He stumbles, catches himself, and his momentum carries him forward into the wall of the far platform. His palms slap concrete. His knees buckle. But he's on solid ground, and the rift entrance is right above him. The vertical tear in reality pulsing with power, its anchoring points visible and reachable.
"August!" Vale's voice carries across the void.
"I'm good!" August calls back, and turns to the rift.
He enters the threshold.
***
The underworld is worse than ever.
The death energy inside this rift is concentrated to the point of near-solidity. A pressure that doesn't just surround him but inhabits him, filling his lungs, his blood, his bones with cold so intense it transcends sensation and becomes something existential. The corruption surges in response. He can feel the dark veins racing up his arms, his neck, his face, reclaiming territory that Vale's touch had liberated.
He moves fast. There's no time for precision. This rift has been growing unchecked for days, and the anchoring structures are massive, deeply rooted, reinforced by the absorbed energy of three closed rifts. August tears into the first one with everything he has, death magic and will and the desperate knowledge that every second inside this space is costing him months he doesn't have.
The first anchor shatters.
The rift screams. The void below him surges, reaching upward, and August has to throw himself sideways to avoid the tendril of darkness that lashes toward him. The platform beneath his feet, what's left of it, the thin strip of reality between the rift space and the abyss, cracks ominously.
Second anchor. August's hands are shaking, the corruption thick and dark on his skin. His vision is narrowing, the green haze of the rift space pressing in from the edges. He can hear fighting on the other side. The clash of blessed steel, Cassidy's war cry, the grinding of bone against iron. He holds onto those sounds. They're the only evidence that the world outside this rift still exists.
The second anchor breaks.
One more.
August can barely see. The corruption has reached his eyes, dark threads creeping across his vision, and the pain in his chest is a living thing with claws and teeth that's trying to pull him down into the void. He reaches for the third anchor with hands that are more shadow than flesh, and he pulls.
It doesn't break. It's too strong. Reinforced, layered, Voss's most sophisticated work. August's power slides off it without purchase. He pulls harder. Pours everything into it. Feels the corruption surge in response, the trade of years for power, the familiar bargain that has been killing him since he was twelve.
He thinks of Vale. Of steady hands and amber eyes andI won't miss.
He thinks of Knox's laugh in the tunnels. Of Cassidy's fierce, honest declaration of conditional trust. Of people who showed up. Of not being alone.
August tears the third anchor apart.
The rift collapses with a sound that reverberates through August's bones, the void below him contracting, the green-black surface rushing inward. He is thrown out of the rift space and onto the far ledge with a force that sends him skidding across concrete.
He's up before he stops moving. The rift is closing, the void shrinking, the abyss contracting, and he has seconds before the ledge he's standing on is separated from the main platform by a gap he can still cross if he moves now.
August runs.
Three strides. The edge of the shrinking void rushing beneath his feet. He can see the main platform ahead. Vale's blazing sword, Knox's mace, Cassidy locked in combat with the guardian construct. He leaps.
He clears the void. His boots hit the platform. He stumbles, catches his balance.
The construct turns.
It moves faster than something that size should be able to. One massive arm swings in a wide arc, and the bladed appendage catches August across the chest. Not cutting, but shoving. The force of it lifts him off his feet and sends him flying backward.
Toward the void.
The shrinking abyss is still open. Smaller now, maybe ten feet across, but deep and dark and hungry, and August is sailing toward it with nothing to grab and nothing to stop his momentum.
"AUGUST!"
Vale's voice. Raw. Shattered. The sound of a man watching the only thing that matters to him fall into an abyss, too far away to reach him in time.
August hits the edge of the void and goes over.
