Chapter 24
Ivan sat alone at the narrow table Dominic had insisted be brought into his tent. The parchment before him had multiplied over the past two days until the surface of the table had nearly disappeared beneath it.
Charcoal lines carved a chaos of maps and notes—sketches of the outpost’s interior, its corridors and gates, the cramped living quarters where the soldiers slept.
He marked where the ground dipped at the west perimeter, where the arrow slits opened toward the road.
Beside it lay a smaller sketch of schedules—what he remembered of the guard rotations, when the captain made his rounds.
Every turn of ink circled the same question: how to breach the walls and live long enough to cross the next.
Near the center of the clutter lay the diagrams of the seam itself. He’d traced its path through the Void until the parchment tore, his notes buried under layers of corrections—angles redrawn, margins darkened, the faint lines showing where reality warped before it broke.
The candle burned low beside him, its flame guttering in the draft.
Dominic had said they would move at dawn. That had been two days ago. The Druid—Athelric—had taken the first stack of notes and returned again and again, muttering and measuring and asking questions that would have driven a lesser man to violence.
What is the compression ratio at the second bend?
How far does the seam narrow when the current shifts east?
What happens if the pressure collapses mid-crossing?
Ivan had answered until his throat went dry. Because the truth of it was simple: if the seam failed, eight men would not merely die. They would vanish.
He flexed his fingers now, ink stains dark against the old scars that crossed his knuckles. Outside, a wardpost hummed softly. The sound was almost soothing, like a hive working somewhere beneath the earth. When the tent flap stirred, Ivan looked up.
“Well?”
Athelric stepped inside. He looked as though he had aged ten years in the past two hours. A stack of Ivan’s parchments hung loose in one hand, the corners creased from repeated handling.
“It works,” the Druid said.
Ivan studied him for a moment, then gave a single nod. “Good.”
Athelric didn’t leave. He lingered instead, his gaze flicking between the diagrams and Ivan’s face, as though trying to decide whether the man before him was brilliant, mad—or some inconvenient combination of the two.
“I have spent the last day and a half dismantling this,” he said slowly.
“Turning it inside-out. I—I’ve spent half my life studying Void mechanics, and it would never have occurred to me to chart it like this.
” His fingers tapped the parchment almost reverently.
“A mind that can build something like this—”
He shook his head faintly. “A mind like yours, wasted skulking through corridors with a knife. If you lent that intellect to work like this instead—”
Ivan snorted, leaned back in the narrow chair, and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger, the motion slow and tired. “This isn’t my work.”
“But you—”
“I understood it,” Ivan said. “I copied it. I answered your questions. But I didn’t create it.” He dropped his hand and looked at him again, his expression flat. “The brilliant mind that built this belongs to a woman.”
Athelric’s brows drew together. “A woman?”
Ivan’s lip curled. “Yes. One your kind kept locked behind temple walls—studied, controlled. Told she was only worth what could be taken from her. Her labor. Her ether. Her body.” His jaw tightened.
“Imagine what she might have become if she’d been given the same freedom your scholars take for granted.
The chance to learn. To fail. To begin again. ”
His hand ghosted over the parchment. “This is what she created while caged.”
Athelric said nothing at first. Then, “Remarkable,” he said, his tone carrying a hint of indulgence, as though the notion amused him more than it unsettled him. “Unorthodox, certainly. Undisciplined in places. But…” His mouth tightened faintly. “There is an instinct here most scholars would envy.”
Ivan’s stare narrowed. “Instinct.”
Athelric glanced up, as if he had only just heard himself. “I mean no insult.”
“No?”
“Quite the opposite. It is impressive. Only…unconventional. Brilliant in places, certainly, but raw.” He gave Ivan a thin, polite smile. “Regardless—the calculations hold. You’re cleared to cross tomorrow.”
With that, he turned and stepped out into the night, the tent flap falling closed behind him.
Ivan remained where he was, staring at the space the man had just vacated.
Outside, boots ground over gravel somewhere beyond the tent.
Voices drifted in and out of hearing. He gathered the scattered parchments from the table and stacked them into a rough pile.
A moment ago, the diagrams had belonged to brilliance. To discipline. To a mind Athelric had nearly envied. Then Ivan had said woman, and suddenly the work was unconventional. Raw.
Sanctimonious worm.
Tension settled through his shoulders and along his spine, and for a fleeting moment, he considered slipping through the rows of tents with a knife and demonstrating exactly how much practice he had at skulking through corridors with one.
The thought lingered just long enough to be satisfying.
He set the parchments aside, pushed back from the table, and dropped onto the cot.
The canvas walls held the warmth of the day, though the night air had begun creeping through.
He leaned forward then, elbows on his knees, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until sparks flared behind them.
He saw the seam he had drawn, the moorlands beyond the ward.
The compound walls rising black against fog.
He saw Godfrey chained in some lightless room.
And somewhere behind all of it—
A raven watching.
Ivan opened his eyes again.
Enough.
He rose. His coat hung from a peg beside the cot.
He pulled it on and laced his boots without haste.
When he stepped outside, the air carried that thin, brittle chill that lives in the hour before dawn.
Most of the fires had collapsed into dull beds of ash and coal, their faint red glow barely strong enough to trouble the dark.
And seated beside Ivan’s tent like a carved statue was Dario.
The man had chosen a low stool and planted himself there with the patience of someone prepared to remain until morning. His blade rested across his knees. His eyes were fixed outward into the dark beyond the camp.
Ivan slowed just beyond the tent entrance and considered his options.
He could step forward, which would rouse the man.
Then, there would be the inevitable lecture about duty, about rest, about the necessity of not doing something reckless before the crossing tomorrow.
He could already hear it, and the thought was wearying enough that it might actually lull him to sleep.
Then again, tormenting Dario had become something of a personal pastime in recent days, and the temptation to agitate the man purely for the sake of it held a certain appeal.
He smirked and stepped into the dark—
And something strange happened.
It wasn’t a decision, or even a thought. The shadow at his feet slipped loose, reaching back toward him as it moved. A faint tug followed—like a hook catching in fabric—pulling him sideways through a pressure that resisted for a heartbeat, then released.
The air warped, close and soundless. The world pressed in, his body both there and not. A blink later, the pressure eased. But he was no longer at the mouth of his tent. He was standing three paces beside Dario, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t noticed, eyes still fixed on the empty sweep of the camp.
A chill crept up the back of Ivan’s neck.
What in the fuck…
He looked down. The frost-crusted grass beneath his boot had lost its color.
Not crushed—dead. Gray, brittle, the veins shriveled.
A small insect lay beside it, legs stiff and curled in on itself.
He bent closer, uneasy, and the world lurched again.
The camp dissolved and reformed around him in the time it took to blink.
The smell of smoke hit him first, then the voices—raised, tight with anger. Ivan blinked through the dizziness and found Gideon standing with his back to him, shoulders set like seasoned oak. Facing him stood Dominic.
“You’ve lost your wits,” Gideon barked. “You steal half a war-band, vanish across the border without your father’s sanction, and now you wish to return with nothing but graves waiting for the men who followed you.”
Dominic only smiled, the expression thin and tired at once. “You mistake valor for wit again, old friend. Go home if you like. I’ll answer to my father when I choose.”
“Your father’s patience has a shorter temper than mine,” Gideon said, stepping forward. “And I’m fast losing that.”
A rush of heat surged in Ivan’s chest—shock, confusion, something weightless tugging at his feet—and before he could find balance or breath, the ground took him again. He fell—or was pulled—sideways through the air, the world folding and righting itself in a moment.
Soft laughter. A scrape against bark.
Bryn was pressed against a tree near the edge of camp, moonlight running down the muscles of her bare arm.
She struck Yoni across the face; he only smiled—slow, crooked, a flash of teeth.
Her hand caught his jaw. “Keep your eyes up when you beg.” Then she kissed him—hard, drawing a sound that was half-laugh, half-groan.
Ivan froze. Long enough to see Yoni drop to his knees, hands already sliding beneath the hem of her skirt. His heart kicked hard against his ribs. Before thought could catch up, his heel shifted in the dirt—and the pull took him again.