The iron drainage grate behind the Grand Cathedral of Val-Khorat had not been opened since the great spring floods of Year 490.
Ren Vale pried the rusted bars upward using his Carved Mammoth Bone Awl as a lever, the fossil ivory groaning under the clockwork torque before the rusted through latch snapped with a wet, hollow crunch. A draft of icy, stale air surged up from the dark opening. Smelling of river sludge, decomposing lamprey skins, and the sharp, metal tang of un-burned copper.
Ren adjusted the copper control valve of his brass breathing collar. The dysbaric mist hissed against his tongue, cooling his throat. Beneath the streets. There, the humidity was ninety percent, the aerosolized hadal salt water felt dense and heavy in his chest. But it kept his unpressurized alveoli from collapsing under the cold earth.
“Eighteen deep-water lengths down,” Nomad Ren whispered from the edge of the shaft.
The Sand-Stalker—Summon #11—knelt on the wet grass, wearing his sun-bleached desert leathers and a frayed linen keffiyeh wrapped tight around his jaw. He had placed his bare right ear directly against the granite foundation stones of the cathedral. In his calloused hands, he held his dried gourd resonator and a flint skinning knife.
