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She feels… cold. Dawsyn opens her eyes.

Familiar trees tower above her, their branches dappling what little light the sky offers. Pine trees. Their smell strikes her and for a moment she thinks she is on the Ledge.

Dawsyn sits abruptly.

Her breath mists between her parted lips. She sits upon ground that gives and looks down to find herself seated in a snow drift. It slopes away before her, disappearing downward among the dispersed trunks. Not the Ledge, then. But the mountain.

Return to the mountain,Yerdos had said and then laid a burning hand to her cheek. Dawsyn still feels it now, the heat from Yerdos’ touch. She lays her own palm against her jaw and is surprised to feel a keen sting.

At the acknowledgment of pain comes the unfurling of mage light in her mind, the burgeoning of iskra in her core. It stretches like a creature departing its cave.

She frowns, then turns her steady palm to her face and stares at it. The iskra coats it in its intricate filigree of frost.

She is out of the Chasm.

“Ryon?” she calls. She needs to get her feet beneath her. Already she can feel the cold seeping through her clothes to her backside. “Ryon!”she shouts the name, and it does not echo. The word is swallowed by the sky, as it should be.

Yerdos saved them. She healed them. She replenished Dawsyn’s magic.

“Ryon!”

She turns and uses her bare hands to climb out of the drift. Her palms burn with the sting of ice, but it does little to slow her. She finds her feet at the crest and rises, looking in all directions.

A body lies in the snow, several feet away. It is crumpled and unmoving, disguised by cloaks and furs. But the shape is familiar.

“Hector!” Dawsyn runs to him. She stands astride him and grabs handfuls of his cloak to roll him over. His skin is colourless, but for the black grit of the Chasm smeared along his cheeks. Small puffs of mist appear beneath his nostrils. Alive. He is alive.

But he is not healed. Whatever Yerdos gifted Dawsyn she did not lend to Hector. He is fading. His eyes are glassy and distant, looking straight through her.

“Fuck,” Dawsyn mutters. He was too weak to fold. They all were.

Dawsyn does not know where to place her hands, where to heal. She opts for his chest, wrenching his cloak open at the ties. She slides his tunic up his stomach until his prominent ribcage comes into view, then lays her icy hands to his skin. He does not flinch.

“Ish-ishveet!” Dawsyn stutters. The iskra and mage light rush to collide and intertwine. “Ishveet!”

The power courses through her and into Hector. Dawsyn can feel the thrust of it, rushing through him. She shuts her eyes against the blinding light and wills the power onward. She orders it to find what is broken and mend it.

When the magic is satisfied, it returns to her, leaving her sluggish.

Hector’s eyelids blink rapidly. His nose scrunches as that same smell of ice and pine assaults him, then his gaze finds Dawsyn’s. “Woah,” he says evenly. “You look awful.”

Dawsyn lies her forehead to his chest for a moment, her breaths ragged with relief. “Fuck you,” she manages to spit out. “You scared me.”

Hector pats the back of her head, his body shivering. “Nothing scares you, Sabar,” he reminds her. “Where the fuck are we?”

“The mountain.”

“How?”

“Yerdos,” Dawsyn answers, standing. She grabs Hector’s arm and hauls him upward out of the snow. “She saved us.”

“Savedus?” Hector repeats, shock widening his eyes. “But… why?”

“I can tell the tale later,” Dawsyn mutters. “We need to find the others. Now.”

In the distance she can hear a keen whining. It sounds like a trapped animal.

“Esra,” Hector mutters, and begins barrelling through deep snow in the direction of the noise.