The Sunken City had teeth.
Lee learned this when they entered the Gauntlet of Screams a corridor that stretched for what felt like miles, its walls lined with faces. Not statues. Not carvings. Actual faces, pressed against the stone from the other side, their mouths open in silent screams.
"The walls are made of people," Taro whispered. "The walls are made of people."
"Not anymore," the Pilgrim said. "They were people. Once. Now they're... insulation. The Sleeper absorbs souls to maintain its prison. Every time it dreams, it feeds. Every time it feeds, another soul gets added to the walls."
"How many?" Kira asked.
The Pilgrim shook his head. "I stopped counting after a million."
They walked through the corridor of screaming faces. The sound was unbearable not loud, but present, a constant pressure against Lee's skull that made his vision blur and his stomach churn.
Ignore them, Onyx Tempest advised. They're dead. They can't hurt you.
"They're not dead," Lee said. "They're trapped. There's a difference."
Is there?
Lee didn't answer. He kept walking, one foot in front of the other, trying not to look at the faces. But they were everywhere old faces, young faces, faces that had been screaming for so long that their features had frozen into masks of eternal terror.
Then he saw a face he recognized.
It was a woman. Middle aged. Worn. With kind eyes that had once smiled at Lee across the orphanage's dinner table.
"Matron Elise," Lee breathed.
The face didn't respond. It couldn't. But Lee saw the terror in its eyes terror and something else. Recognition.
She knows you, Onyx Tempest said. She remembers.
"How did she get here? She died in the Rust Sea. I watched them bury her."
Death isn't the end in the Sunken City. It's just a change of address. When people die near this place, their souls get pulled in. Dragged down. Added to the walls.
Lee stopped walking. He turned to face the wall, to face the woman who had raised him, who had fed him, who had held him when he cried.
"I'm going to get you out," he said. "I don't know how. But I'm going to get you out. I promise."
The face's eyes widened. And for just a moment just a fraction of a second Lee thought he saw hope there.
Then the corridor shuddered, and the screaming started in earnest.
Not from the walls. From ahead. From the darkness at the end of the corridor, where something was coming.
"Run," the Pilgrim said.
They ran.