“Together,” he repeats.
“Together.”
He nods once, sharply. Then he grabs my hand and we run.
Marco knows this place like the back of his hand. Down service stairs. Through maintenance corridors. Past storage rooms and staff quarters. Places that would normally be guarded if not for the panic above. The sounds of chaos follow us—distant screaming, the thunder of running feet.
We burst through an exit into blinding daylight.
The city streets are pure carnage.
Public viewing parties have devolved into riots. Screens mounted on buildings flicker between static and a broadcast of a siren. Bodies lie trampled on the cobblestones. A woman screams for her lost child over the roar of the crowd. People surge through the streets in waves, most fleeing the arena district, others racing toward it to see what happened.
“This way,” Marco shouts.
The wall looms ahead—gray stone separating Victora’s wealth from the wasteland beyond. A crowd has gathered at the main gate, shouting at guards who wave swords, trying to keep some sort of order in the chaos.
Marco pulls me into the shadow of a stone turret. “We’ll have to climb.”
I follow his gaze up the sheer stone face. No handholds. No rope.
“Are you insane?”
But he’s already pushing me toward the wall, hands on my waist. “Tuck the cutlass into your shorts. Use the mortar lines.”
I remember Atrea’s cliffs—scaling them as children while our parents screamed at us to come down. My fingers find the first handhold.
The stone is rough against my palms, sharp edges biting into my fingertips. Below, Marco starts his own ascent, moving with practiced grace.
Twenty feet up, my shoulders burn. Thirty feet, my fingers slick with sweat. Forty feet—my foot slips. For a heart-stopping moment I dangle by my fingertips. Marco’s hand steadies my ankle, guiding my foot to solid stone.
We reach the top together, hauling ourselves over the parapet.
We’re not alone.
Two Imperial soldiers stand frozen at the far end, eyes wide. One reaches for his sword. The other fumbles with a horn.
Marco and I lunge as one.
My cutlass opens the first man’s throat. Marco’s blade punches through the second soldier’s ribs. They drop without a sound.
Marco snatches up a rifle, checks the chamber, nods.
“Move.”
We rush down the tower stairs—flight after flight until my legs shake. Voices drift up from below. Men arguing about securing districts, about Imperial reinforcements.
We slow at the ground floor. Through the doorway, six guards cluster around a table, their commander screaming about incompetence.
They don’t notice us slip past like shadows.
And then we’re through.
Into the outside world.
The wasteland stretches before us—endless scrubland broken by scattered ruins and the bones of dead cities. Despite the hellscape we just left, the sun overhead burns bright in a blue sky.
Fucking hell.
