The question hung in the air for half a moment before Rynna answered. “It’s too far to carry you both in one jump, even if I knew what was on the other side.” She raised a finger, expression flat. “And I’m not leaving either of you in the middle of a corpse swarm.”
She glanced toward the forest floor, where the horde groaned and shuffled in a tangle of limbs and bone. The dead pressed in every direction, so packed they obscured the ground. She could feel the beat of wrongness rolling off them, thick as smoke, and just as suffocating.
But…
A twitch sparked in her fingers. There was a way, but it would take precision. Timing. Risk.
“We could do it in steps,” she said slowly, her thoughts aligning with her pulse. “Short range. Blink, reset. Blink again.” A sideways glance flicked toward Kaelith. Her lips twitched into a faint smile. “We jump. Then, fall a bit. Then jump again.”
Kaelith’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. When he found his voice, it was dry. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Neither did she, really, but there weren’t better options.
A strangled scream tore through the rising wind. All three turned.
A Hollow-born clung to the top of the barrier, his uniform slashed, blood spraying from his chest. He kicked at the horde scrambling up toward him—zombies climbing over one another, their rotten fingers digging into the bodies beneath as they scrabbled higher. One caught his ankle. Another his sleeve. He shouted again, voice hoarse with terror, before he was pulled down into the tide.
Then came the blast. A burst of wind hit the wall like a hammer, sending the uppermost layer of the pile tumbling backward. Limbs flew. Bones cracked. The momentum broke just long enough for the other guard to catch his footing, scrambling to safety.
Rynna tracked the movement upward.
A figure hovered just above the wall, balanced on a wide shard of jagged stone that floated beneath his feet like an obedient pet. A short, square-built Hollow-born stood with arms outstretched, directing lashing gusts of air that exploded into the swarm below. Each burst bought a few seconds. Each second, a little less blood.
“Neither of you can do the floating rock thing?” she asked without looking away.
Kaelith sighed. “No. I’ve never seen it before. But there’ve been rumors that Stone Reach has been experimenting in flight.”
Fenn cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. Rynna, get us there. Now. We’re out of time.”
“Right,” she muttered, raising her eyes to the air above them as she gathered herself, drawing everything inward.
Just her Will. Singular, absolute, and set free as the world approached its final heartbeat. Pushing down the ache in her arm and the tremble in her legs, she reached for both their hands. Then, heat surged through her veins as she summoned the fold between spaces, the invisible thread she could tug to slip between where and when. And a soundless yank echoed inside her chest as the air inverted, and then the world dropped out from beneath them.
They reappeared fifty feet in the air.
Wind tore past her face as gravity caught them. The wall stood ahead, closer now, its top swarming with defenders. Her eyes scanned the space ahead, calculating angles, range, and visibility.
A rain of fire exploded from the western rampart.
A Hollow-born screamed as he fell from the parapets, limbs caught in clamping maws.
And still, the dead climbed—one hundred deep, one hundred high, the wall swelling with bodies like a wound refusing to clot.
She began to fall.
Rynna narrowed her focus, catching the flicker of movement below as the flying rock-Hollow-born glanced up. His eyes widened, but she was already jumping again.
The world snapped, and they were over the wall, the dead surging just behind them. To either side, the earthworks stretched in all directions, walls rimmed with spikes and uneven battlements. Hollow-born moved in fast intervals, posted every fifty feet, launching volleys of fire and stone into the ever-growing ramp at the base.
Beside her, there was a strangled inhale as she paused mid-air—just long enough to locate a safe place to land.
Below, she spotted it. A half-collapsed supply station, long since abandoned.
Rynna exhaled, refocused.
One final blink, and…
They hit open air again, just above the sagging shell of the old station, nothing but broken beams beneath them.
