…but collapse always begins in places like this.

  Soot falls like snow over the Lowrealm.

  Ash and carbon from the collapsed Upper Stacks plume hot breath into the electric glow of a forsaken city.

  There is no true light in this underworld of regurgitated eras, only burning barrels of blue flame, neon shards and leftover synthetics hustled into piles or hovels.

  Old railway carts and trams stack the air like bridges — caught midway to somewhere else, some dangle from concrete like stalactites, others are lodged between walls as though bitten off during transit.

  The quick one darts out from beneath scaffolding, dressed like a shadow in tattered silk.

  She’s light on her feet with a tongue as sharp as a rusted blade, no more than fourteen but already dangerous.

  Above her is a darkness thick and vast and streaked with star things that wriggle and ooze over the high and cavernous ceiling where whisperslugs play their hand at constellations.

  Nearest to her and amidst the dust and debris, an alleycat with no tail slinks through the creases of shadow, one chipped ear twitching before it disappears into a Halidom vent-shrine whose effigy is now gutted and defaced, gaudy features melted into mockery.

  Deep navy uniforms are stark against the rot — cloaked Seraph soldiers roaming lazily through the city, most palming the black pommel of their conscripted blades, always ready to strike and eager for the excuse — soldiers that have turned lurkers inside this bloated corpse of loose morals.

  Three of them slip into what may have once been a theatre; the decals are ruined, and the beautiful designs have been eaten away by acid and age.

  The sign overhead isn’t working right, and the letters often blink in and out of place.

  When they shine harmoniously, it proclaims in neon light: WHORES.

  Most of the time it just flashes ominously and out of sync, and more often than not it says 'WHO'.

  Like it’s a question being asked of the dust.

  She doesn’t stop to read it but gives them a wide berth, sifting past street vendors who barter with overripe fruit, browning unidentifiable meat, scrappy weapons and rusting trinkets in the clutter of the market strip known as The Spine.

  She passes many who don’t lift their heads.

  Everyone is pale, sickly and suffering from all things caused by the absence of natural sun; hairless and unwilling moles more so than human beings.

  It is here that the dying fall in the streets like turned-over saplings; most go alone once their whimpering flesh is dragged out of the main street; some remain in the narrow alleys for weeks, some mere days.

  There’s rarely anything left after hours.

  The lucky are burned — because smoke rises, and what rises must eventually reach the sky, or so those left behind hope over embers.

  The Spine itself squeezes the Lowrealm’s people together—hawkers, whores, scavengers, Seraphs, and saints alike—until they blur into the same grease-smudged crowd.

  It isn’t a road the girl follows so much as a corridor of necessity — too narrow in some places, gaping open in others like the earth had tried to heal over too many times and failed.

  Bridges of scrap metal and repurposed carts stitch the layers together, welded seams slick with corrupted rainwater, oil, or blood.

  Steam belches from vent mouths like toxic breath into the poorly lit underworld sky, and every surface appears to sweat a neon hue that drips down the walls and casts fractured reflections that stain puddles and overflowing buckets a toxic blue.

  Those with something to sell shout above the constant churn: rust-bitten fruit, chipped knives, jars of whisperslugs for light, and the odd child-sized coat cut from some dead soldier’s uniform.

  Those with nothing left to trade simply sit against the walls, backs pressed to crumbling concrete until hunger tips them sideways.

  The air is a stew, a sweet rot of burning plastic and something sharp enough to sting the back of throats.

  A group of scavengers pilfer through trash and ruin in the shadows — digging up debris from before the First Collapse.

  A man in a trench coat and rusted goggles tinkers with a radio — half buried in a mountain of slag.

  When it flickers to life, the light is blue and hopeful.

  It plays a song he’d long ago forgotten.

  Lay your hands on me, lover. Be mine. Be mine. —

  before it sputters, sparks, and returns to death in uproar and then silence.

  Somewhere deeper, where old oil tanks have rolled over and amongst cranes and bones of industry, the girl now sprints through sleepy and abandoned ruins, hiking a bulging pack further up her back and leaping over a discarded pipe with flourish and a victorious smirk.

  She knows this place well; in her bones.

  Her bag is fat with haul, although she is not weighed down by it, and instead she moves with speed unprecedented for such a small frame.

  There’s a break in the darkness as the girl comes upon her destination.

  The Hole—as she’d proudly ordained it months ago—isn’t so much a pit as it is a scar in the earth or a fissure that refuses to heal, much like the rest of the Lowrealm and its pockets of buried wounds.

  Long ago it may have once been a transit hub, for the bones of rusted rails arc into the darkness, ends devoured by a collapsed tunnel recently patched with scavenged sheet metal.

  There are fragments of signage in languages no one speaks anymore bolted and moulting with age still clinging to the stone walls, left merely as a monument to the history they’ve all forgotten.

  Inside, the ceiling is a patchwork of old construction and layered history — cracked tile and soot-stained concrete arching into a dome of crisscrossing support beams that belong to entirely separate centuries — and scattered amongst the flesh of architecture are gaps revealing hints of even older layers: perhaps a church's floor now splintered and inverted above.

  There’s a sewer pipe that leaks a steady stream of water through poorly patched cracks, grey liquid pooling into shallow puddles or tin buckets that break the quiet with a familiar drip, drip, drip.

  The girl slows her pace as she enters, the urgency flitting away as familiarity breeds safety.

  To the far side of the room is a shattered clock face leaning against the wall — too heavy to move and too broken to be fixed.

  She checks the time anyway.

  12:12.

  There’s freshly broken tile patched with planks, and colourful, albeit filthy, stacked rugs greet her boot-clad feet when she scuffs them dry.

  Before long she approaches a repurposed information kiosk turned meeting table at the centre of the room.

  The walls around her are heavily lined with vague maps of the tunnels and notice boards—the largest of which holds stacks of pinned papers about “chores”, the strict schedules crossed out and rewritten in bolder letters.

  The child seems to soften with relief.

  She’s home.

  But even here, safety felt like borrowed time.

  The girl sets her bulging pack upon the kiosk desk with a sputtered huff and a roll of sore shoulders, relieved to be light again. “I’m home!” she calls, and the sound echoes and bounces off the slick on the walls.

  She can hear the thunder of feet down the hall where the bunks lie deeper within the tunnel, and, like the sun she’s never seen before, a face bearing a beaming smile greets her at the doorway.

  The boy with blonde curls emerges, and where his front teeth meet in the middle there is a big chip in the pearl; though his grin is no lesser for it, merely soft. Merely relieved to see her returned safely. “Mouse,” he greets her with all the tired happiness of a young one still blooming into love.

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  Mouse spares a thin-lipped smile and greets the blonde child warmly. “Chip!” Her eyes are sparkling in the low light that splashes over cheeks still warm and young. She can’t be any older than fifteen, and yet she spins like a lifetime dancer to reveal her haul.

  Chip settles cheerfully into her presence, basking in the glow. “You’re back.”

  She tips her chin up proudly. “Like lightning.”

  He quirks a brow—he hasn’t read about lightning yet, but he imagines that it’s fast and dashing like the rogue before him, and so he agrees, clapping his hands and applauding her arrival. “Great! I’m starving.”

  The girl tunnels into her pack and produces an overripe orange, bruised on the side from where she’d toppled over outrunning those pricks earlier on the vendor slats. She holds it up as though expecting another round of applause.

  “Oranges again.” Chip sounds disappointed, and so she whips her head around to face him, suddenly sneering where she had once been soft. He flinches like she’ll hit him — and she does, tossing the circular fruit at his chest, where he nearly drops it.

  “I got soup as well.” She’s fishing through her bag again to flash an unmarked and unopened can.

  “Water? Something’s swimming in the tap-stuff again.”

  Mouse pulls the rim down to showcase a few bottles of clear fluid. “Not much. It’s getting harder to find.”

  “Slink says we can boil it, but Riv got sick last time.”

  “I know, I dumped the bucket.”

  Neither wants to admit that there’s concern brewing in the words between them. Neither wants to admit that although they have oranges and soup and more clean water than yesterday, they are still just scrambling children walking the edges of starvation and sickness.

  “You think we’ve got enough?” he asks, glancing away.

  “Sure! Low risk, remember?”

  “Don’t be dumb enough to believe it,” Chip responds, echoing someone else as he stands up staunchly.

  Mouse smiles again, giggles. “Good impression.”

  “It wasn’t an impression!”

  “Rivin is always overly cautious. We’ve got this!” She almost sounds confident, but her voice tapers off at the end.

  Thankfully, he looks to believe her — but perhaps it’s only because she’s smart and pretty and older.

  Mouse peels a second orange with fast fingers and playfully tosses the pulp towards him, devious in the eyes as he dodges out of the way. “Don’t be so serious, Chip. It’s a cinch. I promise.”

  She then turns towards the pack again to sort through the remaining contents. “I got some bandages — clean, I made sure. Some… smoked… Uh, fish, I think? Maybe rat. I can’t remember. Do you think this looks like fish?” She starts parting a paper bag, and Chip leans in to look.

  “Oh. I see you’re back,” another voice cuts in from the doorway, appearing sudden and silent, unlike the pitter-patter of Chip’s exhilarated feet from earlier.

  When Mouse spins on her heels, there’s a teen with tired grey eyes glaring right at her — two full moons of irritation that pierce the muscles of her face like fine blades. He’s holding up the discarded peel like it’s contagious, like it might just bite him somewhere vital should he let it anywhere closer.

  His voice is nonchalant, and his pale face is similarly plain, carved out only by jet-black hair that hangs heavy over his brow. He’s closer to Mouse’s age than Chip’s but with eyes that bloom heavy with coldness built over lifetimes cramped into handfuls.

  “You know how I feel about litter,” continues the boy with the veteran eyes.

  Mouse nods without a word, catching the crust against her battering heart as he tosses it towards her.

  Chip grins like he’s won something, but then he looks at the oranges again, and his smile fades.

  There’s a moment of breath between them in which grey eyes look her over and find no wounds. He appears to relax, if only in the shoulders.

  “Trouble?” He moves closer, lacing his hands behind his back as he begins to examine the open pack’s contents.

  Mouse shakes her head, smiling broadly. “Nah, slipped away like a ghost.” She rides an invisible wave with one hand — but the boy only nods, unsmiling.

  “We’re still waiting on Ricket,” Chip informs.

  “He’s not back yet?” Mouse sounds concerned.

  “Did you see him?” The boy tilts his head.

  “Yeah, he was making his way down the west pipe last I saw.”

  “He should be back by now.”

  “Slink?” Mouse lifts a brow.

  “Yeah, he got back an hour ago. He’s still getting set up.”

  She nods, ignoring the way that her hands begin to shake in that funny, twitchy way that they do whenever she’s growing exhilarated or afraid.

  Suddenly, there’s the scuttle and crash of buckets and disaster — and as though a clean breeze blew through instead of noise, the gathered children relax upon the scrambling arrival of Ricket.

  The boy spills into the hall alongside toppled-over buckets, grinning toothily beneath dark braids from the floor. He wipes the blood from his scuffed chin with one hand while brandishing—victoriously—a soaked and rolled-up envelope in the other.

  “Rivin!” he booms from across the room. “I got it!” Despite his soaked trousers and the dripping document in question, the boy looks positively pleased with himself between breaths of gasping air.

  Wordlessly, the one named Rivin approaches, sighing like a father exhausted — he’s already wondering about the roster and picking up the tipped-over buckets and setting them right beneath the leaks again.

  Afterwards, he grasps the paper between two fingers and offers his other hand to the sprawled-out teen, hoisting him back to his feet once accepted. “You’re wet,” he remarks, wiping his newly damp palm against his trousers. “Why are you wet?”

  “Had to earn it,” Ricket replies all too confidently, pushing out his chest as he saunters towards the others, already snooping through Mouse’s pack. “Ooh, oranges.”

  Rivin shakes out all the water he can from the envelope. “We’ll have to dry it out, idiot. What happened?”

  “Turns out the source’s way of bartering was… irregular,” the boy explains, biting into the fruit pulp and all. “We’ve got time. Put it on the stove, right?”

  He sounds unapologetic. The others can only blink and stare.

  “You better hope it’s not ruined, Ricket,” Mouse scolds, frowning. “That’s our only map.”

  “I can get another one! I’m just no good at swimming, is all…”

  “Who is this source of yours again?”

  Ricket only bats them away with his orange before returning it to his hungry maw. “Secret source. It’s all in the name.”

  Rivin is already walking into the tunnel he’d appeared from earlier, and the others—like pups on leashes—follow quickly in his shadow and towards the smell of something simmering and not-so-inviting drifting through the shadow.

  They arrive upon an old loading platform where perhaps supplies had been shipped to and from long ago — now it’s part kitchen, part workshop, and altogether a chaos zone for children forced to grow too quickly, too early, and too devoid of light.

  An old Halidom field stove — payment from one of their better jobs — has been jury-rigged into a communal cooking station near the entryway, where a tall, lanky teen ladles hot gruel from a cast-iron pot into a chipped mug, bent over the station like he can’t be bothered holding himself straight.

  He blinks with bleary cerulean eyes — red-rimmed and glassy. “Welcome home, you lot,” he sounds tired. “How’d we fare?”

  He leans back to rest his hip against the bench, speckled with crumbs from the stale bread he now reaches towards to dip into the soup. Beyond the stench of whatever cooks on the stove, the room stinks also of old oil and repairs.

  It’s mostly spotless — per the chore chart — though fresh dishes stack by a leaking sink in the makeshift kitchen.

  “We’ve got oranges,” Chip groans.

  “And a map!” Ricket beams.

  “A wet map,” Rivin finishes, already trying to extract the drenched paper from the envelope without destroying it. Finally, and with some success, he lays it flat against a counter nearest to the stove.

  It’s still legible.

  “Should we put it on the heater?” asks Mouse.

  “Don’t be stupid. We don’t have a working heater. Put it on the stove,” offers Slink.

  “You’re both stupid. We’ll just leave it to dry. Don’t touch it. Slink, I said, “Don’t touch it.” Rivin slaps the older boy’s hand away with a sharp tap, glaring daggers through black hair.

  “Eat up, then.”

  Several eyes glance at the soup precariously.

  “Did Chip cook?”

  “Do you have to ask?” Slink chuckles.

  “Hey! Rivin won’t swap my chores—”

  “You’re bound to learn. Eventually.” Rivin doesn’t sound so sure as he squints into his cup. “I hope.”

  “Until then, we suffer together,” hails Slink, humming and shovelling in a second spoonful he nearly gags on.

  “It’s not that bad!” Chip defends, filling a mug, and taking a gulp he immediately regrets. His face pales and grows sickly, and he forces a deep and resounding swallow that nearly cramps his throat to keep it down.

  “Eat up, brats; we need you big and strong tomorrow.” Slink uses his spoon to point.

  Soon enough, the five teens are huddled around a table, finishing off the last of their dinner. Full but not satisfied.

  Never satisfied.

  “Should we go over the plan again?” Ricket wonders, finishing his mug and placing it quickly aside — like medicine he knows he must have but hates.

  “What plan? It’s a quick in and out, right?”

  “We need to be careful. This is new territory. Far beyond The Spine. We need to be sharp.”

  “Lav says—”

  “You trust that leech?”

  “Of course not.” Mouse worries her lower lip with her teeth.

  “We’ve got the map. We’ll be fine.”

  “Ricket’s source is even less trustworthy—”

  “All this bickering means we’ll go over it again,” Rivin sighs, massaging his brows.

  The table falls into silence as he retrieves the map — mostly dry now — and places it before them on the table. It details a fallen Halidom bunker, and a series of numbers are smudged into the top of the page.

  “What’s this?”

  “She says we’ll know it when we see it,” informs Ricket.

  Rivin huffs but doesn’t argue. Thankfully, they’re far more detailed than anything they could get their hands on prior.

  “We’re looking for a container. Big enough to pack the wheels. There’s no knowing what else is inside. I want us entering this place like it’s loaded to blow. Okay?”

  Several heads bob in agreement.

  “Lav has promised us something simple, so expect a trap.”

  “Are you listening, Slink?” Ricket jabs.

  Slink doesn’t move; instead, he continues picking the grime from beneath his fingernail with a butter knife. “I’m listening.”

  “He’s listening,” Rivin waves it away.

  “Ricket, what’s the security like?” Mouse asks. “Did your source tell you?”

  “Guarded—”

  “By morons, I’m told,” Slink mutters. “The last crew stupid enough to take this job on never came back, did you hear?”

  Rivin doesn’t answer, but his eyes dart away. “What’s the patrol like?”

  “Aha — she says they skip patrol every second day,” Ricket grins wide.

  “So, we find this container,” Mouse says as she tries to draw on the fragile paper, first ripping the edge before softening up her touch to scrawl.

  She pulls away to reveal the sketch: SY-Δ-000. “It’s small, but all hands on deck.”

  “Two drones circulate the building,” adds Ricket. “The second drone’s out of commission. I’ve got good intel.”

  “What’s in the crate?” Chip asks.

  “Does that matter?” Rivin sighs.

  “He doesn’t want us opening it,” murmurs Mouse, pausing for a beat before, “Lav said drugs.”

  “Do we believe that?” Slink snickers.

  “Once again, does that matter?” Rivin repeats, quieter this time.

  Another beat passes with only the familiar song of dripping water in the low light.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The crew look at their little huddle space — at the cracks in the floor where they can see right through to the rigid ground, the moss prevailing through the fissures of the closed bunker door, and the stash of rations that looks meagre next to the stash of tech.

  “We stick to the plan.” Rivin taps his finger on the map, grey eyes sharp like his voice. “We stay together, and we don’t fuck up.”

  Four sets of eyes look to him unwavering.

  “Lav said this would be low risk, but the payout suggests otherwise.”

  The message is clear. There’s no such thing as low risk in the belly of Halidom.

  “I want this quick and quiet. Be smart, and we all get out of this alive.”

  Perhaps it is a peculiar thing for a boy such as him to utter, yet it does not seem strange to them at all—not when the cold is leaking in and the shelves are growing far too bare.

  So it is there, deep inside the husk of an undigested world, that five children plot to change their fates.

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