C. M. Wilder

A city built on water. A door hidden in the dark. A child taken as leverage.

Dan Mercer used to run toward danger for a living. Then burnout took his home, his rhythm, and everything he thought made him useful. Now he lives on a narrowboat on Birmingham’s canals, keeping his world small and quiet, until the canal starts knocking back.

When nine-year-old Ellie Parker vanishes under a bridge, the official story is simple - accident. Dan knows it’s a lie. The water doesn’t behave like a drowning. The echoes don’t behave like echoes. And a sleek business card from Glass & Co. suggests the city’s “infrastructure” runs deeper than concrete and steel.

As secret Wardens move to contain the truth and a corporate Fae court begins testing the boundary, Dan is forced into a bargain he doesn’t want, and a war he didn’t know existed. Because in a city of thresholds, someone always pays. And Dan refuses to let it be a child.

They don’t conquer with swords. They conquer with meetings.

Ellie is home, but not whole. The gaps in her memory don’t fit any medical explanation, and the Wardens are desperate to bury the incident before it spreads. Dan should walk away. Instead, he’s dragged deeper into the machinery behind Birmingham’s canals, where planning permissions double as magical permissions and “community consultation” is just theatre.

Glass & Co. escalates its campaign, embedding influence into council language, regeneration projects, and the stories people tell themselves so they can sleep at night. Meanwhile, the Green Court pushes back with older rules, older debts, and a dangerous offer: protection through oath.

Caught between bureaucracy and myth, Dan learns the real battlefield isn’t the bridge. It’s belief. And when the next “stakeholder” goes missing, Dan realises the Protocol isn’t about one child.

It’s about building a corridor through his city.

Bargains can be broken. Oaths follow you home.

The canals are changing. Certain tunnels feel wrong even in daylight. The Drowned Choir whispers louder. And the Wardens have started treating Dan like a contagion, useful, watched, and one mistake away from being locked away.

When a breach opens where it shouldn’t and takes someone Dan can’t ignore, the Green Court makes its move. Bracken-of-the-Lock offers Dan a choice, swear to the water, swear to the boundary, swear to the people who keep vanishing or face the consequences of being unmoored in a world that demands rules.

But oaths have edges. They cut away parts of you to make room for duty. And Glass is waiting with the perfect counter-offer, stability, safety, and the return of everything Dan lost.

To save the city, Dan may have to bind himself to it. And once you’re oathbound, the water remembers.

Bargains can be broken. Oaths follow you home.

The canals are changing. Certain tunnels feel wrong even in daylight. The Drowned Choir whispers louder. And the Wardens have started treating Dan like a contagion, useful, watched, and one mistake away from being locked away.

When a breach opens where it shouldn’t and takes someone Dan can’t ignore, the Green Court makes its move. Bracken-of-the-Lock offers Dan a choice, swear to the water, swear to the boundary, swear to the people who keep vanishing or face the consequences of being unmoored in a world that demands rules.

But oaths have edges. They cut away parts of you to make room for duty. And Glass is waiting with the perfect counter-offer, stability, safety, and the return of everything Dan lost.

To save the city, Dan may have to bind himself to it. And once you’re oathbound, the water remembers.

Some routes you don’t take after dark, unless you want to disappear.

Birmingham’s canals have always been shortcuts. Now they’re front lines.

After the events of the Spin, the boundary stabilises in places it shouldn’t, turning sections of towpath into quiet traps. The canal community begins to talk in code, which bridges to avoid, which tunnels swallow sound, which locks feel like they’re watching you back. The Wardens impose unofficial curfews. The Green Court marks territory with consequences. And Glass builds corridors with the confidence of a company that believes the city is already theirs.

Dan’s boat, his last refuge, becomes the most dangerous place he can stand, because the living map inside it keeps updating. More doors. More routes. More points pulsing like infected nodes.

To protect the people who live on the cut, Dan must choose, hide and survive, or fight and risk becoming exactly what Glass wants, a compass that leads them everywhere.

Close it. Control it. Or become part of it.

The corridors are nearly complete. The Wardens are running out of ways to contain the truth. The Green Court is ready to enforce old law with brutal clarity. And Glass is done pretending it’s merely “managing” the situation.

When the final Gateway begins to form beneath Birmingham, bigger than any breach before it, every faction converges. Each wants the same thing for different reasons, to decide who controls the crossing and who pays the price.

Dan is no longer just a man living on a boat. He’s a boundary asset, an oathbreaker, an oathkeeper, a problem the city keeps trying to solve. The last gate forces him to face the question that’s been stalking him since the first knock on steel.

How much of yourself can you sacrifice to save everyone else, before there’s nothing left to save?

Tom Keane used to be the man people trusted in a crisis.

Ex British Army, steady under pressure, and built with a stubborn moral compass, he once had a life that worked. Then burnout stripped it down to the bones. Career gone. Money gone. Identity gone.

Still he cannot walk past someone in trouble.

When he steps in to help a young woman in Birmingham city centre, she is quickly absorbed by a polished “support” team and Tom is warned to stay out of it.

Then the paperwork starts.

Welfare checks. Landlord calls. Concern reports. Official letters. Every attempt to help is rewritten as interference, and every question makes Tom look more dangerous.

To fight back, he must stop reacting and start documenting.

Because in this trap, nobody needs violence when they can destroy you with a story.