The next terrace was significantly larger than the previous ones combined. It emerged from the gloom as a vast plateau of raw black stone, stretching so far into the darkness that its far edge remained invisible. Three distinct causeways branched from its near side, none resembling the pale seam they desperately sought.
Marcus stopped at the edge, studying the darkness before him. He tried to orient himself using the fleeting warmth that had touched his left palm earlier, but it was gone now, leaving only a fading impression.
"We've lost the line," Lysara said, her voice low with frustration. She leaned against her carved staff, the wood clicking softly against the stone. "From the summit, I had a rough sense of direction. After that wraith pack, I have nothing."
"Can you reach for the seam again?" Kael asked. "The way you read the causeway cycles?"
"I can try."
Lysara closed her eyes, tightening her grip on her staff.
"The lingering drain is making everything quieter than it should be. It feels like trying to hear a whisper in a storm."
She stood motionless for several seconds.
"Wait."
Her eyes opened.
"There. Faint, but there."
She pointed toward the plateau's western edge.
"That way."
Without another word, they started across.
The plateau's surface was uneven. Unlike the smooth crystal of the earlier landing zones, this ground was broken into jagged ridges and shallow depressions. It looked as though something colossal had once rested here, leaving scars in the bedrock.
Marcus watched the ground more than the darkness ahead, carefully picking his way through the rough terrain.
That vigilance was what made him notice the sudden shift in the floor's rift-light.
The blue-violet veins beneath their feet dimmed.
Not the entire plateau. Only in a small patch ahead. A circle of dead stone that hadn't been there moments before.
"Stop,"
His hand snapped out.
The team froze.
"What is it?" Taryn whispered, one hand drifting toward her bandolier.
"The light," Marcus said. "Right there. It just changed. Like a held breath—"
The stone erupted.
Not as a physical opening.
As a violent release of compressed energy.
A massive rift-wraith surged straight out of the bedrock, materializing at full size. Static-riddled edges sharpened as it turned toward them before Marcus could even raise his guard.
It hadn't crossed the plateau at all.
It had been waiting beneath the stone.
And the dimming light had been their only warning.
"Marcus!" Taryn shouted.
Too late.
The wraith's grit-textured limb snapped forward and seized his left wrist.
The same wrist.
The cold hit instantly.
The drain hit instantly.
White bled across the edges of Marcus's vision.
Pain ripped through his core. A strangled gasp escaped his throat as something deep inside him seemed to tear loose.
It felt as if he were being unmade from the inside out.
Within his consciousness, Kael felt his memories surge toward the anomaly: loved ones, his old precinct, the cold rain of his final night on Earth.
The faces began to fray.
The details began to vanish.
The entity was erasing him.
In response, the warmth lingering within his palm flared violently.
It didn't resist the draw.
It reacted instinctively, like a hand recoiling from flame.
The silver sigil ignited.
Blue-white light exploded from his palm, flooding the plateau and illuminating the jagged ridges for hundreds of yards.
Beneath the familiar rift-blue glow, a core of gold-white starlight burned at its center.
Taryn and Lysara cried out in shock.
The wraith recoiled.
Its grip loosened.
Not from surprise.
From pain.
Its static-filled form flickered violently as though its structure could no longer sustain itself.
But it didn't let go completely.
As it recoiled, it dragged Marcus with it.
His boots lost purchase on the uneven stone.
He hit the ground hard.
The wraith's retreat pulled him toward the edge of the plateau.
Toward a bottomless chasm.
"MARCUS!"
Taryn's scream echoed across the terrace.
Marcus twisted and clawed at the ground with his free hand, searching desperately for leverage.
He found none.
The stone near the rim was unnaturally smooth.
His fingers slid uselessly across it.
Three feet.
Two.
"I can't form a shield in time!" Lysara shouted. "The drain is scrambling everything!"
Then Taryn spoke.
Her voice had changed.
Gone was the familiar fury of battle.
Gone was the panic from the basin.
What remained was cold certainty.
"Marcus."
The single word landed like iron.
"Don't you dare move."
He couldn't.
The momentum held him fast.
Through the ringing in his ears, he heard glass clinking in rapid succession.
Taryn's hands moved through her alchemical bandolier with impossible speed.
She ignored the smaller blast-vials she normally used.
Instead, she reached into a hidden compartment and ripped free three larger spheres wrapped in heavy copper wire.
Items she had kept hidden from everyone.
Including them.
"Close your eyes!" she roared.
"Now!"
Marcus obeyed.
The world behind his eyelids turned crimson.
Heat detonated across the plateau.
This was nothing like her usual explosives.
This was a torrent of raw thermal energy.
The blaze struck only the wraith's grip.
The entity screamed.
The sound vibrated through the stone.
Marcus felt the grit around his arm convulse as the creature was battered by extremes of freezing cold and overwhelming heat.
A combination it clearly wasn't built to survive.
Then the pressure vanished.
His wrist came free.
The sudden release should have saved him.
Instead, his own momentum carried him over the edge.
The stone disappeared beneath him.
For one terrible instant, there was nothing at all.
He was falling.
Then something seized his right arm.
A hand.
Hard enough to bruise.
It locked around his forearm with iron strength that belied its owner's slight frame.
Marcus opened his eyes.
Taryn was on her knees at the very edge of the terrace.
Both hands were locked around his forearm.
Every muscle strained as she leaned backward against his weight.
Her face was pale.
Her teeth were clenched.
The remains of her bandolier smoldered faintly where the hidden vials had been torn free.
"I've got you!" she gasped.
Behind her, the wraith was gone.
No scattered grit.
No recovering form.
Nothing.
Only a wide scorch mark blackening the stone and the sharp scent of ozone and ash.
"I've got you."
Her voice shook.
"Just... don't move."
Lysara reached them a second later and joined Taryn in hauling Marcus back onto solid ground.
He collapsed onto his back.
Far above, the cracked ceiling of the canyon vanished into shadow.
His left wrist ached with a lingering cold.
The silver sigil was dark and silent.
Not gone.
Exhausted.
Like a muscle pushed beyond its limit.
"What was that?" Marcus asked hoarsely.
"What did you throw?"
Taryn didn't answer immediately.
She sat back on her heels and stared at her trembling hands.
Then at the ruined bandolier.
Then at the empty loops where the hidden spheres had rested.
"Something I shouldn't have," she whispered.
A long silence followed.
"Something I haven't touched since the day everything fell apart back home."
"Taryn—"
"It's fine."
She cut him off before he could continue. Her jaw tightened into a familiar defensive line.
"It worked. That's the only thing that matters right now."
Marcus pushed himself up onto one elbow.
For a moment, Kael reevaluated her completely.
He no longer saw a dangerous alchemist guarding secrets.
He saw a protector.
Someone who had sacrificed her final reserve, a part of her past she clearly wanted buried, to save a man she still wasn't entirely certain she could trust.
The realization settled quietly between them.
No words were needed.
Shared survival had rewritten something between them.
"It worked," Marcus said softly.
"Thank you."
Taryn met his gaze for a brief moment.
Something unreadable flickered in her eyes.
Then she looked away.
"We need to leave this terrace," she said, her practical edge returning. "Before something else decides to crawl out of the bedrock."