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… And I reach for her. My hand closes over her shoulder, the fabric of her tunic soaked and rough against my palm. My other arm snakes around her waist, locking her against me. My chest to her back. Her breath hitches. Her body trembles. Beneath my palm, her heartbeat pounds, frantic and wild.

I dip my head close to her ear. “Move when I move.”

She nods. Once.Barely. A tiny jerk of her chin that nearly costs us our balance.

Together, we inch sideways, bodies aligned.

My shadows still cling to the fault line, but the strain is worsening. Cracks deepen beneath the surface—thin lines of fracture spreading like veins, each one telling me exactly how this wall will fall. The spell pulls against me, harder now, resisting its shape.

Pain flares up my spine. My breath shortens. Every heartbeat comes with a cost.

One foot. Then the next.

Ellie stays pressed against me, matching my movements.

The walls groan under the pressure. Rock shifts. Somewhere above our heads, a piece shears free and falls, just missing my shoulder.

The spell lurches. I force it back into place. Re-anchor. Reinforce. But I’m running on borrowed time.

Every step is split focus—half on keeping her upright, half on keeping the mountain from crushing us. I can’t fail at either.

The wall of rock strains against my will, fighting with the patience of stone, and the hunger of gravity.

The mountain wants to break.

And I can feel myself breaking with it.

Relief floods through me when Tisera's hands reach out, pulling Ellie to safety.

I take one last step, confirm there’s solid ground beneath my boots, and then release the spell.

The mountain lurches behind us, freed from my grip. The backlash is immediate. A sharp recoil that rattles my spine and hollows out my chest. I stagger. Only slightly. But enough. My legs almost give out beneath me, my palms slick with cold sweat. The chill cuts deeper now, as if the wind has found a way inside my ribs and decided to make a home there.

Then the collapse begins.

Stone gives way with a low, cracking groan that builds to a deafening roar. A cascading failure as nature reclaims what I held by force. Sections of the path sheer off in jagged chunks, plummeting into the canyon below. The sound is deafening. A chain reaction of thunder and ruin that shakes the pass to its bones and rattles my teeth.

Seconds later, there’s nothing left behind us but space and wind, and the echo of destruction.

A shape moves in my periphery.

Ellie crosses the distance between us in two strides, and throws herself into my chest.

The impact rocks me backward. Her arms wrap around me.Hard. Desperate. Full-body contact that threatens to topple us both. She’s soaked through. Rain-slicked and shaking. The momentum of it jars through my spine, grounding and jarring all at once.

I freeze.

The weight of another body against mine, unfiltered. Unshielded. It’s too much for my already voidcraft-strained senses. But … I don’t move.

Her forehead presses to my shoulder.

“You held it back,” she whispers. “With magic?”

I make no attempt to deny it. “Yes.”

Her fingers curl into my tunic, knuckles white. She doesn’t let go.

And I can’t make myself step away.