The world below was gone, lost to darkness and the distant moan of the dead pressing ever northward. Only the branches remained. Only the wind, the movement of her body, and the sting of branches against skin. Ahead, the two men moved without speaking, without signaling.
They didn’t glance back.
Rynna clenched her jaw, pushed harder, and chased them through the trees like their lives depended on it, because they did. She struck the next branch hard, the jolt chasing up through her legs and into her lower back. Swinging her arms for balance, bark split beneath her heel, then she was airborne again, flinging herself forward into the next leap.
She was keeping up. Barely. But the pace didn’t slow. And ahead of her, they just kept moving, like a pair of predators cutting through the dark. Rynna bit down against a wild, startled laugh. Maybe she should have drunk more water. Liketheyhad wanted.
I am not a brat.She grumbled to herself, leaping to the next branch, just as—
Stop. Fenn spoke into her mind.
He slowed mid-leap and landed soundlessly on a broad branch as his silver eyes flashed in the faint pre-dawn light. Rynna and Kaelith dropped into silent crouches on either side of him, the wood creaking softly under their combined weight.
Blood rushed in her ears.
What is it? she sent back, keeping her breathing soundless.
The sky behind them had begun to pale, streaks of rose and gold pressing against the horizon. It had been only a few hours since they’d crossed through the gate. By her estimate, they were still a couple of hours from Pulse Reach’s capital city, even at their inhuman pace.
Underneath them, the sea of dead churned sluggishly through the forest, their forward press faltering. Bodies bumped and jostled as the front ranks slowed to a confused crawl. The wind knifed through the trees, carrying with it the wet, cloying stench of decay. Itfilled Rynna’s nose and coated the back of her throat until she had to swallow hard against the urge to gag.
There.Fenn pointed ahead.
And in the soft light, Rynna saw a faint shimmer through the treetops. It was a subtle, translucent ripple, almost invisible until you looked directly at it.
They’ve raised a barrier of their own, he added.
Through the thinning canopy, the risen earthwork came into view, stretching toward the horizon like a scar. Makeshift battlements. Refuge.
The wall, forty feet of hardened earth, spanned the valley like a fortress hewn from the bones of the land. Along its crown, thousands of Hollow-born stood in spaced intervals, weapons drawn, armor scorched and slick with blood.
And below, the dead came.
They hurled themselves at the wall in waves, scrabbling over each other in a frenzy so dense the ground itself seemed to crash and ease like a wave. Limbs tangled. Skulls were crushed underfoot. They clambered and tore and stacked upon the fallen until the base of the barrier swelled with a mound of twitching flesh and broken bone in an ever-growing ramp built from their own.
Rynna swallowed as one of them made the top—its body crushed and twisted, face half-missing. A spear of lightning slammed through its head, flinging it back down the slope. Another replaced it in seconds. Then another. And another. A young female Hollow-born leapt to the wall with a cry, blades spinning in a wide arc, severing heads and limbs as she fell, only to be swallowed whole beneath the surge.
Flashes of fire, air, and steel rained down from the ramparts as Source-driven blasts cut swaths through the tide. But it wasn’t enough. They were being buried by numbers. It wasn’t a siege. It was a flood.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Fenn’s jaw tightened. “It’s only been a day.”
Smoke spiraled from distant cities, black against the fading light.
“The invasion spread faster than predicted.” Kaelith tilted his head back toward the sky.
They’d brought the barrier down, but the enemy had already advanced. If they didn’t act fast, this continent would be just as dead as the rest of the world.
Chapter fifty-eight
Aplumeoffirerose on the northern horizon, blooming like a wound in the sky.
Rynna turned her gaze toward it, her heartbeat skipping. Even from this distance, she could feel the heat of it. The wall extended north and south for as far as the eye could see in an unbroken spine of stone and earth woven through the landscape, piercing toward the heavens. But it wouldn’t last.
“We need to get to the other side of the wall.” Fenn was already scanning the forest below for a path.
“Can youlandus over it?” Kaelith followed the line of fire with a grimace. “Or whatever you call it.”
