The farther down we go, the sharper the Dark Below sinks its fangs into us and the more the blackness becomes impenetrable, until Lucien finally has to witch-light his hand, his purple-black fire lighting a faint sphere around us. The cavern walls aren’t smooth anymore—faint carvings like runes peek out from between the moss and unfathomable age of the place.

“Sound-activated traps,” I hear Malachite murmur. “I don’t make noise when I walk, but the rest of you sound like horses.”

“I object,” Yorl hisses. “I’m far quieter than you.”

Malachite pauses, listens, then nods. “Okay, not bad. But unless the rest of you grow hairy feet like Bookworm over here, we’re going to trigger one of the sound traps sooner or later.”

“I can muffle us,” Lucien offers.

“Isn’t that difficult?” Fione asks. “Three people, for who knows how long?”

“Not as difficult as you’d think. The stone down here is hungry for anything—sound most of all.”

“Whatever that means.” Malachite shakes his head. “Just go easy on yourself, Luc.”

The witchfire suddenly illuminates a split in the path—one tunnel going left, the other going right. Malachite stops us, he and Yorl listening carefully with their long ears.

Yorl looks at him first. “Nothing.”

“The other way, then,” Malachite asserts.

“But—” Yorl stops, listening to the other side. “There’s nothing there, either.”

“There is,” Mal insists. “Faint clicking. You just can’t hear it.”

“Clicking?” Fione’s voice cracks nervous. “Doesn’t that mean there’s a trap down that way?”

“The ancestral council is made up of beneathers,” Yorl says. “Beneathers have the best hearing in the world. They can hear the clicking as no other mortal can—not even celeon.”

“It’s how I used to spy on you two.” Mal grins at me and Luc. “Didn’t even have to be close. Could be blocks away and I’d still hear every word of your vapid flirting. There’s a trap both ways,” he clarifies. “Probably. It’s just one of them beneathers can hear, and the other is silent. So we go the beneather-way.”

“If it was that easy, every beneather not on the council would’ve navigated the Fog Gate by now,” Lucien points out.

“S’not gonna be easy to disarm the trap,” Mal agrees. “But it’s better than nothing.”

“If we get lost down here—” Fione starts.

“We won’t,” I assure her. I try to summon the Weeping again as we walk down the imperceptibly clicking left path. If things go wrong, I can always dig into the stone with my claws, create them a shelter or a new tunnel. Nothing of this place looks valkerax proof, and certainly not Heartless-valkerax proof—

“What was that?” Yorl stops. I freeze at the front, peering uselessly into the dark ahead of us.

“The clicking,” Malachite says.

“It’s getting louder,” Yorl agrees. “But it’s…that’s not mechanical—”