A faint rustling sound broke the silence. Moments later, a black rat crawled out from the corner.
The man's face immediately brightened. He scooped the creature up with surprising affection, stroked it a few times, then carefully removed a small iron tag hanging from its tail. Once finished, he set the rat back on the floor. It scampered away eagerly and vanished once more into the darkness.
"We need to hurry," he said. "Another guest is already on the way. One of Shrike's people."
The priest standing opposite him remained silent. He merely observed the man's actions.
The fellow was filthy beyond measure. Like so many of the gutter rats that inhabited the undercity, he was a drifter—clothes stained black with grime, the stuffing inside his coat hardened into clumps like stone.
He was an information broker.
And inside his head were the answers the priest sought.
"You can communicate with rats?"
The priest appeared remarkably unconcerned by the urgency of the matter. Instead, he asked what seemed an entirely irrelevant question.
The broker laughed.
"How could that possibly be?"
"But the message came from that rat. About the other guest."
"Nothing more than a few trinkets."
The broker casually held up the iron tag.
"The rat is only the courier."
The tag appeared utterly ordinary, but the priest knew there had to be a system hidden within it—a pattern that could be deciphered into information.
"Using rats as messengers?"
"The underground is complicated. Pipes and tunnels run everywhere. Train them properly, and rats become excellent assistants."
As he spoke, another rat somehow appeared in his hand. Something moved within the darkness behind him.
There were many of them.
Far too many.
"Let's get to the point, Priest," the broker said. "You didn't travel all the way from Firenze just to meet a man like me, did you?"
The priest forced his gaze away from the shifting darkness behind the broker.
Disgust lingered in his eyes.
He hated this place.
He hated these people.
Had it not been for the information he sought, he would never have set foot here.
"I want to know what happened recently in Old Dunling."
"Be more specific."
"What occurred in the northern region of Old Dunling several days ago?"
The broker's hand suddenly stopped moving.
A peculiar gleam flashed through his eyes, as though he had just heard something unexpectedly interesting.
Slowly, he leaned back into his battered wooden chair and settled into a comfortable position.
"That is not a good question."
"But I need the answer. We will pay."
Silence followed.
The broker stared at the priest for several long moments before a cold, unpleasant smile spread across his face.
"We don't know much ourselves. After all, we're only rats. Lowly creatures who survive by listening to whispers carried on the wind."
As he spoke, he closed his eyes.
His expression remained calm, yet traces of pain lingered beneath the surface.
Reality and illusion began to overlap inside his mind.
In an instant, countless drifters emerged from the darkness.
They crowded around him, whispering into his ears, reporting every strange rumor, every suspicious event, every scrap of potentially valuable information. One by one, he collected their words and carefully stored them away within his memory.
As their voices rose and fell, countless scenes materialized inside his mind.
The darkness surrounding the broker and the priest suddenly shattered apart, as though a giant cardboard box had been ripped open. Light flooded everything.
The broker turned his head.
The darkness illuminated.
Stone bricks and timber descended from above, assembling themselves into a stage like a grand theatrical set.
A gambling hall appeared.
Men sat within it, talking.
"Don't know what's going on lately. The train schedules keep changing. It's driving me insane."
"What schedules?"
"The northern winter sightseeing line. It was supposed to leave days ago, but it keeps getting delayed."
In a corner of the casino sat one of the gutter rats.
By pure chance, he overheard the conversation.
The broker looked elsewhere.
Darkness dissolved.
Another scene formed from nothing.
"What do you think this is?"
On a street in the lower district, a man secretly pulled out a bottle.
Inside sloshed half a container of thick black liquid.
"What is it?"
"No idea. Last night I saw a train passing through, but something wasn't right about it. It was enormous—far larger than any normal train. This stuff leaked from it. I managed to collect some."
Night blanketed the wilderness.
A monstrous silhouette thundered across the horizon.
The man who witnessed the steel behemoth could feel nothing but terror.
"What are you talking about?"
The second man clearly had no idea what he meant.
"Look! I think it's some military weapon. They have to be developing something."
As he spoke, he demonstrated the liquid's properties.
A small flame touched the black substance.
Instantly it erupted into a raging blaze.
The fire burned fiercely.
And refused to die.
Nearby, a gutter rat raised his head slightly.
Watching the two men struggle helplessly against the flames, he committed every word to memory.
Strange black liquid.
That information would fetch a fine price from the broker.
The broker continued searching through his memories.
The scenes shattered one after another before reforming into the warm atmosphere of a cheap tavern.
"There are gods in this world!"
A drunken man shouted.
"There must be gods!"
"I saw it! I heard it! During the blizzard! There was a sound like thunder. I went out into the snow and saw a heavenly light descending beyond the horizon!"
He slammed his mug against the table.
"It was the middle of the night!"
The man was a hunter who lived in the outskirts of Old Dunling. Whenever fortune favored him, he would celebrate in this inexpensive tavern.
Most dismissed his words as drunken nonsense.
Only a drifter sitting nearby remembered them.
He thought the story was interesting.
And he knew that strange broker would probably think so too.
The broker opened his eyes.
The visions vanished instantly.
Countless rumors.
Countless conversations.
Countless fragments of lives.
He stripped away the meaningless details and searched for the pattern hidden beneath.
Slowly, a story emerged.
Altered train schedules.
Black liquid that burned with unnatural ferocity.
Divine lights in the night sky.
Or perhaps not miracles at all.
Perhaps explosions so vast that they resembled the wrath of gods.
"Military operation."
The broker spoke with certainty.
"A large-scale military operation was recently conducted in the north."
The priest's voice lowered.
"You're certain?"
"Half deduction. Half guesswork."
The broker spread his hands.
"After all, we're only rats. Creatures that would struggle to survive if we ever left the lower districts."
The priest studied him silently before rising to his feet.
"I'll return."
The broker smiled as he watched him leave.
"You're always welcome."
His grin widened.
"We like wealthy customers."
The world beneath the city was dark and damp, thick with the stench of rot. The foul odor rushed to meet them, as if every unseen corner of this buried realm concealed the remains of the dead.
The drifter walked ahead, carrying a kerosene lamp. Its dim amber glow was the only source of light in the endless darkness.
Ghostly sounds drifted through the silence. Countless creatures seemed to be moving within the blackness, their claws scraping against stone and dirt, producing an endless chorus of faint rustling.
Lloyd cast his gaze into the darkness. With a witch hunter's sharpened eyesight, he could make out innumerable rats scurrying through the tunnels. Somewhere nearby, he could hear the murmur of flowing water. There had to be a sewer close at hand.
"We may be walking for quite some time," the drifter said without looking back. "Hope you can endure it."
The stale air was heavy with dust, making every breath laborious. Fortunately, Lloyd had long since grown accustomed to such conditions. Compared to what he had already endured, this discomfort was hardly worth mentioning.
"You dug all of this yourselves?" he asked after they had been walking for a while.
The deeper they ventured, the stronger his curiosity became.
Lloyd had traded with the Ratkin before, but never had he descended this far beneath the city.
"Rats need escape routes," the drifter replied. "Simple as that."
After a pause, he continued.
"Though these tunnels aren't exactly stable. One of the nearby passages collapsed a few days ago. Several people were buried alive. We were supposed to take that route, but since it's gone, we'll have to make a detour."
Under the weak lantern light, direction was nearly impossible to judge. During their journey, Lloyd had already passed countless forks and intersections, yet the drifter seemed to have memorized every twist and turn. He navigated the labyrinth with effortless certainty.
"How do you remember all of this?" Lloyd asked. "I'm already completely lost."
He had tried to memorize the route himself, but after so many turns and backtracks, even he had begun to lose his bearings.
"A survivor's got to have a few tricks," the drifter replied mysteriously. "One of the Ratkin's little secrets."
And so they continued through the darkness.
With nothing but endless tunnels ahead, conversation became the only distraction from the monotony.
"What's your name?" Lloyd suddenly asked.
"Kamu."
The man hesitated briefly but answered without suspicion.
"You're an outsider too, aren't you?"
"If I wasn't, I wouldn't be living in the Lower District."
"Where are you from?"
Kamu abruptly stopped.
Within the cramped passage, he struggled to turn around and shot Lloyd a puzzled look—a look that plainly said, Why do you ask so many damn questions?
Beneath the lantern's yellow glow, Lloyd offered a friendly smile.
"Don't be offended. I have a feeling I'll be doing more business with the Ratkin in the future. If I'm going to spend money, I'd rather spend it with someone I know than a stranger, wouldn't you agree?"
He shrugged.
"That requires a little mutual trust first."
Kamu studied him for a moment before answering.
"I'm from a small kingdom in the south, Mr. Holmes."
Lloyd blinked in surprise.
"You know who I am?"
Kamu turned away and resumed walking.
"Of course I know who you are, Mr. Holmes. The detective who serves the Shrike. The man who personally brought about the Red River Massacre."
His voice remained calm.
"You haven't shown your face in the Lower District for a very long time. Most of us assumed you were dead."
"You know quite a lot."
"Just survival instincts. The Shrike rules the Lower District. Naturally, creatures as insignificant as us make an effort to understand those who hold power."
"And yet this seems to be the first time you've ever seen me."
"As long as one Ratkin knows, the rest eventually know."
Lloyd followed closely behind.
Within a few short exchanges, he had already learned something valuable.
These seemingly insignificant "rats" clearly possessed an astonishingly efficient intelligence network. Once information reached one of them, it somehow spread to the others. What Lloyd could not yet understand was how they communicated—or how they managed to retain such an immense volume of information.
"We're almost there."
As Kamu spoke, the distant sound of running water grew louder and louder, until it resembled the roar of a colossal waterfall hidden somewhere in the depths below.
But there was more.
Lloyd's sharpened hearing caught countless additional sounds: machinery turning, footsteps echoing, hushed conversations blending together into a chaotic storm of noise.
"We've arrived."
Kamu's voice broke his concentration.
Everything suddenly seemed quieter.
Stepping aside, Kamu gestured for Lloyd to continue forward.
The tunnel opened into a sewer. Fetid water poured from overhead channels and rushed through stone conduits at tremendous speed. As they passed alongside the torrent, a vast subterranean chamber unfolded before Lloyd's eyes.
The roar of water reached its peak.
The underground waterfall stood directly before him.
"This is your nest?"
For the first time, genuine astonishment crept into Lloyd's voice.
Old Dunling truly possessed more than its surface suggested.
It was a city with depth—quite literally.
A city hidden beneath another city.
"One of them," Kamu answered. "People need somewhere to huddle together and survive. This place serves well enough."
Lloyd tilted his head upward.
Faint light filtered down from far above. Alongside that light descended millions upon millions of tons of water, plunging from a tremendous height and filling the air with drifting mist.
It was an enormous waterfall.
Diverted from the River Thames through a network of channels, it flowed into the depths beneath the city, feeding the colossal boilers below.
The entire chamber stretched downward like a vertical abyss.
This was one stage of the city's vast purification system. The waterfall crashed into a reservoir beneath them before continuing downward through countless branching channels that spread like a spider's web.
Steam pipes crisscrossed every surface.
Massive machinery operated ceaselessly of its own accord.
Rust-eaten aerial walkways intersected throughout the cavern, weaving together in impossible layers. High above, orange-red identification numbers had been painted onto the metalwork.
This place was part of the Pillars of the Furnace.
One of its forgotten edges.
"The Mechanical Institute practically hollowed out the underground," Kamu explained. "Steam pipes and machinery filled the void afterward. You could say Old Dunling is built atop an enormous machine."
His gaze swept across the vast chamber.
"But the underground world is simply too large. This place lies on the frontier of that kingdom beneath the city. Nobody pays attention to it, so we made our home here."
Lloyd followed his gaze.
Along both sides of the waterfall stood rows of iron doors embedded in the walls—passages leading deeper into the machinery itself.
Figures moved behind them.
Above the abyss, the Ratkin had constructed crude shelters atop the aerial walkways using scavenged timber and broken planks. The structures clung to the vertical walls like grotesque tumors hanging from flesh.
The walkways stretched outward like a giant spider's web.
And upon that web lived its prey.
"You realize these are deathtraps, right?"
After pondering for a moment, Lloyd offered what he believed was an insightful observation.
Kamu did not even bother looking at him.
"We can only survive here. What difference does it make whether the buildings are safe?"
The largest of the "tumors" sat where several walkways converged. Here and there, people emerged from nearby sewer tunnels and disappeared into the tangled settlement suspended above the abyss.
This was Lloyd's first time seeing a place like this.
The Pillars of the Furnace were so immense and unwieldy that Lawrence had managed to establish breeding facilities within them, while the Ratkin had built entire colonies.
Calling it an underground kingdom suddenly no longer felt like an exaggeration.
This truly was the edge of a hidden realm, far removed from the Eternal Pump at its heart.
Moisture and corrosion had covered the walkways in rust.
With every step Lloyd took, the structure groaned beneath him. It felt as though the metal might snap apart at any moment.
He glanced downward.
The reservoir lay more than ten meters below, its surface obscured by mist where the waterfall struck the water.
Then something fell.
A dark shape suddenly separated itself from the cascading torrent.
It slammed into the walkway with a heavy crash, causing the entire structure to shudder.
Lloyd immediately seized a rusted handrail to steady himself.
Turning toward the impact, he saw the object wedged between the metal supports.
It was a corpse.
The body looked as though it had been submerged for weeks. Its skin was bloated and deathly pale.
"You'll get used to it," Kamu said casually. "People in the Lower District are always throwing strange things into the river. They assume everything eventually ends up in the furnaces and gets burned. What they don't realize is that there are several filtration stages first."
Clearly, he had seen this countless times before.
Without another word, he kicked the corpse loose.
The body toppled over the edge.
Lloyd watched it disappear into the swirling mist below.
"Come on."
Kamu resumed walking, leading him toward the largest tumor-like settlement at the center of the vast underground colony.