The flood rose past Echo's knees, and the broken engine still smoked above him. He had come to this place to end the false god whose light kept him erased, buried in the cathedral's shadow. Now the engine's collapse had drowned the stairs behind him. Black water filled the vault's lower levels. He was trapped below, with no clear path back up toward the ribbed stone above. He held the iron lantern high. Red crystal fragments floated inside it, glowing with old warmth. Their light showed a tunnel half-swallowed by the rising flood. Echo pushed toward it. His red eyes burned against the dark. The cracks across his pale skin glowed as he waded, armor dragging in the current. Something moved along the wall. A small pale creature crawled from a crack in the stone. Long limbs. A sealed mouth. Huge black ears that turned toward every splash. The Silence Keeper. Echo froze. He remembered the warnings about this cathedral's hunters. This one tracked sound, not sight. Echo stilled his breath. The water lapped loud against his chest. The creature's ears swiveled toward the noise. It skittered closer, limbs clicking on wet stone. Echo could not stay silent and still while the flood kept climbing. He had to choose. He spotted a bronze chest wedged on a high ledge above the water. Glass cylinders lined its front. Faded scrolls sat inside them. One slot gaped empty. A plate read ECHO. The sight stopped him cold. His own name, waiting in a box of forgotten voices. Then he understood. The creature chased loud sound. He needed a louder sound somewhere else. Echo tore a crystal fragment from the lantern and hurled it down the drowned corridor. It cracked against stone and shattered, ringing sharp through the chamber. The Silence Keeper spun and chased the noise. It vanished into the far dark. Echo climbed to the ledge and grabbed the chest's edge. The ledge opened into a narrow dry shaft rising upward. A way out. Above, a huge black bell hung in the shaft, veined with glowing red cracks. It had not rung in centuries. As Echo pulled himself up, his shoulder struck the metal. The bell swung. It rang. The sound rolled through the whole cathedral. But the voice inside it was not a bell's. It was his own. "Don't open the Reliquary," it said. Echo's hands went cold on the stone. He had never spoken those words. Yet the voice was his. Far below, the water calmed. Far above, something stirred in the ribbed dark, drawn by the ringing. Echo had escaped the flood. He stood dripping in the shaft, staring up at the bell that had stolen his voice. Somewhere above waited a Reliquary he had just been warned against. And now every hunting thing in the cathedral knew exactly where he was.

The bell still rang above Echo as he climbed from the shaft. Its sound rolled through the ribbed cathedral and died. He stood in a vast hall of curved bone and cracked stone. Red light leaked through broken windows. Water dripped from his armor. The bell had warned every hunting thing of his place. Now he waited to see what came. A shape stepped from the shadows between two ribs. Tall. Scorched armor. Cloth wrapped over his face. He carried a long hooked blade meant to drag men from hiding. Echo had never seen him, yet the man stared like he knew a corpse walking. This was the cathedral's executioner. Someone had sent him to the flood and told him Echo drowned there. "You should be dead," the Hunter said. His voice shook with something close to fear. "I counted the water. I counted the days." He raised the hook. "Whatever wears that face, I bury it again." He lunged. The hook tore across Echo's shoulder and ripped him sideways. Echo rolled and drew Eclipse Fang. The blade flared red. Steel met the hook and sparks fell. The Hunter fought like a man erasing a mistake, each swing heavy and sure. Their clash woke the dead. Along the walls, hollowed worshippers stirred. Their torn chests glowed with trapped voices. The Choir Husks rose from the pews and wailed. The sound filled the hall. Echo and the Hunter both staggered. Dozens of husks crawled toward the noise of the fight. Echo needed room. A heavy chain hung from the vaulted bone, strung with ornate metal bells. He grabbed it and pulled with all his weight. The anchor cracked loose. The chain crashed down among the husks, crushing a row of them and ringing like thunder. The sound drew the rest toward the wreckage. Echo cut through the thinning crowd, Eclipse Fang shearing bone. The Hunter came again through the chaos. Echo caught the hook on his blade and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. The Hunter fell against a shattered pew. A black medallion swung loose from his belt. It bore the false god's mark, the same god whose light kept Echo buried. Echo tore it free. "That's not yours," the Hunter hissed. He clutched his bleeding side and backed toward the dark. "Who sent you?" Echo demanded. The Hunter did not answer that. He limped between the ribs, husks parting around him. At the edge of the shadow he stopped and looked back. "The Erased One," he said. "They told me you were gone for good." Then he was gone, swallowed by the dark. Echo stood among the broken husks. The name turned in his head. He had never heard it. Yet the Hunter spoke it like a verdict. In his fist lay the black seal, marked with the god he meant to topple. Someone powerful had ordered his death and believed it done. Now they would learn he still walked. And the seal in his hand was a thread back to whoever had sent the blade.