Bloodied Maps and Rising Tides

Floodwater hammers Goblan onto a slick ledge inside a vast cistern. The flood roars below, and the only dry ground is a narrow lip by a rusted sluice gate.

Across the stone chamber, the Hooded Watchman stands waiting, cloak dripping. He turns fully toward Goblan, calm as if he expected this exact spill from the dark.

He lifts one wrist into the torchlight. A crimson cord mark wraps it clean and deliberate, not a wound, but a sign.

The meaning lands hard. He is not a rescuer, he is a plant, and the chase has been following Goblan from the start.

Behind Goblan, the flood pounds through the culvert mouth. Ahead, the watchman waits by the sluice, marking the only visible way out.

Goblan eases off the ledge and moves low through the spray, each step swallowed by the roar. He keeps one dagger hidden along his forearm, using the dark and the stone lip to mask the motion.

The Hooded Watchman does not flinch. Goblan reaches the sluice gate before the current can betray him, close enough to read the man's breathing in the torchlit damp.

At Goblan's feet, a strip of waxed cord lies snagged in a crack beside the gate, fresh enough to have been cut recently. It matches the crimson mark on the watchman's wrist.

The watchman tilts his hood toward the side arch, where faint torchlight trembles on the water. He is still waiting, but now Goblan can see the escape route he meant to point out.

The Hooded Watchman gives a curt nod and turns to the rusted wheel. He braces both hands, strains once, and the sluice groans open with a wet shriek.

Cold water surges through the gate in a hard, white sheet, dragging muck and leaf-froth into the channel. The torchlight from the side arch shivers brighter on the ripples.

Goblan gets his answer, and more than that, a clean path. The watchman’s wrist flashes crimson once as he yanks back from the spill, keeping low and listening for pursuit.

He slips away from the sluice lip into the darker run of stone, the opened gate hissing behind him. The watchman stays by the wheel, still making himself useful, while the faint torchlight ahead marks the way out.