She needs… help. Safety.Direction.
She looks up.
Too high.
Too far.
But she stumbles toward the wall anyway.
Something inside her chest pulls.
A pressure.
A thread hooked somewhere behind her sternum, tugging forward with quiet, relentless insistence.
There.
Move.
Her feet drag through sand and gravel as she crosses the open ground, half-expecting arrows to whistle through the air behind her.
None come.
A thin, late night crowd at a corner tavern stare at her from behind their ale. They do not help. Do not speak. Only watch.Like everyone else in Azhareth.
Her heart squeezes, anguished and heavy with despair.
Kael.
She left him.
The thought almost brings her to her knees.
The city walls approach. Closer, closer.
She slams her shoulder against the base of the wall and grips the rough stone with shaking hands.
Her fingers slip immediately.
Too smooth.
Too tall.
Too impossible.
But the pull inside her chest tightens.
Up.
She doesn’t question it.
Her foot finds a crack in the stone.
Her fingers wedge into another.
She drags herself upward.
One inch.
