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Jade's eyes fluttered, unfocused, a low sound building in her throat that wasn't quite words yet.

"Jade." I kept my voice steady, or as steady as I could manage with my hands shaking against her ribs. "Jade, can you hear me?"

Her eyes found mine, glassy and slow to track, and the sound in her throat sharpened into something closer to a moan.

"Hurts."

"I know. I know it does. Can you heal it? I need you to heal yourself ok."

She blinked at me, and something in her expression shifted from pain into confusion, her hand twitching against the stone like she was reaching for a sense that wasn't answering.

"I can't feel it."

"What?"

"I can't feel it," she said again, panic sharpening under the pain now. "I can't feel any of it. It's not there."

"Try again," Nykos said, low.

She did. I watched her face while she did it, watched whatever internal reach she was making come back empty, over and over, her breathing climbing faster with every failed attempt until Halver caught her free hand and held it still.

"It's gone," she said, and the fear in her voice was worse than any of the blood. "Alex, it's gone, I can't reach it, I can't-"

I'd never once seen Jade look at her own body like it belonged to a stranger. Not after the trap field, not after the Water Rift, not through any injury I'd watched her shrug off in the time I'd known her. Watching her reach for it and find nothing scared me worse than the blood did, worse than the fall, worse than any of it, because I understood in that single moment exactly how much of her safety, all of our safety really, had depended on a thing none of us had ever once imagined losing.

"Okay." I kept my hands moving, pressing a wad of torn shirt against the worst of the punctures, because panicking with her wasn't going to close a single wound. "Okay, that's fine, we'll figure out why in one second. Nykos, can you reach anyone? Anyone at all."

Nykos's face had already gone the particular grey of a man realizing something before he said it out loud.

"No."

"No, as in you haven't tried, or-"

"No, as in there's nothing there. No minds, no surface thoughts, not even my own sense of the link to Halver. It's just gone."

"Halver?"

Halver's jaw tightened. He closed his eyes, and I watched him try, watched the familiar shift that should have started at his shoulders simply refuse to come, nothing happening at all beyond a man standing very still and very frightened in a way I'd never once seen on him before. His hands curled into fists at his sides like he could force it through sheer will if he just wanted it badly enough.

"I can't shift." His voice came out low, stripped of its usual steadiness. "I've never not been able to. Not once, not since I was thirteen."

"Corian."

He held one hand out, jaw set, the same focused stillness he wore in the field right before a barrier snapped into place between us and whatever needed stopping. I'd seen him do this a hundred times. It always worked. It had to work.

Nothing happened. No shimmer, no pressure change, nothing at all.

"It's not forming," he said, and something in his controlled commander's voice slipped for just a second, just long enough for me to hear the fear underneath it before he clamped it back down. "I don't even feel it trying to."

Ashter poured out of Jade's wrist and solidified beside her on the rock shelf, ember eyes fixed on the wound at her side, and pressed his head hard against her ribs the way he always did when something in her had gone wrong.

"I'm fixing her," I told him, not sure why I bothered except that he was looking at me like he expected an answer. "You just stay put and let me work."

He didn't move. His eyes stayed on her the whole time, unblinking, ember light banked low and steady. His eyes seem to dim half a shade, the light beneath the cracks in his hide banking lower. I noticed it and didn't have room to think about what it meant yet.

I reached for the easiest thing I knew, a spark, barely more than warmth cupped in my palm, something I'd been able to call since I was eleven years old without thinking about it any harder than breathing. It had never once failed me. Not when I was scared, not when I was exhausted, not even the week I'd caught a fever bad enough to keep me in bed for four days straight.

Nothing answered. Not warmth, not resistance, not even the familiar hum of my own ability sitting just under my skin waiting to be used. Just my hand, empty and useless, held out over a girl who was bleeding faster than I could pack the wounds, and something in my chest went cold in a way that had nothing to do with the water.