The Chasm does not sleep. It merely waits. By day, the citizens of Neverwinter pretend not to feel it—pretend the jagged wound in the earth is just another scar the city wears with weary pride. By night, when the lanterns thin and the wind slants in from the sea, the Chasm remembers that it is not just an absence of stone. It is a presence of something else. Elunara Dawnspear arrived under a muttering sky, Selune a smudged coin behind high cloud. Her armor drank the dimness rather than reflecting it. She preferred the clean silver of true moonlight, but the goddess did not always send beauty with her warnings. Tonight, the warning had been simple: *listen.* The wind did not whistle across the broken edges. It *sang*, in a raw high keen like voices dragged through a keyhole. The sound raised the hair on the back of her neck. “You feel it too.” Aubeya Mystradreamer emerged from behind a fractured pillar of stone, blue-white runes skimming along the sleeves of her cloak. Her hair was pulled back hastily, ink smudged at the corner of one eye. She smelled faintly of candle smoke and old parchment. Elunara inclined her head. “Mystra has opinions about the Chasm tonight?” “Mystra has opinions *always*,” Aubeya said. “The Weave has… knots here. New ones. Someone is tugging threads who should not be allowed near string.” They stood side by side at the edge, two silhouettes carved out of disparate faiths. Below them yawned a darkness that was not properly dark at all—shimmering in places, dull in others, like oil floating on deep water. Elunara closed her eyes, letting the sounds filter—the wind, the distant clank of the city watch changing shifts, the low rush of the river. And under it all: a faint, irregular pulse. “Something moves,” she said. “Stone should not have a heartbeat,” Aubeya muttered. “Nor should cities. Yet here we stand.” A third voice cut across the chill air, smooth as oiled steel. “Stone, cities, people—everything forgets what it is eventually.” They turned. Qelqiroth Shestendegesh leaned against a shattered buttress as if it were a tavern wall, arms folded, cloak trailing in the dirt like spilled shadow. The wind fussed with his hair and failed. His eyes gleamed with a patient, unpleasant amusement. “Of course,” Aubeya said. “The Chasm is twitching and the worst-dressed omen in Neverwinter arrives to admire it.” “I’m deeply fashionable,” Qelqiroth replied. “You simply can’t see the current trend yet.” Elunara took a measured step toward him, hand resting lightly on the hilt of her weapon. “Why are you here?” “Because I listen when the ground talks,” he said. “And tonight it is singing a very old song.” He nodded toward the depth. “Put your hand on the stone. Humor me.” Elunara did not like humoring him. She did it anyway. Paladins are allowed curiosity as long as they admit it later. The rock beneath her gauntlet thrummed, not with the steady certainty of the earth’s slow shifting, but with a jittery, syncopated beat. It was not a heart. Hearts keep time. This felt like something *trying* to learn what rhythm was and failing. Aubeya pressed her palm against the ground as well, eyes slipping half-shut. Glyphs skated across her skin, then fizzled. “That’s wrong,” she whispered. “You will have to be more specific,” Qelqiroth said. “Wrong how?” “The Weave frays around enchantments and burns around necromancy,” Aubeya said. “This is neither. It’s like someone is… teaching the raw stone a spell one syllable at a time.” Elunara frowned. “To what end?” “Do we truly wish to find out?” Qelqiroth asked lightly. “Yes,” Aubeya and Elunara answered together. For a heartbeat, the three of them were united in something that might one day become an alliance or an argument or a war. The Chasm answered before any of those futures had time to unfold. The pulse in the rock surged. Stone cracked—not outward, but *inward*, as if some vast hand were twisting it. A line of pale light split the dark far below, then winked out. Elunara jerked her hand back. Aubeya staggered. Qelqiroth simply watched, expression sharpening into interest. “Well,” he said softly. “Someone has been busy down there.” “You knew,” Elunara said. “I suspected,” he corrected. “Now I know. Inquiries cost extra.” Aubeya rounded on him. “If you had even an inkling that someone was reshaping the foundations of Neverwinter—” “I did what I always do,” he said. “I watched. I waited. I chose a good vantage point for when the idiots arrived.” “Which of us are the idiots?” Elunara asked. Qelqiroth smiled. “That depends on what you do next.” In the distance, faint but unmistakable, came the muffled boom of a contained rockfall somewhere beneath the Protector’s Enclave. Elunara felt it through her boots more than heard it. Aubeya’s eyes widened. “That came from the Underways,” she said. “Near Durnan’s last survey.” “Slappy was on rotation near there,” Elunara murmured. Qelqiroth tilted his head, listening to something only he could hear. “The city is trying to mend itself around whatever is festering below. You could call it healing. Or rejection.” Elunara looked down into the wound in the earth, then back toward the distant glow of the city proper. Duty, faith, and fear pulled at her in different directions. “We need to warn the walls,” she said. “We need to map the Weave anomalies,” Aubeya countered. Qelqiroth smiled wider. “And I need to find the ones writing new rules in the dark. Fortunately, all three of those errands lead underground. How very efficient.” The three of them stood in uneasy alignment, the wind tearing at cloaks and hair and patience. Below, the Chasm pulsed again, brighter. In the Ledger, the Soul Bearer would later inscribe: Three souls came to the wound for different reasons. None of them left with what they came for. The city shifted in its sleep and dreamed of falling.