Satyr’s Children | Book 1: Siren
【BGM: Shin: Abyssal Tentaculum - Path to Nowhere】
The bottom level of the Trailblazers’ Guild plunged into a boundless abyss of darkness. The instant the vision was taken away, other senses seemed to sharpen beyond all limits, only to become distorted and unreliable under the influence of fear.
The musty smell and scent of medicinal herbs that had lingered in the air were replaced by an unsettling emptiness, as though they were no longer in a basement at all, but had suddenly been cast into the belly of some enormous creature, or deep into a long forgotten tomb. The bone-chilling dampness and drop of temperature made Ali feel that the scales on her cheek were considerably colder than usual. The silence pressed so heavily upon them that it seemed capable of bursting their eardrums.
… Rustle.
Who’s there?!
“Ali?” Perhaps sensing his sister’s unease, Triton called out to her. His voice slightly shaky, and its echoes rippled through the empty basement.
So now… Old Joe, the bound spirit, was nowhere to be found. As for the Guild’s main hall directly above them, who knew whether it was still filled with the bustle of preparations for the Dawnlight Festival, or whether it too had fallen into a hellish silence? And their parents… They were still out there, investigating the person who had poisoned Miss Yunyao, in a place far more dangerous than here.
Clink. The sound of chains striking one another came from behind them.
It was Rusty. They were still there, and so far had made no hasty movements.
Countless dreadful thoughts flooded Ali’s mind, only to be crushed beneath the force of her instinct for survival.
Under no circumstances could they simply sit here and wait to be killed!
“Radiance!” The green crystal at the core of her lantern mace lit up. A steady, though not particularly bright halo of light pushed back the darkness for a few feet around them. The sudden flash of light made Ali turn her head away and squeeze her eyes shut for a moment.
“Hsss—!” Almost simultaneously, a sharp hiss came from somewhere above them, unmistakably tinged with pain.
Ali whipped around and aimed at the light source behind her.
The gray-skinned Snakefolk was clutching their eyes tightly, their body slightly hunched. Their shackles clanked, and their orange dreadlocks shimmered with an eerie gleam beneath the green crystal light.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice was sharp as she tightened her grip on the mace.
“…Too bright.” Rusty’s muffled voice came through their fingers. “It’s… too much light for a pair of eyes that had just adapted to the dark. Just… give me a moment and I’ll be fine.”
Triton had shifted half a step sideways, placing himself slightly in front of his sister. The curved blade mounted on his bracers gleamed coldly under the only light source. His gaze darted between Rusty and the open cell door.
Ali knew what her brother was thinking: Had Rusty’s collar stopped working? How had the runes inside the cell gone dark? How was the door opened? Was this Ophion really as harmless as they seemed? Their father had warned them that every one of Rusty’s reactions might be an imitation—or a calculated response. So then…
“You’re not going to run?” Triton asked in a cold tone. His lapis-lazuli-colored, horizontally slit goat eyes followed Rusty’s every small movement.
“Uh… run? Where, may I ask?” The orange-haired Ophion slowly lowered their hands, squinting as they struggled to adjust to the new light source.
They seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. Tilting their head, they made the chains rattle softly. “We don't even know what's happening upstairs. And down here… I can sense nothing but layers of stone and dead ends. In a situation like this, splitting up would be the last sensible thing to do, wouldn't it?” They paused. Their tone took on a touch of Bert’s characteristically matter-of-fact concern. “Isn’t working together under unfamiliar threats one of the first principles taught in Trailblazers’ training?”
They’re imitating him again. Ali exchanged a glance with her brother. But damn it, this argument made perfect sense.
“And besides…” Rusty raised a hand and gently tapped on the metal collar still locked around their neck with one fingernail. They gave a wry smile. “This thing is still on. I can’t use my magic. Unlike the other facilities around here, this collar's doesn't seem to have been affected by the ‘shutdown.’”
“And these physical restraints are still in place.” They rattled the shackles around their wrists. “To expect a prisoner in such ‘poor condition’ as me to escape through all these layers of security is giving me far too much credit. Unless, of course, the two of you have such a low opinion of whatever it is that created this… darkness?”
Rusty was in much better shape than when they had first been brought here, Ali realized. Perhaps after finally getting enough sleep in a place much safer than the Forbidden Zone, they now even had the energy to banter with them, to test how much she and Triton knew about the collar’s condition, to test their attitude toward them, and to test their understanding of the gravity of the situation.
This Ophion is definitely not as innocent as they look.
“So, only the magic sustaining the Guild’s underground facilities has failed? And only the spells for lighting and confinement?” Ali raised her lantern mace a little higher. Its green glow barely outlined the denser darkness deeper down the corridor, where something seemed to be absorbing all light.
“I suppose…” Rusty gave no definite answer. Their grayish-white pupils narrowed into thin slits as they slowly surveyed their surroundings. “My eyes feel much better now… Night vision is one of the gifts I’m born with. With a little bit more light, I can even see with more clarity.”
Suddenly, their movement stopped. Their head tilted slightly toward the darkness at the other end of the corridor. Their long, forked tongue darted briefly between their lips, then snapped back inside.
“What is it?” Ali’s heart leapt. She couldn’t see nor hear anything.
“Shh—” Rusty motioned for her to be quiet. They remained completely motionless, concentrating on “tasting” the air.
A few seconds later, they slowly turned their head back. Their vertical pupils, set in eyes as white as plaster, looked particularly unnerving in the green light.
“The smell… has changed.” They sounded uncertain. “Previously, there was stone, rust, mold, herbs, the sweet greasy smell of the pastries you had, and a faint trace of charcoal and burned paper from that old ghost.”
“But now…” The Snakefolk paused, their Adam’s apple bobbing. “Uhhh, is there someone burning some kind of… plant? The smoke is faint, but it’s beginning to seep down from above.”
“Wha—” Ali abruptly cut herself off. The scales on her cheeks bristled.
She could smell it too.
The scent was growing clearer and stronger second by second. Looking through the unsteady green glow of her lantern mace, she could even make out a few thin, pale wisps of smoke slowly descending from somewhere overhead—most likely a ventilation shaft or a gap in the stairwell. They drifted downward like tentacles, twisted and alive.
… Vigilia Leaf. That expensive plant, commonly used to calm the nerves or sharpen one’s mind. It was also the very scent that had clung to the mysterious group of men Ali had encountered in the back alley behind The Boiling Stew.
But here? Now? Why…?
“Damn it… Mr. Joe!” Triton was the first to piece together the horrifying situation. “Someone has been burning Vigilia Leaf to incapacitate Mr. Joe!”
Indeed. Vigilia Leaf was a smoking herb used by the living to stimulate their minds. But for Joe Frostbite, a bound spirit whose existence depended on the perception he sustained through incineration, burning large quantities of it in a concentrated area would overwhelm him, paralyzing his senses.
But what if such damage wasn’t reversible? Could Joe die from this?
“We have to go up!” Ali lifted her lantern mace. Its green light flickered across her taut face. “Old Joe might be in trouble!”
“We DO have to go up,” Triton corrected her. “But not to the upper level to look for him, Ali. We should go straight to the main hall on the ground floor and immediately report the situation to the Guild officer on duty. The magic here has failed, the cell security system is malfunctioning, Mr. Joe is missing, and there's an unidentified cloud of smoke possibly created by Vigilia Leaf. The officers will know what to do. We're only Apprentices. We don't have the authority to handle a threat like this on our own.”
“Authority?” Ali turned around, her mint-green eyes blazed like fire. “By the time we've reported everything through all the ‘proper channels,’ Mr. Joe might have dispersed without a trace left! Vigilia Leaf is poison to him! And what makes you think the main hall is safe? What if the problem isn't just in the basement?”
“Yes! That’s exactly my point! We don't know whether it’s safe upstairs! It’ll be suicide if we just rush in head first without proper guidance!” Triton grabbed his sister by the wrist, his grip a little too tight. “Our job is to guard Rusty and ensure the security of the holding area, not abandon our post to play lone heroes! Dad had told us what to do when something’s wrong: secure our own safety first, then sound the alarm! Hells, we haven't even tried the alarm yet!”
“And then what?” Ali wrenched her hand free. “We stay put until someone with ‘authority’ comes downstairs, only for them to find that Old Joe is dead, Rusty has escaped, and the two of us, their ‘dutiful guards,’ did absolutely nothing about it? Triton, Joe is our colleague! We can't just stand by and watch him die—”
“All right, friends!” Rusty loudly cleared their throat.
Ali turned her furious gaze toward the Ophion. They were using that tone again. The gentle, concerned voice that belonged to Bert had been imitated so skillfully, so uncannily, that it sent a chill down her spine and filled her with revulsion.
Who do you think you are? How dare you using that—
The Snakefolk seemed wounded by her glare, a trace of sorrow emerged from their expression. But they soon looked away and continued.
“Either way, we need to get upstairs first, don't we? Firstly, we should make sure all the exits are still accessible. That way, we make sure we still have all those options, no?” They pointed toward the staircase, where the Vigilia Leaf smoke was visibly growing thicker. “I think… I smell something else up there.”
The siblings froze. They followed Rusty’s gesture and looked toward the stairs.
“What I'm saying is…” Rusty’s voice gradually grew quieter. “Have you two considered that we… might not be able to get out anymore?”
No further explanation was needed. All three of them immediately dashed up the stairs leading to the ground level.
At the top of the stone staircase leading to the Guild hall stood a wooden door that was never locked during the day and normally guarded by one watchman. Now, it was sealed shut, fitting so tightly into its frame that not even a crack remained. Something had blocked the observation window entirely. Beneath the door, a dark, sticky sheen was faintly visible. It looked as though a large quantity of melted wax mixed with impurities had been poured over it, sealing the door to its stone frame.
Ali took two steps up at once and raised her lantern mace. Its green light revealed even more horrifying details: It wasn't wax at all. It was some kind of semi-solid, dark brown gel, slowly creeping downward along the grain of the wooden door. It gave off a harsh chemical odor, mixed with the acrid stench of burning plants, but far more pungent.
“Is this… sealing compound?” Triton’s voice had grown dry.
It was a specialized alchemical product kept in the Guild warehouses for temporarily sealing cabinets containing dangerous materials. Its adhesive strength was formidable, and once hardened, it was as hard as stone.
“Looks like…” Rusty sighed softly. “Someone doesn't want us to leave. And they don't want anyone outside getting in easily, either.”
“Hey! Is anyone there?! Something's wrong down here!” Unwilling to give up, Ali reached for the warning bell rope beside the door.
Her fingers found nothing but empty air. The bell was gone.
… Tch. Ali drew a deep breath and clenched her teeth.
She swung her lantern mace with all her might, slamming the three pound hexagonal mace into the heavy wooden door.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
With every impact, the green crystal's light shuddered violently, throwing wildly trembling shadows across the narrow stairwell.
No response.
Cold sweat soaked through the clothes beneath the Siren girl's armor. She finally stopped, struggled to catch her breath, she pressed her ear against the battered door.
Beyond that tightly sealed door, beyond more than a dozen cold stone steps, beyond the dense darkness that seemed to choke the very air…
Ali heard music.
Faintly, as though it came from somewhere very far away. A lute, then hand drums, then the brass horns reserved for festival celebrations. People were laughing. Glasses were clinking. Someone was dancing to a lively tune.
The Guild hall was holding its pre-festival gathering on the eve of the Dawnlight Festival. If it weren't for that damned sealing compound, Ali might be able to smell the warm, sweet fragrance of the pastries Aeliana had specially delivered before dusk.
If everything had gone according to plan, David and Solin would have come to collect the siblings from the Guild after their shift, so they could all go home and get ready for tomorrow's banquet.
“Triton…” Ali called her brother. “How much longer until our shift ends?”
There was a faint rustling of fabric.
“Ali, give me some light over here.” Triton took the Guild-issued hourglass from his waist. He had turned it over once when they took over the afternoon shift. Its glass casing was cold to the touch, the faint hiss of sand trickling was barely audible.
The Trailblazers’ Guild was the only institution in Northwatch to operate on a three-shift rotation unlike the night watch, whose members had to stay awake on duty for an entire night. This arrangement had been established twenty years ago, following negotiations between the Guild and the lord. The veteran captains had submitted a joint petition, arguing that too many people were dying on excessively long night shifts. Only then had the early, middle, and late shifts been introduced.
The early shift ran from six in the morning until two in the afternoon. The middle shift from two in the afternoon until ten at night. And the late shift from ten at night until six in the morning.
By now, the Featherflight siblings had been on duty for a little over four to five hours since taking over that afternoon. Under the eight-hour schedule, the incoming guards should be preparing to take over their work at around nine in the evening.
But only a dozen or so minutes might have passed between the moment the lights went out and their attempt to leave. They were nowhere near the end of their shift.
“We just have to hold on until nine. Mom and Dad, along with the incoming guards, will notice something is wrong.” Using the light from Ali’s lantern mace, Triton ran his fingers over the hourglass's markings. “We have about… three hours left.”
“Rusty.” Ali spoke again.
“Yes?”
“Here in Northwatch… every hour on the hour, guards or night watchmen would ring the bells in the clock towers to mark the time. We have quite a few bell towers, and the ringing can be heard throughout the entire city. Most people rely on those chimes to keep track of the time.” She took a deep breath, then asked hesitantly, “Ever since you were brought down here… have you heard any of the bells?”
“…No.” The orange-haired Snakefolk slowly shook their head. “It's too far away. And it's so noisy outside right now that I can't even make out sounds from inside the buildings.”
Ali said nothing more and made no further attempt to hammer at the door. She stood there, dejected, clutching her mace tightly, her mint-green eyes fixed on the murky, grimy buildup beneath the door.
“Come on. Let’s go find Mr. Joe.” Triton reached out and took his sister’s sweat-soaked hand into his.
“Would you mind if I led the way?” Rusty pointed toward the darkness ahead. Even while Ali’s green light could barely illuminate a small patch of their surroundings, the Snakefolk’s dark-adapted eyes had already mapped out the path before them. “Follow me. Just don’t shine the light directly into my eyes. Ah… I think I can smell him.”
“Come on. Let’s go, Ali. Mr. Joe needs us.” Triton gave his sister’s hand a gentle tug, then turned toward the Ophion. “Lead the way.”
Rusty nodded and turned, disappearing into the shadows.
The green light followed the Ophion, swaying as it moved deeper into the warehouse district. Behind them, the sealed door grew more and more distant, its presence fading into the silence until it vanished completely into the darkness. On the other side of that door, the music continued to play.
The first basement level's warehouse district was much more spacious than the holding area.
Ali held her lantern mace high, but its light could barely illuminate a few steps ahead. Shelving units emerged in layers from the darkness, only to sink back into it as they passed. Wooden crates, iron cabinets, and sealed ceramic jars were stacked along both walls, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Each aisle resembled a sheer-sided gorge carved between towering rock faces.
“He’s to the east.” Rusty’s forked tongue trembled in the air. “Farther inside. Close to that place with the flue.”
Ali remembered that area. Two days ago, she had accompanied her mother to return the “sound bait” used to trap the Red-Shoe Dancers. She had caught a glimpse of the place from a distance.
At the very back of the warehouse, a low partition wall enclosed a separate, semi-isolated space. There were ventilation openings along the base of the wall, and a metal pipe above connected to a duct leading up to the roof.
It was the designated area where the Guild allowed Joe to “eat.” On a regular basis, people burned discarded documents, moldy and damp fabrics, and batches of inexpensive scrap paper specially collected for him there.
Then Ali caught the smell of smoke. The stench of burning damp, mold-infested materials mingled with paper ash and the charred remnants of fabric. It seeped out from the depths of the aisle, curling and swirling around their feet.
“What a putrid smell…” Rusty wrinkled their nose.
The low partition wall emerged at the edge of the green light. The waist-high barrier, built to contain open flames, looked like a forgotten tomb entrance. Acrid clouds of Vigilia Leaf smoke poured out relentlessly from behind it, stinging their eyes until they watered.
“…Mr. Joe?”
The old bound spirit lay slumped beside a bed of ashes that had not yet gone cold. His semi-transparent body looked as though something had torn through it from the inside. Its edges had frayed into wisps, which were gradually dissolving into the air, one strand after another.
Triton lowered his body and used the tip of his curved blade to stir the remaining embers in the brazier. “It is Vigilia Leaf indeed. But… how could Mr. Joe not have noticed someone bringing it down here?”
Ali ignored him. Instead, she turned toward Rusty, looking at them as though pleading for help: “Can we still save him?”
The Snakefolk had already crouched down. Without touching Joe, they held a palm a few inches above the increasingly distorted figure, testing the temperature of what remained of him.
“… The old man is still here.” They paused. “The core of his soul hasn't dispersed. But his senses are overloaded. If this continues, his spirit body will be crushed by the pressure, like drowning a snail in a bucket…”
“Just tell us what we can do!” Triton cut them off.
“I don't know!” Rusty broke down, tugging at their hair. “Bert never taught me anything like this! The lost spirits and wandering ghosts in the Forbidden Zone are always purified by Trailblazers. No one knows how to restore a spirit’s body!”
“… I have an idea.” Ali pulled a greasy piece of linen out of her pocket.
It was the wrapping cloth Aeliana had used for the pastries. Tiny flowers were embroidered along its edges, and a few flakes of pastry crust still clung to the fabric.
“Let's burn this.”
“Why?” Although Triton questioned his sister, he had already started searching his pockets for tinder and flint. “The smell from burning one piece of cloth will be far too faint. It won't overpower all the smoke of Vigilia Leaf here.”
“I think… this is different.” Ali glanced at the charred brazier and sighed. “There's no time to explain. Saving a life comes first. We might as well try it as our last resort.”
An orange glow crept up from the corner of the cloth. At first, it was a shy little flicker. Then, in an instant, it leapt high. The flames greedily devoured the oils soaked into the linen fibers, along with the flour and the sweet fragrance of festival pastries—all those warm scents of the living, long forgotten by the old bound spirit for more than a decade.
The firelight illuminated the three faces surrounding it.
Among the ashes, the wispy human-shaped figure began to slowly draw itself together.
Joe Frostbite opened his eyes.
“… Liz?” His lips moved a few times. A string of muddled, broken sounds, the kind that seemed to come only from the throats of the very old, rumbled out of him. “Liz… have you come to see me?”
“Mr. Joe?” Triton cautiously called his name.
The old bound spirit’s cloudy eyes, usually narrowed in mockery, finally managed to focus.
“You little brat—GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!”
Joe roared. His semi-transparent body shuddered violently with the force of his shout, the outline that had only just begun to reassemble nearly came apart again.
“Behind you—! The ventilation duct—!”
He pointed desperately behind the three of them, his withered finger trembling like a candle flame in the wind.
“There's—there's someone hiding in there!!!”
