I drop to my knees, yanking a strip of bandage out of the mender's pack and cinching it tight around a soldier’s arm. “Easy now. Breathe…where are the Wardens?”
“Battlements!” another wheezes. “We needed every glyph against the bombs—the wards have shattered!”
It happens in an instant.
A blast. A shove. A yank on the back of my neck. Pain in my skull.
Stone and fire tears through the corridor, hurling us backward. I slam into the floor, ears ringing, copper flooding my tongue. My nose feels wet—blood running freely down my lip. I stare at the broken pieces of the ceiling, the world tilting up and down beneath me.
The ground roars.
Above, a chunk of stone from the ceiling falls toward me.
With sheer willpower, I force my body to roll, moving until the stones land beside me. The rest of the ceiling comes down in a thunder of debris. I stagger upright, gasping.
“Are you all ri—“ I turn to the injured Reskala and the mender beside me, but they don't move. Limbs mangled. Armor crushed. Eyes staring sightlessly into the Void.
Already gone.
Lives spent in moments.
The ringing in my ears thins, replaced by something worse. A sound not meant for mortal throats.
“Resh! Resh! Resh! Resh!”
It's everywhere—inside the broken walls, inside my bones. Not voices, but the drumming of death’s wings. A chant like prayer, rising in frenzy. The explosion ripped open a hole in the wall. Cold air from outside whips my hair behind me. Pitch black out there. No light. Nothing. Just the chanting, pulsing like a war drum.
Kail! Please answer me!
I cry into the Bond. But the thread iswrong—thin, stretched, distorted. As if something claws between us. As if some unnatural magic pulls at the thread from a different side.
Kailorien!
My voice echoes back in silence. Panic stabs deep. I turn to the dead Reskala, grief catching in my throat. I cannot stop. I cannot stay. If I hesitate,that voicewill return. If I don't keep moving, death will catch me. My hands shake. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Kailorien! I need you! You said you would come! You said you would hear me!
I must find him. My body is still broken from the Sight, but I must use magic now. My right hand flares. A draw on my soul. A pull. Magicsimultaneously threads mana from my core and crushes my lungs. Raw blazing pain splits down my chest, salt settling into wounds unseen. Just like the Moores. Just like the time I closed the rift.
No mystic voice speaks this time.
No warning is given.
But I know it with my whole being—I am drawingtoo much, pullingtoo much.
It’s all right. I’ll find him. I just need to find him. I won’t fall. I won’t!
Silver burns across my skin, lines etching into my flesh—symbols I know as well as my own breath.Vör’tha—Kailorien’s rune—glows on my knuckles and fingers. I freeze, staring.
And then the world splits. A bellow like a war-horn shakes the hall, reckless and untamed. Light bursts from my hand—more and more and more—gathering before me into a massive orb of mana.
From within steps Astenos. The war-steed looms tall, veins glowing not blue, butwhite.My white.
Looking at me with fiery, glowing eyes, he shifts on his massive legs and bows his head. His breath steams like winter’s grave, curling cold against my skin. His mane and tail blurs at the edges, fading into ghostly silver mist drifting like torn veils in the dark.
I seize his mane, haul myself onto his back. No reins to hold onto. No saddle to keep me steady. Just the trembling muscles of my thighs and my fingers weaving into his coarse hair. “Please. Take me to him,” I beg the creature.
Astenos rears, starlight bursting from his shoulders, wings unfurling wider than the corridor can hold. The walls shake with the force of them, dust streaming from the stone. Not feathers and bone, but pure Veilweave, the magic already singing commands to the currents of the air. He approachesthe hole in the wall, balancing on the ledge, debris falling away from his six hooves down into the pitch-black nothingness below.
