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Through my familiar’s eyes, I watch as the fissures spread—fine hairline cracks splintering wider with each gust, invisible to the untrained eye, but alive beneath my senses. Stone shifts, settling its weight in ways that are dangerous, load-bearing walls grinding against themselves in microscopic movements that will break all too soon.

“Can we still pass?” Ellie’s voice shakes, face pale, as she clings to the stone wall.

“Yes, but with extreme caution.” I scan the fault line—its tension, its depth, its breaking point. Each hairline fracture maps itself in my mind, a web of potential failure points. “Go one at a time. Move as fast as you can, but be careful.”

Tisera crosses first, inch by slow painful inch. The unstable wall creaks audibly as she passes. Small stones dislodge and fall, swallowed by the gulf below. She reaches the far side, steadies herself, and turns.

"Go," I tell Ellie. "Keep to the left edge of the path. Watch your footing.”

She moves.Slowly. Every muscle taut. Her arms hug the innerwall. Her movements are stiff with fear. Every step forward is a negotiation between instinct and terror.

The wind keens. The scent of wet stone thickens, mixing with ozone from the building storm. Ellie’s entire frame shakes. The fear rolling off her is nearly physical—a vibration in the air, a thrum beneath the storm.

My gut twists at the sight of her vulnerability.

At the midpoint, a gust slams through the pass with the force of a hammer. Ellie flattens herself against rock, fingers digging for purchase. Eyes squeezed shut. Lips moving soundlessly. I don’t need to hear her to know what she’s saying. Prayer, self-assurances, pleas that the mountain won’t collapse beneath her feet.

My reaction is immediate.

I draw breath. Then speak a single word.

“Vashren.”

Power drives outward. Not shadow, but pure voidcraft. The spell ignites, pouring from my palm in threads of force laced with darkness.

It hits the stone in silence, sinking into fractured rock. Shadows follow, flowing through the fissures, anchoring the weak points, pinning pressure where the strain has already begun to build.

I feel the fault lines stretch. Hairline cracks beneath the surface. The subtle drift of stone shifting its weight. The tremor before failure.

The longer I hold, the more clearly I can track it. This section is going to break. I can delay it, but I cannot stop it.

The casting burns low and steady through the center of my chest, a cold fire that devours breath. Sweat slithers down myspine. My breath shortens. Focus narrows. The spell holds, but the cost is building.

“Keep moving,” I call to Ellie. My voice is tight with strain. “The wall won’t hold forever.”

And neither will I.

"I can't." Her voice rises shrilly, cracking with terror that echoes off stone. The wind tears at her hair, plastering it across her rain-slick face. Her fingers dig into the rock, white-knuckled and desperate.

Something rises within me. Not the shadows or the void, but something older. A reflex honed by solitude and long-dead vows. A protective instinct I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember, forcing its way through the walls I’ve built around myself.

"Yes, you can." I force calm into my voice, softening the tone even as the wind howls around us. "One step in front of the other, Mel’shira.”Unexpected One.Why did I say that? I give a slight headshake, and refocus.“Tisera is waiting for you. Just a few more steps and you can take her hand.”

Every word is a lie I make true by saying it. If she falls, I won’t be able to hold the mountain and catch her. I won’t be able to choose.

She inches sideways, then freezes, shaking her head.

"Ellie,move!" The command tears from my throat as my grip on the unstable mass falters for a moment, just a single heartbeat, but it’s enough to send pain lancing through my ribs as the spell fights to hold. The storm strengthens, wind and rain driving against my concentration. Each second challenges the limits of what I can hold.

There’s no time left.

I step onto the path.

The surface is slick beneath my boots, each footfall a gamble. Wind howls through the gap like a living thing.

One breath.

Three quick strides ...