“I’m sorry.” The words scrape out. I don’t know what I’m apologizing for. Everything. Nothing. The failure that’s about to cost her life.
“Don’t.” Her hand finds my face. Weak contact. Fading. “Don’t apologize.”
“I can’t stop it.”
“Then don’t.” Her eyes focus on mine. Clarity fighting through the haze of injury. “Run.”
“I don’t?—”
“Run.” Her fingers tighten against my jaw. “Take me and run. Find somewhere to regroup. Fight it again later.”
“There is no later.” I hear the creature behind me. Almost reformed. Almost ready. “It won’t stop. It’s built to hunt us. Wherever we go, it follows.”
“Then we keep running until we find a way to kill it.”
“Soreia—”
“I am not dying in this canyon.” Her voice carries a determination that shouldn’t exist given her injuries. “Neither are you. Now pick me up and move.”
I run.
Through the narrowing canyon. Past ice formations that tear at my wounds. Carrying her weight plus my own, my body failing, my body running on reserves I didn’t know I had.
The creature pursues. I hear it behind us—the wet sound of its multiple limbs finding purchase, the rattling breath of its overlapping faces. It’s faster than me. Even unburdened, it would overtake me.
Carrying Soreia, I have minutes at best.
“There.” She points with a trembling hand. “A side passage. The ice collapsed?—”
“It’s blocked.”
“The gap at the top. You can fit through. Barely.”
I see what she means. A crevice where the ice fall didn’t quite seal the passage. Narrow. Barely wide enough for a human.
Not wide enough for the creature.
I alter course. The abomination screams behind us—frustration, rage, the sound of divine will thwarted. It accelerates, desperate to catch us before we reach the gap.
I make it with seconds to spare. Shove Soreia through the crevice first, then force my own battered body after her. The ice scrapes skin from my shoulders, my back. Fresh pain layered on existing agony.
Behind me, the creature slams into the blocked passage. Its bulk can’t fit. Its limbs reach through the gaps, grasping, tearing at ice—but the collapse holds.
For now.
The passage opensinto a wider space. A side canyon, smaller than the main route but with actual cover. Boulders. Ice formations thick enough to hide behind. Terrain that doesn’t immediately read as a death trap.
I set Soreia down against a boulder. Assess her injuries with hands that won’t stop shaking.
The head wound is superficial. The blood loss is manageable. But she’s cold—too cold—and her magic has gone completely silent. The exertion of helping me fight, combined with her own injuries, has depleted her reserves entirely.
“You need to rest.”
“The creature?—”
“Is still trying to get through the ice fall.” I can hear it working, tearing at the obstruction with methodical fury. “It will find a way. But not immediately.”
She nods weakly. Her eyes drift closed, then snap open with forced effort.
