I stepped into the boost and latched onto the first handhold. The mortar had rotted decades ago. Every grip was a gamble—fingers in a crack, test the hold, pull, pray it doesn't crumble. My boots scraped stone as I climbed. Left hand. Right hand. The wall was old enough to be generous with its cracks and stingy with its promises.
Partway up, my foot slipped.
I caught myself—barely—but my heel knocked a brick loose. It tumbled away from me, spinning end over end toward the ground, and my stomach dropped with it.
No.One sound and the patrol would be on us before we cleared the wall.
I twisted, arm shooting out, fingers grasping for the brick—
Missed.
But the brick stopped anyway.
Suspended. Hanging in the air like gravity had lost interest. A shudder ran through reality itself—I felt it in my bones, in the way the air went thick and wrong around the hovering stone. The same hiccup I'd felt in the square. The same wrongness. The Veil flinching, reality stuttering around the spike of my panic like it couldn't decide which laws still applied.
Then it dropped.
Brannick snatched it. Both hands, no sound, a grunt trapped behind clenched teeth. He lowered it to the ground and looked up at me.
His expression gave nothing away. But his eyes flicked to the space where the brick had frozen, and the question was loud enough without words.
I kept climbing. Faster now.
I hauled myself over the parapet's edge. Below, Brannick held position at the base. Waiting for my signal. Waiting for the wards to come down.
That part was on me.
I turned toward the watch-room and let my eyes adjust to the dark.
First things first. I yanked the dampening amulet over my head and shoved it into my pocket. Muffled senses would get me killed up here.
The world sharpened the instant the amulet left my skin. Every edge, every shadow, every draft of air through the stone—all of it dialed up to a frequency I'd been suppressing for hours. My Unravel stretched awake, ravenous after its forced sleep.
Blue-white light stretched across the walkway ahead. Filaments thin as spider silk, crisscrossing the stone in a lattice that hissed with barely contained energy. One touch and they'd scream. One brush of fabric and every sentry within a mile would know where I was.
The Unravel could read them. I let my vision soften and the pattern came through—not random. Rhythmic. The filaments shimmered in sequence, brightening and dimming on a cycle that repeated every few seconds.
But seeing the trap wasn't the same as surviving it.
The gaps between swells were too narrow. Too fast. I could read the rhythm, but my body couldn't move quickly enough to slip through before the next flare.
Unless I made the gaps wider.
I shut my eyes. Found that place where The Unravel and The Griefweaver coiled around each other, bristling like cats forced to share a pen.
Three heartbeats.That was all Dreadscale had given me. Three heartbeats of fusion before the whole thing collapsed.
It would have to be enough.
On the inhale, I reached for the Shadow.
It came reluctantly—cold, sulking, resentful of being called. I didn't fight it. Didn't yank. Just opened the door the way Dreadscale had shown me and let it unspool from my core in a thin, dark thread.
The Shadow touched the nearest filament.
The light flickered and dimmed. It dulled enough that the gap in the pattern widened from a heartbeat to two. Maybe three.
I moved.
