Chapter 28: Forgotten Ruin

Chapter 28: Forgotten Ruin Apollo pretended not to watch the city outside, but every nerve in him twisted at the suggestion of movement. The wind had stopped entirely. The flames from their torch guttered upward without the least disturbance: no draft, no movement of air, just the slow consumption of wax and wick. He waited for the others to doze, then stepped outside. The street was brighter than it should have been, the glow from the central tower, perhaps, or a trick of the stone reflecting starlight. Apollo walked in a slow spiral, testing the distance to the next ring, counting his own footsteps against the perfect echo returning from the stone. At the fourth intersection, he stopped. There, nailed to the door of a squat, windowless building, was a single strip of paper. The language was not the city’s; it was written in a hand he recognized, though it had been years since he’d seen it outside of dreams. It read: "The world is made of walls and luck. You are running out of both." He pulled it free, folded it, and pushed it into the seam of his coat. He thought of Torgo, wondered if the old magician had left a corpse anywhere or if the river had simply devoured him, stone and all. On his way back, Apollo noticed something new. On the far side of the square, a figure moved. Not toward him, not away, but in a careful semicircle, matching his own slow pace. The figure was tall, dressed in mourning black with the hood pulled low. It walked with the certainty of someone who had lived in the city for centuries. He could not see a weapon, but the gait spoke of violence with every stride. Apollo did not challenge or signal; he returned to the house, bolted the door, and tried to forget it. By the middle of the night, the fever had woken Thorin, and the retching was bad enough that Lyra got up to help. The stench was more bile than blood, which Apollo counted as a mercy. He dosed the dwarf with willow salt and a measure of the blue powder, which cooled the shakes but left Thorin rambling in three languages and mumbling about cities made entirely of teeth. Nik drifted to sleep, then woke, then slept again, never more than a quarter inch below the surface of attention. The dog paced the room in slow circles, never once barking, but always listening. At dawn, none of the food was left, and neither was the fire. When they stepped outside, the city’s illusion had changed: now the streets showed evidence of passage, tracks left by shoes that belonged, impossibly, to their own party. The dog whined, sniffed the air, then cowered behind Apollo’s left calf. They followed the avenue toward the tower, knowing that this was the purpose, even if it felt like a trap. The streets became wider as they advanced, the houses grander and more complex the closer they drew to the center. At three points they saw figures in the city, at a window, behind the grillwork of a balcony, hunched on a roofline with their back to the rising sun. None moved. Each watched, and waited. Apollo’s head throbbed with the pressure of it. ’What do you want from me?’ He could hear the answer in the way the wind now whistled through the cracks: nothing. The city wanted nothing, because it already had them. At the base of the tower was a dry fountain filled with perfectly smooth stones. No statue at the center, just a plaque set in the base. The others stood back, waiting, but Apollo knelt to read it. The characters shifted as he stared, the meanings arranging and rearranging until he could almost speak the truth of it aloud. But he did not. He only stood, dusted his hands on his coat, and glared up at the empty windows overhead. Nik said, "You understood that, didn’t you?" but Apollo shook his head, too tired to even invent a new lie. They entered the tower. Inside, the spiral steps went upward forever, but the air did not change, and the walls were lined with a gold veining that seemed to pulse in time with his own blood. At the landing, a great chamber. No furniture, no books, just a single circle drawn on the stone in charcoal and salt. Lyra would not cross it; she stayed at the door, eyes darting, calculating exits. Nik broke the silence. "What now?" he asked. Apollo stepped into the circle. For a moment, he felt nothing. Then he heard the voice, not from across the room, not from the street, but from inside his own teeth, vibrating in the roots and curling down his jaw. The words were nonsense, yet perfectly understood. He fell to one knee, gripping the shard from Torgo, and squeezed until the edges bit through the skin of his palm. The city’s purpose flooded him, a sense of unfinished business, obligation, an echo of every vow he’d ever made and broken. The memory of the old gods’ faces, the field of white flowers, the well of red. A single, impossible command: "Finish." He stood. The others watched with the kind of cautious respect usually reserved for the dying. He looked at them, each in turn, then lied as best he knew how: "It’s just a ruin," he said. "There’s nothing here." And the city, hearing this, let him go. They left by the western road. The market was as it had been, the shoes in their place, the frost heavier now. When they stopped to rest, the dog curled at his side, and for a while, Apollo let himself believe. The world had not run out of walls. Not yet. And luck, well, that was just another way of spelling hunger. He walked east, always east, the taste of the city’s silence still thick on his tongue. And wherever the next morning waited, he would meet it with an empty hand and a heart still stubborn enough to beat.