone and toward the broken window. They rolled over the sill and dropped into the dark. A thin hiss rose from below, followed by a scraping retreat.
The Skahl-skin outside could not feel pain. They could still be burned. They could still learn that a path had become too hot to cross.
Elora stood with the rake held out in both hands. The light painted her face red at the edges. She had gone pale from the cold, but she did not look away from the window.
“Back now,” Kaelen said.
She retreated to the stair wall. He kept the brace in place until the blows at the hatch stopped. The silence lasted long enough for him to hear the creatures moving around the tower’s outer stones. Claws dragged over the wall. Something bumped the lower door, then withdrew.
The attack had broken. The danger had not.
Kaelen eased away from the brace. The hatch remained shut, held by the iron bar and the new support. He tested it once with his shoulder. It did not shift.
Elora set the coal rake beside the stove. “You should write down the broth.”
He looked at her.
“So you know it happened,” she said. “You don’t have to remember the taste.”
He went to the shelf and opened her ledger. The page beneath her last entry held the record of his lost exchange with her while they prepared the tower. He read it once, then turned to a clean line.
“Yesterday,” he said. “Barley broth. We ate together.”
Elora watched him write. “It was too watery.”
He added that. The words sat on the page as facts. They could tell him what had happened. They could not put the taste back in his mouth.
He closed the ledger and returned it to her. She held it against her chest for a moment, then set it down carefully.
Kaelen checked the brace again. The split in the hatch bar had widened. If the creatures struck it repeatedly, the wood would fail. The outer ring had stopped the ones that reached the stairs, though another use would take another memory. The main bell could break a larger attack, and its cost waited deeper than the small absences he could still count.
He looked toward the bell chamber. Elora stood near the stove, rubbing her hands over its weak heat. He moved the remaining coal pan closer to her feet.
“Keep your boots there,” he said.
She did. Then she glanced at the broken window.
A sound came from above them, beyond the ceiling. Slow claws crossed the roof stones, moving toward the chamber that held the Pyre-Chime.
Kaelen looked up. The brace in his hand was made for a hatch below. The bell chamber had no second door.