Page 47 of Kiss of Smoke

“I never knew there was a cellar under this building,” I said, climbing in after Robin.

We filed downwards, guns at the ready, but nothing jumped out at us.

It was, in most ways, a completely innocuous cellar. Several pipes dripped in the corner, and there were stacks of pallets leaned against the walls and boxes of general cleaning supplies.

I poked through them, hoping for a little more to go on, but there was nothing else of value.

But Ceri shifted to his ghostly form, and began running in and out of the pallets stacked against the wall, letting out a series of small yips.

Robin and Gwyn began moving the pallets aside, tossing them like kindling into the mildewy corner where the pipes dripped, and slowly they revealed the cellar’s secret.

One of the earthen walls had been cut out to reveal a dark tunnel leading downwards.

“They must have worked backwards,” Robin said, scuffing at a bit of the cellar’s earth with his toe. “Began in the Undercity, and worked their way up to beneath this specific house.”

I wanted to be sick all over again. This whole time, I’d literally been living over the place where the Unstained Souls crept in and out of Avilion. The Ghosthand right under my feet.

Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that I'd run into Ioin on the street outside last year…not if he’d come into Mothwing Falls through Carabosse’s tunnel. And dating me would’ve given him a perfectly good reason to always be nearby.

Ceri became solid again, his claws digging into the dirt floor as he sniffed the air breezing out of the tunnel. He let out a low growl, looking up at Gwyn for permission.

Robin nodded, and Gwyn said something in a foreign language. He hadn’t even finished speaking before Ceri happily bolted into the tunnel.

The four of us followed, walking heel to toe so our footsteps wouldn’t echo and give the Unstained Souls a heads’ up.

They had meticulously carved out the tunnel up above and smoothed its walls and floor, but the further we went, the rougher it became. Soon we were ducking beneath dead roots and outcroppings of stone and watching our feet so we didn’t stumble in holes.

But there were no artifacts, no footprints…

Nothing to show that the Unstained Souls had been here until we came to the first natural Undercity tunnel, where they’d clearly begun their excavation.

Heaps of dirt had been hauled out and left in messy piles, and several shovels had been left behind.

And we got our first sign that the Ghosthand had ever come this way at all.

“Robin,” I whispered, stopping at the sight of something dark amidst those piles of dirt.

Gwyn’s orbs came closer, illuminating the grisly sight. Their pale green light played off the desiccated face of a dead goblin, and the handprint burned into his chest.

Robin knelt over the goblin, gently prodding the corpse’s chest with the barrel of his pistol. The goblin almost immediately collapsed in on itself, flaking away into a pile of ash before our eyes.

“He’s been here for a long time.” Robin’s voice was grim. “Possibly one of the first kills.”

The poor goblin had probably been wandering through the Undercity, minding his own business, when he came across the Unstained Souls digging a new tunnel. And he’d paid for it with his life.

I forced myself to look away from the pile of ash and dirt. One direction of the tunnel seemed relatively empty, while the other had neatly-packed earth for the floor, as though many people had walked that way.

But we soon came to a blank wall of earth.

Robin frowned, but Jack held up a hand, pushing it against the dirt. A citrine ring on his finger flared bright amber, illuminating all of us, and the dirt wall seemed to waver.

His hand was shaking, but I soon understood it was the ring: the artifact was responding to the glamour hiding the path, the amber light growing brighter than ever.

With a final burst of light, the dirt wall vanished, revealing another tunnel, and Jack’s ring went dead.

He looked down at his hand, illuminated once more by Gwyn’s ghostlight orbs. The citrine stone was cracked and dark.

“We won’t be using this again,” he murmured. “Whatever artifact they used to cloak the tunnel was immensely powerful.”

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