There is a particular hour of night in Neverwinter when the lanternfog grows bold. It seeps out of alley-corners and slinks along the gutters, curling itself around boots and cartwheels as though trying on lives it will never have. It slides under tavern doors to eavesdrop on drunkards, then wriggles away in disgust. And always, always, it goes nosing at the stormpipe grates, as if the city were exhaling secrets from its stone lungs. Whisper’ess knew that hour well. She sat cross-legged on the edge of a low parapet above Protector’s Enclave, lute across her knees, hair braided in the style of a woman who refuses to let the wind bully her. Below her, the square breathed: last-call laughter from the Driftwood, the clink of a late patrol’s armor, the distant murmur of a prayer from some sleepless soul. And under all that, tonight, something else. A thread of sound tugged at her ear. Not a note, not a word—half a breath, an almost-voice, sliding along the edges of her hearing. She stopped playing. Let the last chord hang. The sound came again. Down, not up. From the grates. Whisper’ess leaned over the parapet. Fog wreathed the iron-mouths that swallowed rain from the streets. The faintest vibration thrummed in the stone, like a low, thoughtful hum. “Citysong,” she murmured. That was wrong. The water under Neverwinter gurgled, rushed, occasionally sulked—but it did not sing. She swung herself down from her perch, boots landing with the soft confidence of someone very used to arriving unnannounced in places. A few steps took her to the nearest stormpipe grate. She crouched, pressing a hand to the rusted iron. “Hello, then,” she whispered in fluent Undercommon, because it never hurt to be polite. “Is that you, or something squatting in you?” Something in the wet dark below… answered. It wasn’t speech, not yet. It was intent. A pressure behind the sound, the sense of many small voices trying to push through one narrow throat. Whisper’ess shivered. This was either going to be an opportunity, or very good fodder for her next ballad about things best not meddled with. In either case, she would need witnesses. Preferably one who hit things, and one who bottled them. --- Finding Slappy was not hard. Noise had a tendency to pool where she went. The Dragonborn was halfway through a mug at a standing-bar outside the Driftwood when Whisper’ess slipped up behind her and plucked a three-note pattern on the lute that meant *trouble worth leaving a drink for*. Slappy turned, eyes bright. “Is that the ‘fight now, ask questions never’ chord, or the ‘help me move a body’ chord?” “A third thing,” Whisper’ess said. “The pipes are gossiping.” Slappy blinked. “The… what?” “Stormpipes. Guttermouths. Underground river-guts. They’re humming. With intent.” She tilted her head. “Come listen. Bring your… presence.” Slappy thumped her mug down with heroic self-denial. “If something is talking under my city, it’s either getting evicted or enlisted.” --- Selwyn Flaskwright proved slightly trickier to fetch, if only because her shop was very good at hiding under piles of itself. They found her in Flaskwright’s Brews & Curios, hair tied back, goggles askew, politely arguing with a potion that had decided it was a gas now and resented being kept in a bottle. “It’s segregating by temperament again,” Selwyn sighed, as the vapor pressed sulkily against the glass. “You can’t all be top layer, you’ll spoil the narrative.” “Selwyn,” Whisper’ess said gently, “your citypipes are speaking.” The Dragonborn alchemist stilled. “Speaking how?” she asked. “The way a kettle speaks? Or the way an old god does, through pressure and leaky metaphors?” “The second one,” Whisper’ess replied. “With better diction.” Selwyn looked at the potion, at them, then at the door. “How structurally irresponsible,” she murmured with something like delight. “Very well. Let’s go interview the plumbing.” --- They gathered around the largest grate at the edge of Protector’s Enclave—a broad iron mouth where several narrower channels met to plunge into the deepstorm underways. Fog wrapped around their ankles, adoring. Whisper’ess laid her ear against the iron. The humming was clearer now, layered, like too many people whispering at once through a closed door. “Listen,” she breathed. Selwyn pressed her palm against the cold metal and half-lidded her eyes, following the vibration with her mind the way she’d been trained to follow the pulse in a reagent. Slappy leaned down and simply shoved her snout as close as she could, nostrils flaring. For a moment, all three of them heard it only as a murmur. Then, quite suddenly, it *resolved*. **“—bones remember—”** **“—water carries—”** **“—listen, little ones—”** Whisper’ess jerked back. “That was definitely not normal pipe-gurgle.” Selwyn’s frills flared. “The underways are holding on to more than runoff. There’s storyflow down there. Old fear. New cracks.” Slappy was already grabbing the grate. “So we go down and knock.” Selwyn blinked. “We could also prepare. Bring warding salts, binding flasks, at least one—” The grate shrieked as Slappy ripped it free. Whisper’ess sighed. “She does this.” “I see that,” Selwyn said faintly. “We go now,” Slappy declared, already sliding feet-first into the dark. “Before it stops talking. Or before it finishes whatever sentence starts with ‘bones remember.’ Neither option sounds good.” Whisper’ess exchanged a look with Selwyn. “Fine,” the bard said. “We’ll improvise.” “Fine,” Selwyn echoed, adjusting her satchel. “But if something tries to inhabit my organs, I am charging the city a consulting fee.” They followed Slappy down into the wet-breathing dark. --- The stormpipe underways of Protector’s Enclave were not corridors so much as compromises between water, stone, and architects who hadn’t been paid enough. Brick tunnels arched overhead, slick with old storms. Channels ran along the center, where runoff gurgled toward deeper drains. Narrow walkledges clung to either side, meant for maintenance workers and, tonight, three idiots with more courage than self-preservation. Selwyn conjured a soft, steady glow at her fingertips—a reading-light of Oghma, barely brighter than lanternmoss. Whisper’ess’s shadow elongated along the pipewall, lean and restless. Slappy’s bulk filled the tunnel like a polite avalanche. The hum was louder down here. They could feel it in their ribs, in their teeth, in the soles of their boots. “Feels like a drum,” Slappy muttered. “Like when the walls shake during an orc charge. Only… wetter.” Selwyn crouched by the trickle running past. She dipped a gloved finger in, then sniffed. “Rainwater, mostly. Some forge runoff. Trace alchemical seep from upper drains. But layered over it is—” She squinted. “Resonance. The water is holding onto sound the way a potion holds onto intention. That should not be happening without help.” “Help from what?” Whisper’ess asked. Selwyn smiled thinly. “Either a god, or a very nosy wizard, or the cityself having a slow awakening. Take your pick.” They moved deeper. Flood-mark runes had been carved at intervals into the stone where the waterline had once risen—little chiselled markers noting which storm had reached which height. Old dates. Old disasters. Whisper’ess skimmed her fingers over them. As they passed the third marker, it lit. Pale light seeped out of the chiselled grooves, cold and steady. So did the fourth. And the fifth. “Ah,” Selwyn whispered. “There it is.” The runes didn’t just glow. They began to… change. The old flood years blurred, stone smoothing beneath the light. New marks appeared, carving themselves as though an invisible, meticulous hand were at work. The numerals they formed were wrong. Ahead. Dates that had not happened yet. “Is that a future-storm date?” Slappy asked. “Because if the pipes are scheduling disasters now, I want to punch whoever taught them planning.” Whisper’ess leaned close, reading. “The Thawing of 1492,” she murmured. “The Crackwinter of 1495. The Drowning of—” She stopped. The last rune didn’t finish the year. The light stuttered, then went out. All along the tunnel, the water shivered. A voice spoke behind them. Not from a throat. From *stone*. **“Are you listening yet?”** Slappy spun, maul half-raised. The tunnel behind them had darkened, shadow thick as clotted ink. The glow at Selwyn’s fingertips flickered wildly, then steadied, defiant. “Show yourself!” Slappy shouted. “Or I’m hitting the architecture at random!” “Please don’t threaten the foundations,” Selwyn hissed. Whisper’ess simply stood very still, letting the old instinct rise—the one that had kept her alive in Menzoberranzan’s echoing caverns. When things you could not see spoke, you did not run. You listened until you knew which way to run. “Who speaks?” she said softly. Silence. Then from the water itself—a whisper. **“The city does.”** The trickle in the channel surged, rushing uphill for a moment before logic yanked it back down. On the surface, water bulged, drew together, forming the vaguest suggestion of a face. Deep-set hollows. A nose like a bridge. No mouth. Whisper’ess felt every hair on her arms rise. Selwyn’s voice went very academic. “Fascinating. Aggregated runoff memory, coalescing into a temporary form. Do you have any idea how many people’s footsteps and spilled tears are in this conduit alone?” Slappy squinted at the water-face. “If this thing tries to bite me, I will kick the entire river.” The water-face did not bite. It swayed, ripples distorting its features. When it spoke again, the sound came from all around—a low, many-layered murmur, like a hundred pipes exhaling words together. **“Stones remember weight.”** **“Water remembers paths.”** **“You remember songs and scars.”** The underways shuddered. **“The bones of this city are awake,”** it said. **“We have heard too many cracks. Felt too many flames. Listened to too many secrets whispered into our gutters by men who think stone is deaf.”** Whisper’ess felt her throat go dry. “Why us?” The water-face turned toward her first. Its non-mouth never moved, but she felt the answer like a thought pressed against hers. **“You hear what others hide.”** Then toward Selwyn. **“You read what others discard.”** Then toward Slappy. The water hesitated. **“And you hit what others fear. You are all very… useful.”** Slappy puffed up. “Finally, someone understands me.” “What do you want?” Whisper’ess asked. “A city does not wake for nothing.” The pipes around them creaked. High above, somewhere, a wagon rolled over a metal grate. The sound came down like distant thunder. **“We want to be listened to,”** said the city-bones. **“We have held prophecies in floodmarks. Screams in stone. Names in rust. We have heard the weight of boots gathering at the wrong times in the wrong alleys.” “We know where the next cracks will run when the wrong lord pulls too hard on the same chain.”** Selwyn inhaled sharply. “You’re tracking structural and social stress.” “I don’t like the way that sounds,” Slappy muttered. “Good,” Whisper’ess said. “It means it’s important.” She stepped closer to the channel, letting her reflection distort alongside the water-face. “Why Whisper down here?” she asked. “There are temples. Towers. Bards. Why the stormpipes?” The answer came without hesitation. **“Because you cannot ignore leaks.”** Water surged, slapping the walls, not in anger but emphasis. **“You patch them. You curse at them. You crawl into the dark to see why your house is weeping. So we begin where you are forced to come.”** “Are you threatening to flood us?” Slappy demanded. “No,” Whisper’ess said quietly, before the entity could answer. “It’s threatening to drown us in things we pretend not to see. Old rot. Weak stone. Convenient deaths.” The water-face flickered, as if pleased. **“Tell the Soul Bearer,”** it said, voice dropping into a tone that thrummed through Whisper’ess’s bones, **“the bones of the city are awake. We have things to confess.”** Selwyn pulled in a breath, then, with infinite care, drew a small crystal vial from her belt. “May I?” she asked the conduit. “A sample. A… speaking-drop. So the Soul Bearer knows this is not just bard-talk.” The water-face regarded her. **“Take one word,”** it said. **“No more. We are not your potion.”** A single droplet swelled from the rest, rising against gravity until it hovered before Selwyn’s snout like a liquid pearl. She caught it in the vial with a clink. The tunnels darkened. The flood-mark runes dimmed, retreating to their old, honest years. The humming stopped. The water ran on as rainwater should, ignorant and unburdened. For a long moment, the three of them just stood there. Breathing. Listening to the after-silence. Then Slappy said, softly, “I thought pipes were just where the rain goes to die.” “They are where the city keeps its memories of falling,” Selwyn murmured, staring at the vial. Whisper’ess smiled, slow and sharp. “Tonight,” she said, “they started climbing back up.” --- They hauled themselves out of the underways smelling of wet stone, rust, and a faint, hair-raising sense of being watched by masonry. Back under the open sky, the lanternfog had thinned. The moon hung above Neverwinter like a patient eye. “So,” Slappy said, settling the grate back into place with surprisingly gentle hands. “Do we tell anyone?” “Yes,” Whisper’ess said immediately. “Carefully,” Selwyn added. “Loudly,” Slappy suggested. Whisper’ess slid her lute strap back over her shoulder. “We tell the Soul Bearer,” she said. “The one who listens for what the city tries to pretend it never said.” “And the rest?” Selwyn asked. Whisper’ess’s smile turned wicked. “The rest we put in song.” Later, in the Ledger, the Soul Bearer inked: > Down in the stormpipes, where the city hides its bellysecrets, > three souls heard Neverwinter whisper in its sleep. > > Its bones are awake now. > Its cracks are counting. > > The next time something breaks in these streets, > remember: the stone heard it coming long before you did.