The darkness lasts exactly long enough for me to think, 'Well, this is it. This is how I die. Not in a blaze of glory. Not saving the realm. Just swallowed by a collapsing pocket dimension while a beetle clings to my shirt like a terrified brooch.'
Then the ground slams into my feet.
I stagger forward, knees buckling, and Kaelren catches me before I crash face-first. His arm locks around me from behind, pulling me upright. Flush against his chest in one motion. I hear Peeble shriek somewhere near my collarbone and feel their legs scrambling for purchase against the fabric of my shirt.
"I'm fine," I say, blinking hard against the sudden light. "I'm fine, I'm..."
I stop talking because I'm looking at the Verdance.
The city rises out of the earth ahead of us, and there is no other word for it. It rises. Towers climb toward the sky, but they are not built from stone or brick. They are grown. Pale, living wood spirals upward in smooth columns that branch into canopies a hundred feet above the ground. Bridges span the gaps between them, woven from root and vine so tightly they look solid as iron. Along every surface, light pulses in slow, rhythmic waves, green and gold and steady enough that the entire city seems awake.
It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
It is also wounded.
A section of the nearest tower is missing. Not crumbled, but sheared. The wood is splintered and raw where a chunk the size of a house has been torn away, and the exposed interior glows a faint, sickly amber where the living material is trying to regrow. Scaffolding made from younger vines wraps the wound, holding the structure together the way bandages hold a broken rib. Two towers deeper into the city lean against each other at angles that were never planned, their canopies tangled where they collided. A bridge to the east has collapsed entirely, its remains dangling in long, fibrous strands over a gap that drops into shadow.
Beautiful and wounded, the Verdance looks like a city refusing to fall apart.
"Welcome to the Verdance," Thalia says from beside me. Her voice is calm, but I catch the way her eyes move across the damage, assessing, cataloging, noting what has changed since she left.
"How long were you gone?" I ask.
"Three days." Her jaw tightens. "The northeast tower wasn't leaning when I left."
Kaelren's arm has not moved from my side. His hand presses flat against my hip, fingers spread wide, his thumb tracing a line back and forth along the curve of my side. I do not think he is aware he is doing it. Through our connection, I can feel the low, steady hum of him processing, taking in the city, the damage, the tactical layout. Underneath that, though, is something rawer. Something that has nothing to do with strategy.
He is counting the seconds since the pocket collapsed. Measuring the time he could not see me in the dark.
I curl my fingers over his. He exhales.
"It is, objectively, magnificent," Peeble announces from my shoulder, having finally righted themselves. They extend one foreleg in a sweeping gesture. "A living architectural marvel. A testament to botanical engineering and the indomitable spirit of..." They pause, squinting at the collapsed bridge. "Is that supposed to be hanging like that?"
"No," Thalia says.
"Wonderful. Off to a great start."
We move forward. The ground beneath our feet shifts from packed earth to something softer, a path of woven rootwork, pale and smooth, that gives slightly under each step. It feels alive. Not in a creepy, about-to-grab-your-ankle way. More like walking across a floor that is paying attention. The surface adjusts to my weight, tiny fibers shifting to cushion my stride, and a faint warmth rises through the soles of my boots.
The city knows we are here. Thalia said it would.
People emerge as we walk. They step from doorways carved into the bases of the living towers, from walkways overhead, from scaffolding and repair platforms along the damaged sections. Fae, mostly, though some bear marks I do not recognize, patterns I have never seen in colors that match nothing from our iteration. There are a few humans too, or something close to human, and several beings I have absolutelyno frame of reference for. One of them has skin that shifts between bark and flesh depending on the light. Another has eyes that are entirely gold, with no pupil, no iris, just flat, burnished metal.
They stare. Of course, they stare. We are strangers walking into the heart of their city with their leader, and two of us are covered in marks that probably look alarming.
Kaelren's hand slides from my hip to the small of my back. His fingers press a little harder than necessary.
"You're hovering," I murmur.
"I'm not hovering. I'm maintaining proximity."
"That's the dictionary definition of hovering."
"Then the dictionary and I agree."
I bite back a smile. The bond hums between us, warm and close, and I let it. After everything, the void, the scattering, the long stretch of nothing, the physical fact of him next to me feels like the most real thing in this entire living city.
Thalia leads us along the main path. It curves between the tower bases and opens into wider plazas where the canopy overhead filters the light into shifting green-and-gold patterns on the ground. In those plazas, the repair work becomes easier to see. Crews of fae haul lengths of vine up the sides of damaged structures, securing them with some kind of amber resin that hardens on contact with air. Others coax new growth from the living walls with their hands pressed flat against the pale wood, marks glowing as they encourage the material to fill the gaps.
