Catalyna stayed on the high roofs.
In the inner district, the buildings rose close together, their ridgelines stitched into a rough path. In the outer district, the roofs sat low and broken, and the streets stayed packed with people. Too many eyes. Too many mouths.
She could have dropped down and vanished among them. That would have been one option if this weren't Bren, so she chose height instead.
The Blackfyre subjects tended to be absurdly loyal to Reitz. If anyone realized she had Ezra, they would shout her out in seconds.
Mana sensors would catch her quickly. With them in play, she couldn't afford mistakes.
Void-silk had protected her through most of her tenure in Bren. She had the control to fold her aura down until she could almost pass for nullborn, but it took constant attention. In a covert operation, one lapse was a death sentence.
So she always wore void-silk underneath.
Catalyna moved in short bursts, never lingering. She kept to the roof crests and the blind angles behind chimneys. Each time she paused, she folded her aura down tight, a hard knot pressed behind her ribs. It wasn't that void-silk could not suppress it; it was instinct.
She knew Aerwyna's way of thinking. She would start at the gates.
She had seen it a hundred times. When a city locked down, the order went outside-in. Guards at the wall. Inspection lines. Papers. Wagons searched. Anyone who looked out of place turned around.
If Catalyna tried to jump the wall in daylight, the wall guards would spot her mid-flight. Even if she landed clean, she'd have open ground on the far side and no transport waiting. They'd ride her down.
She could outrun them, sure. But once it was known Ezra had been taken, other lords would join the chase. That would spiral fast. Too many eyes. Too many names. It would risk her whole covert chain being exposed.
And she knew how loyal these people were. They'd throw their lives away to get the lordling back. They'd keep coming until they boxed her in, wave by wave, wearing her down little by little.
Basic imperial doctrine. Right now, Bren's security had been at its lowest; most of the Knights were dispatched to ride alongside Reitz.
They had made enough noise to make the raids feel real, under the mask of "continuous attacks" on towns and granaries. People would assume the Badland raids and the current hits around Troutberk, Valorfall Hold, and Crim Cranti were connected.
They fed rumors and planted intel until all of Fulmen was on alert. The truth was simpler. Most of it was exaggerated—damaged infrastructure and posturing.
Reitz would have reacted immediately. With that window open, they commissioned a raid close enough to Bren that it would've been a problem if it was serious. They bribed a few brigands with enough coin to make them bold, then fed them bad information so they wouldn't expect the lords to show.
Three birds; one stone.
Dead brigands. Reitz pulled away, and her organization's logistics would be secured.
She had watched from a rooftop above. The guard count had doubled. She counted patrols and rotations. She already knew how they were supposed to respond under alert.
But today it was off.
A few patrols weren't following the prescribed loops. It wasn't blatant, but she saw small deviations that opened gaps where there shouldn't have been any.
And behind it all was the real problem: Aerwyna. She knew how to run a city, and she could fight.
Duke-ranked. Close to the Archduke. In circle terms, probably fifth, nearing sixth.
If she wasn't careful, that would mean certain death.
So Catalyna stayed in the inner district and kept moving.
Ezra lay strapped to her front in void-silk, tied hard across her waist. His face was free. His eyes tracked everything.
Catalyna kept her gaze forward. She could feel his focus like a weight.
A street opened below—an intersection full of guards. They moved in pairs and fours, spearpoints up, visors down. A Captain stood with an inspection list, checking faces one by one.
Catalyna crouched behind a chimney cap and tightened her aura again, forcing it flat.
She suddenly heard a shout from behind. Two men roared at once.
"The woman is here!"
"The wet nurse and Lord Ezra have been located!"
So that's where the patrols went, she sighed inwardly. Some of the patrols had already been on the roof. She hadn't expected this movement at this hour.
Catalyna moved.
She sprinted along the ridge, turned, and dropped to a lower roof in one smooth step. Five guards surged out onto the rooftop line ahead of her, blocking the next gap. They held lances level, bracing their feet on the tiles.
"Halt!" the lead guard bellowed. "Surrender Lord Ezra now, woman!"
Catalyna's hands went up toward the guards in pursuit, palms up, unflinching—an automatic response.
She condensed Fire on her palm.
A steady torrent hit them, thick and bright. The flame rolled over steel and cloth in a single sweep. They barely had time to raise their weapons.
Exposed flesh went black and charred. When the spell ended, only steel remained.
Catalyna pivoted and ran.
She drove north, jumping roof to roof, choosing taller buildings and longer gaps. The route forced pursuers to commit.
Dammit. I'm just buying time, she thought. Aerwyna will be here soon.
Ezra went rigid against her.
He activated AMP the moment the five guards stepped in front of them.
Gold text slid into his vision. Velocity readings. Force arrows. Angles pinned to edges of brick and tile.
Speed: around forty kilometers per hour, he thought, tracking Catalyna's stride by the overlay.
He pushed deeper.
Potential energy stayed messy. AMP gave him the clean numbers he understood from Earth. Velocity updated each time her foot struck tile. Force vectors sketched every jump.
Wind resistance. Gravity. Momentum.
He tried to hold it all while his stomach lurched with each landing. Numbers kept feeding into his vision.
Ahead, two Knights vaulted onto the rooftops behind them.
Plate mail that stood out. It had a different sheen, and the light shone a little bit differently.
Tsk. Magic-resistant mail. Catalyna's tongue clicked; her shoulders tightened.
One of the knights shouted. He amplified his voice with magic over the tiles.
"Milady! The wet nurse is here!"
The other raised his hand, condensed, and cast.
A [Rock bullet] screamed across the gap.
Ezra saw it as a fat arrow of motion. He didn't even bother to note the speed.
A boulder flew past toward her. They wanted her to evade sideways and lure her. Instead, Catalyna bent forward, then snapped her leg out. Her boot met the projectile with a sharp crack, and the boulder broke into fragments.
Ezra jerked hard to the right as he timed his own movement against her center of mass.
Late, he thought. Half a second.
"Stop that," Catalyna snapped without looking down. "You want to make me slip?"
Her next landing came shallow. Her foot scraped the tile edge.
She recovered, but the slip cost her momentum.
The two Knights stayed close.
Catalyna kept her hands ready, but she avoided casting. These weren't street guards. They moved like trained killers.
The Knight on the right called again, voice flat.
"Just surrender. It ends here, Catalyna."
Catalyna answered with speed.
She pushed harder, leaping farther, keeping to ridges where she could see the next step.
In the corner of her eye, she saw more soldiers rally.
Behind her, the Knights spread a half-step apart to trap her line.
She kept sprinting. She decided to go down to the street now. More knights came as they saw her.
As she turned into an alleyway, an [Earth Wall] blocked her and disrupted her momentum, forcing her to go up again.
She condensed mana on her legs and jumped toward the rooftop again.
A swarm of soldiers started to form. It wasn't just a few now. They had begun to rally en masse.
A [Stone Bullet] zoomed toward her, but she abruptly stopped, pivoted, and punched the spell away.
The abrupt swiveling movement shook Ezra, causing him to lurch.
But Catalyna kept running. She had changed direction now.
Two Knights went forward to catch her head-on, but hesitated to cast a spell. Instead, they wanted to trap her.
Catalyna saw the hesitation and dove between them. As she spiraled, she spun a kick to their torsos, which launched them a few meters away.
She kept moving in the same direction and came across another [Earth Wall]. Just as the wall materialized, she kicked and hopped onto it, using the momentum to propel her to the rooftops once more.
The Knights pursuing her didn't cast anything big anymore. Right now, they were monitoring her and trying to drive her into an encirclement.
[Stone Bullets] flew past left and right, with Catalyna skillfully deflecting or dodging them.
To the pursuers, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to her pacing.
It seemed that she was just avoiding encirclement, so the Knight Captains became bolder. They commanded more troops toward the gaps in their formation.
A pattern emerged in Catalyna's mind. Their spells mostly aimed at her back or legs to disrupt her momentum.
Since her hands were free and Ezra was strapped to her front, her mobility was high.
The Knights didn't dare to cast a spell with a large area of effect or cast directly in front of her, lest they hit Ezra.
A smile crept across her face.
Typical. Protect the asset, disrupt the operator. She smirked inwardly. They're trying to steer me.
She widened her route, circling through the inner district to gather more pursuers and keep them guessing.
If a normal guard blocked her, she could break through.
If the Knights tried to close on her, she would just cast directly. From a different vantage point, she was at a disadvantage, but she knew what strengths she had and what cards to play. She knew exactly what she needed to do.
***
Aerwyna heard the alarm.
She was already moving.
Riverrunners followed at first, then fell behind when she leapt a full street in one bound. They were Knights. Good ones. Their legs and lungs still had limits.
She left them.
She drove toward the sound.
The city gave her fragments—boots on stone, a horn, a distant shout. She tuned it all into a line and ran it down.
Her aura stayed cold and tight, pressed into a spearpoint.
Every second that passed sharpened a single thought.
Ezra.
***
Catalyna hit another gap and landed hard.
A [Fire Ball] snapped past her head, close enough to burn a strand of hair.
She twisted aside and kept running.
"Ezra," she hissed through her teeth. "Keep still."
Ezra's mind stayed on the overlay.
Catalyna's movement gave him data in a way he could use.
He watched her feet: where they landed, how she pushed off.
AMP drew lines over it all. Force vectors. Angles. The small sway of her torso after each jump.
There.
A pattern.
He sorted it the way he'd practiced: speed and direction first, force second.
He just needed one moment—when her weight was over nothing. A push-off. A mid-air correction.
A small shove at the right time, and the rest would fall apart.
Two Knights kept pace behind.
The other two guards threw another [Earth Wall] up in an alley below, forcing Catalyna to step wide when she dropped to a lower roof.
Ezra felt the change. His body swung.
He jerked again.
Catalyna snapped her head down a fraction.
"Stop it! If you do that again—"
A [Rock bullet] came from the left.
Catalyna cut right, and it missed, smashing into the chimney behind.
She stayed physical. Pure movement. A straight line across tilted roofs and narrow ledges.
Hold until noon, she reminded herself.
Backup waited outside the gates; they would make a diversion. Once they made contact, those people would stall the wall guards while she cut east, two miles off the secondary extraction point, since the primary exit is compromised.
It was a workable plan.
Until Aerwyna.
Ezra watched the rooftops ahead.
Catalyna leapt. AMP snapped it into place.
There was a clean window he could use.
A timing window measured in fractions.
He threw his weight hard to the side at the exact moment her foot left tile.
Catalyna's balance broke as she leapt; her body rolled a fraction off-axis.
She missed landing by inches. Her feet hit the next roof edge wrong and dropped as they fell into an alley gap between buildings.
Ezra's AMP flashed numbers—distance, angle, the snagging metal below.
Yes, he thought. Falling. Cloth snag. Tear.
An iron bar jutted out from a wall, barely visible.
The void-silk and her clothing brushed it and tore the fabric.
Catalyna twisted mid-air to save the landing, but the tear widened as Ezra shoved his fingers into the opening and ripped.
The cloth gave, kicking her abdomen to break free.
Ezra shot away fast. He calculated the best amount of force to use so that it could land him at the farthest point from Catalyna.
Catalyna's eyes went wide.
"What—"
She immediately reached for him, but air and momentum stole her arm's range. She was unable to adjust with all the factors in play: the Knights, the slip, and now the escape.
Ezra hit the ground in a messy roll. He reinforced his body with mana to blunt the force. He also redirected some of the mana to his vocal chords for maximum range.
Bracing himself for a shout as he sprinted away.
He opened his mouth and roared.
"MAMA!"