CHAPTER 22- Whisperglass

They left before sunrise.

The workshop's interior still smelled faintly of oil and ink, traces of the week's preparations lingering in the stale warmth of the hearth. No one said much. Liran laced his boots with precision. Hester rolled up her maps and tucked them into a waterproof tube. Ashra checked the pressure on her smoke-satchel twice, then slid a curved dagger into her belt with a whisper of metal against leather.

Corwin ran a hand across the workbench one last time.

Then they were gone.

They moved fast. East through the narrow lower lanes, past butcher shops that hadn't yet opened and taverns still shuttered from the night before. At the edge of the Old Quarter, they slipped through a boarded arch that once led to the Guild's promenade. Now, it was little more than a tunnel of moldy stone and tangled ivy.

Beyond it, the road forked.

They followed the north trail into the remnants of the Scholarch's Quarter—abandoned after the Rupture, its libraries reduced to blackened shells and bone-strewn atriums. It was here that the map led, and where the whispers began.

Ashra paused. "Do you hear that?"

Hester nodded. "Glass. Singing."

It came faintly—like wind dragging a finger along the edge of a crystal goblet. Not loud, not constant. Just enough to freeze the blood in Corwin's veins.

"It's the Whisperglass," he murmured. "Verin wrote about it. A fragment of something older than the Circuit. It's said to warn of transgression."

Liran snorted. "And we're walking into it. Fantastic."

The trail narrowed into stairs carved from broken tomes and fallen lintels. Faded sigils curled across the walls like ivy.

At the center of the ruins, in what had once been a great observatory, stood a single spire of crystal—not natural, not carved. It pulsed softly with inner light, and threads of memory flickered across its surface: silhouettes of long-dead alchemists, echoes of spoken formulas, shadows pacing the margins of ancient rituals.

Corwin approached first.

"What do we do with it?" Ashra asked.

"We listen," he said.

The spire responded to his presence.

Light shifted. A ripple of sound passed through the air like thunder muffled in velvet. Then a voice—not one of theirs—spoke.

"Three lie sleeping. One lies buried. One walks behind."

The message burned itself into the floor, etched in flowing alchemical script.

Liran exhaled slowly. "Cryptic."

Corwin frowned. "It's a warning and a riddle. A map within the map."

Before they could puzzle further, the ground trembled.

From the edge of the ruins came a shape—gaunt, cloaked, wrapped in talismans of bone and thread. Its face was hidden beneath a veil of cracked mirrors.

Carrion.

It did not speak. It did not need to.

It pointed.

And from behind it, more figures stepped from the shadows. Silent. Steady. Unnatural.

Ashra drew her blade.

Hester hissed, "Run or fight?"

Corwin looked back at the Whisperglass. The crystal now flickered with new light—a line drawn northward. The direction of Thalwyn Mare.

"We run," he said. "It's not time yet."

They fled down the scholar's spine, weaving through the shattered bones of academia, while behind them the Carrion Order advanced with the patience of the inevitable.

But they'd seen it now.

The Whisperglass. The map. The warning.

And somewhere, someone walked behind them—closer than they dared believe.