The rogue at the rear, light on his feet and never quite relaxed.

  Jim trails them in the wall-shadow, matching their pauses, their starts, their turns.

  At one of the larger pools, Selise’s lantern beam skims across the surface—

  —and something splashes.

  A quick, wet body-shape vanishes into the dark the instant the light touches it. Too fast to identify cleanly. Rat? Frog? Sewer eel? Something with enough sense to hate illumination.

  The warrior halts. Selise lowers the lantern pole toward the water. Halden’s hand tightens on his symbol.

  At the back, the rogue glances over one shoulder.

  Then again, a few steps later.

  Not obvious enough for the others to call out. Just the kind of subtle check a person makes when they’ve decided something is following us.

  Jim freezes at exactly the right times, becoming grime and whiskers and nothing more. The rogue’s eyes pass over him twice and never quite land.

  For now, Rat #1 remains what the big folk think he is:

  just another rat in the sewer.

  Jim waits until the party’s boots and lantern have moved a safe distance past the pool, then makes his own dash.

  He scurries by the black water in a low, fast blur, claws clicking once on old tile before he finds the rougher stone again. Nothing follows him out of the pool. Whatever jumped in wanted darkness more than a fight.

  Ahead, the tunnel changes again.

  The flagstone path narrows and then opens onto a broader ledge where the center watercourse suddenly drops away into a deeper channel. The sound changes with it: no longer the close hiss of shallow flow, but a lower, throatier rush, like the sewer has opened a second mouth beneath the first.

  At the far end of this section, the wall is painted red.

  Not bright, fresh paint. Old, slapped across stone in a band that cuts the tunnel visually in half. The red has run in places, faded in others, but it still reads the same way at a glance:

  Danger past here.

  The warrior stops first and studies the drop. Selise lowers the lantern pole, letting the light slide down the deeper channel. It goes a long way before it finds water again, and even then the surface is moving hard.

  Brother Halden looks at the red-marked wall and nods once, like seeing a landmark from an old account.

  “That’s the line,” he says quietly.

  The rogue glances at him. “Line for what?”

  Halden lifts his symbol, then gestures toward the deeper run beyond the red stone. “Beyond that point is the deep sewer. When the tide turns, the lower channels sweep clean. Fast, hard, and without much regard for what’s in them.”

  Selise peers down into the drop and makes a face. “You say ‘sweep clean’ like that’s comforting.”

  “It is,” Halden replies, “if you arrive after the sweep instead of during it.”

  The warrior grunts. “So we wait.”

  Halden nods. “We wait. Then we move as soon as the tide turns and the lower runs settle. That gives us the best window.” He glances down the red-marked line again, then adds, “A full twelve hours. Maybe a few minutes more, if the far tunnels are still passable.”

  That settles it.

  The party begins the small, practical ritual of setting a camp in a place no sane person would choose unless paid.

  The warrior checks the ledge width and picks the driest, most defensible patch near the red wall. Selise props the lantern pole where it throws the best light. The rogue does a quick survey of the area beyond the light. Halden kneels for a moment by the wall, hand on symbol, either praying or just collecting himself.

  Jim stays in the shadows and watches the whole process with a weird mix of fondness and disbelief.

  They are actually making camp in the dungeon, he thinks. Again. Incredible confidence. Terminally adventurer behavior.

  Still, it makes sense. If the deep sewer floods with the tide, charging ahead now would be suicide. Even Jim can appreciate a group willing to respect environmental hazards after one look at that drop.

  The ledge they’ve chosen is better than the nest chamber was, at least in structural terms. Higher, drier, fewer blind approaches. Not comfortable, but survivable.

  And now a new question settles over the tunnel with the slow certainty of a closing trap:

  What else knows this is a good place to wait?

  The party has just settled into the uneasy stillness of a sewer camp when the deep channel announces itself.

  At first it’s just a change in sound.

  Not louder, exactly—deeper. A far-off, rolling pressure like surf heard through stone. The warrior, who had been sitting with his back to the red-marked wall and sword across his knees, lifts his head. Selise pauses in the middle of meditating. Brother Halden’s fingers tighten on the chain of his symbol.

  Then the air changes.

  A cold, wet gust comes rushing up from beyond the red line, carrying something no ordinary sewer should smell like:

  salt.

  Real salt. Sea salt. Sharp and clean under the rot, like the ocean has shoved its shoulder into the undercity and decided to come in.

  Jim’s whiskers flare so hard it almost hurts.

  The next sound is unmistakable.

  A surge.

  Water slams through the deep run beyond the drop-off with a booming rush, fast enough that the whole tunnel seems to vibrate. The lower channel fills in seconds, black water turning white-edged and violent as it hammers around old stone bends and vanished floor levels.

  Mist explodes upward from the shaft, a fine spray of salty air and sewer chill that rolls across the camp in a sudden ghostly sheet.

  Selise jerks back from the edge. “Gods.”

  The lantern light turns hazy in the vapor. The warrior rises to one knee, instinctively bracing like the tide might somehow leap the red wall and take a swing at them.

  Brother Halden doesn’t look surprised. He looks grimly vindicated.

  “That,” he says over the roar, “is why we wait.”

  The rogue, crouched near the rear with one eye on the side passages, glances toward the deep run and mutters, “Noted. I’d prefer not to be swept out to sea, I never was much of a swimmer.”

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  Jim, tucked into the cracks of the wall above and behind the camp, watches the tide claim the lower sewer with the fascinated horror of a man who has seen enough floods in the last day to start taking them personally.

  The deep channel is no longer a sewer. It is a temporary sea-cave, a throat full of harbor water driven inland by the tide. The red wall line makes perfect sense now: beyond that point, at the wrong hour, there’s no dungeon to explore. There’s just moving water and whatever it tears loose.

  The mist keeps rising for a few moments, cool and briny, settling on armor, cloaks, fur, and stone. It leaves the whole camp smelling faintly of ocean over filth, a strange collision of harbor and sewer.

  The party says little after that.

  They don’t need to.

  The tide has spoken for the environment, and everyone present understands the same thing:

  when it goes back out, it will leave a path open—

  and anything in the deep sewer that survives the sweep will still be there, waiting on the other side.

  The roar of the tide fades from immediate violence to a steady, distant thunder. The mist settles. The salty chill lingers in the stone.

  One by one, the party gives in to exhaustion.

  The warrior is the last to sit fully, still wearing most of his gear, sword laid close enough to grab without thinking. He looks around the little camp, then at the rogue.

  “You’ve got first watch, Nix.”

  There it is. A name, dropped casually in the dark.

  The rogue gives a two-finger salute without standing. “Lucky me.”

  Jim updates the mental ledger at once.

  Rogue: Nix.

  Selise curls up nearest the lantern, cloak pulled tight, one hand still hooked loosely around the pole as if he doesn’t trust the sewer not to steal it. Brother Halden settles with his back to the red-marked wall, holy symbol tucked close, sleep coming in the shallow, guarded way of someone who knows exactly where he is. The warrior goes still in stages, like a campfire burning down.

  Only Nix stays awake.

  He sits just outside the warm center of the lantern light, where he can see into the dark without blinding himself. Elbows on knees. Knife loose in one hand. Looking like a man who has spent enough nights underground to know that “quiet” is never the same thing as “safe.”

  Jim watches from a crack in the wall above and behind the camp, all whiskers and patience.

  A little later—minutes, maybe an hour; sewer time is mushy—Nix rises without a sound and begins a slow circuit.

  He checks the pool edge first, then the side cracks, then the approach from the grate tunnel. He pauses near the red line and listens to the deep sewer breathing below. No wasted motion. No theatrics. Just methodical, professional paranoia.

  Then, halfway back toward the camp, he stops.

  Near Jim.

  His head tilts slightly toward the dark stones where he is tucked away.

  Nix says, in a low voice that won’t wake the others:

  “I know you’re out there.”

  Jim freezes so hard he becomes part of the geology.

  Nix crouches and reaches into a pouch at his belt. For one terrible second Jim thinks this is the part where the rogue produces a dart, a trap, or some tiny adventurer nonsense designed specifically to ruin rat lives.

  Instead, Nix sets down a small piece of bread on the dry edge of the stone.

  Not a toss. Not bait flicked carelessly into the dark.

  Placed.

  Then he straightens, gives the shadows one last unreadable glance, and walks back into the circle of lantern light. He sits, settles, knife across one knee, and resumes his watch like nothing happened.

  Jim stays still for a long moment, heart pattering.

  Then his brain catches up.

  Okay, he thinks. So the rogue absolutely clocked me at some point, decided I wasn’t a threat, and has now either made a peace offering or is running the strangest trap in Waterdeep.

  Below, Nix says nothing more. He just watches the tunnel, lantern glow on one side of his face, darkness on the other.

  And in the gap between them, on the cold stone, a small piece of bread waits like a flag planted in neutral ground.

  Jim stays wedged in the crack, every muscle locked.

  Below him, the little square of lantern light holds the camp in fragile peace: the warrior asleep but not deeply, one hand near his sword; Selise curled tight around his cloak; Brother Halden propped against the red-marked wall, head bowed, breathing steady.

  And Nix, awake.

  Knife across one knee. Eyes on the dark. Acting like he didn’t just casually ruin Jim’s entire stealth-based self-image.

  On the stone between them sits the piece of bread.

  Jim stares at it.

  His first thought is simple and extremely human.

  Well. Damn.

  Not anger. Not fear exactly. Just that dry, flat recognition that the rogue had, at some point, promoted him from background rat to recurring detail.

  He should have seen it coming.

  Nix had looked back too often. Not enough to spook the others, not enough to break the rhythm of the march, but enough. The kind of glances you only make when some part of your brain is quietly saying, that’s the same shape I saw before.

  Jim’s whiskers twitch once, then go still.

  The bread smells good. Dry, safe, honest buttered carbs. His rat body wants to launch itself at it immediately and let philosophy deal with itself later.

  His human brain is less enthusiastic.

  This is how familiars happen, he thinks.

  The thought arrives fully formed and completely unhelpful.

  This is exactly the kind of nonsense he used to inflict on players. Strange animal shows up. Rogue notices. Food gets left out. Three sessions later the whole table has decided the thing is part of the party and no one remembers when that happened.

  The difference, of course, is that now he’s the strange animal.

  Jim shifts his weight by half a claw-width, just enough to ease the cramp in one hind leg. Nix doesn’t look up. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t say anything else. He just keeps his watch, lantern light on one cheekbone, darkness swallowing the rest.

  That, more than the bread, is what throws Jim off.

  If Nix were trying to catch him, this would feel easier. If he were mocking him, easier. If he’d tossed the bread casually and gone back to work, easier.

  But he didn’t.

  He placed it.

  Like an offering. Or a marker.

  Jim’s chest feels weirdly tight.

  Not because he’s scared—though he is, a little. Not because the bread is tempting—though it is.

  Because Nix had every chance to reduce him back to the category of vermin, and chose not to.

  That’s dangerous in an entirely different direction.

  Jim stares past the bread at the rogue’s profile and thinks, with a kind of exhausted clarity:

  I’ve just been noticed by the sort of person who notices things for a living.

  That changes things.

  Invisible had been safe. Invisible had been armor. Invisible meant he could trail heroes, eavesdrop on priests, skitter through crawlspaces, and remain part of the city’s harmless static.

  Jim’s tail curls tighter around himself.

  Below, the deep sewer murmurs beyond the red wall. Somewhere farther off, water shifts in old pipes.

  He thinks about his old table.

  About how often he had asked players, What do you do?

  Simple question. Murderous question. The hinge every story swings on.

  Now it’s his turn.

  He looks at the bread again.

  Rat instinct says: food.

  GM instinct says: symbol.

  Survival instinct says: trap.

  Something softer, lonelier, says: invitation.

  He hates that last one most of all.

  Because he misses people. He misses being known. He misses speaking and being answered. He misses the easy gravity of a group around a table, the stupid little bonds made by shared danger and worse jokes.

  And here, in a sewer in Waterdeep, some rogue with too-sharp eyes has just done the smallest possible version of that: not friendship, not trust, just a quiet little I see you.

  Jim exhales through his nose.

  Okay, Rat #1, he thinks. Congratulations. You may have acquired a rogue.

  Very slowly, keeping most of his body hidden in the crack, he inches forward until one paw reaches the edge of the stone lip.

  Nix does not react.

  Jim waits. Counts heartbeats. Still nothing.

  He gives his crack a quick, final inspection—noses along the edges for fresh scent, tests for damp or drafts or anything with too many legs—then slips out another inch, then another, low to the wall, a streak of gray-brown tension. Every nerve is lit. Every muscle is ready to reverse direction so hard he leaves a cartoon-shaped Jim-hole in the dark.

  He reaches the bread, hooks it with both forepaws, and drags it backward one measured pull at a time.

  Nix still doesn’t turn.

  Just watchfulness, carefully angled away, like he understands that if he pushes even a little, the whole fragile arrangement shatters.

  Jim gets the bread into the crack and stops there, hidden, the bread pressed against his chest.

  He does not eat immediately.

  Instead he peers back out with one black eye and studies the rogue from safety.

  Nix is exactly where he was, knife on knee, gaze on the tunnel, posture loose in the way only very dangerous people ever manage to look. And for the first time Jim gets a proper look at him.

  Halfling.

  Jim has to stop himself from reacting at all. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. The fact lands in him with a weird, private thrill. In another life he would have clocked “rogue” first and “halfling” second as a character build. Here, in the half-dark of a sewer, it feels different—less like a trope and more like seeing the logic of the world click into place. Nix is small, yes, but not delicate: compact, sure-footed, put together like something meant to move through narrow places quickly and come back out alive. Wet leather, dark hair, lean limbs, quick hands, and eyes that miss very little. From a rat’s view he looks almost perfectly made for this world under the world.

  Jim lowers his head and finally takes a careful bite of the bread.

  Dry. Buttered. Good.

  In the lantern glow, Nix keeps watch.

  Jim gives his crack a careful inspection before committing.

  He noses along the edges, checks for fresh scent, tests the little pocket of stone for damp, drafts, and anything with more legs than it should have. It’s cramped, but dry enough, narrow enough, and hidden enough to count as safe by sewer standards—which is to say: probably not immediately fatal.

  Good enough.

  He curls into it, tail tucked close, one eye half open for a few breaths while the lantern glow and distant tide-rumble blur together.