Chapter 1
Chapter one
The world broke itself apart behind her.
Light shattered. Noise fractured. Her body stretched thin between worlds as the wormhole flung her through time and space, stripping her down to pieces.
Faces burned across her vision—
A girl laughing with blood on her cheeks.
A man’s hand, fingers severed, reaching through smoke.
Red banners flaring in the sky.
A brother? A lover? Gone.
None of it stayed. None of it mattered.
The sky tore open around her. She fell screaming through it, through air that felt too real after the void, limbs flailing uselessly in freefall. Below—mountains. Trees. A forest swallowing the horizon in green teeth.
Branches caught her first, slamming against armor, scraping bare skin where the joints left her exposed. Something cracked in her side. Another branch spun her sideways. A gauntlet tore free with a metallic shriek, spiraling off into the canopy.
Then—ground.
The impact crushed the air from her lungs in a soundless huff. Pain lanced up her spine, white-hot and immediate.
Then—stillness.
Her chest convulsed, heaving air in jagged, broken gasps. The taste of dirt sat thick on her tongue. Blood wept sluggishly from a cut at her hairline, blurring one eye.
Move. Get up.
Her body didn’t want to listen. Trembling hands scrabbled at the forest floor—wet moss, old leaves, something sharp slicing her palm open. Metal. Plating. Not hers. Not anymore.
One elbow locked. Then the other. She forced herself upright onto shaking knees.
“Fuuuh…what the fuck.” The words slurred in her throat. They didn’t sound right.
What was hers? Who was—
Her head tipped forward. Sweat dripped from her chin onto the soil. One foot found purchase. Then the other. She staggered, catching herself against the trunk of a tree slick with sap.
A name. She needed a name.
Her name.
Think. Think.
Pain spiked through her skull. Fragments of memory flared and burned out. Faces without names. Words without meaning. A blur of missions and orders. Of fire, and blood, and betrayal spinning away from her like the debris of a dying star.
Her mouth shaped the syllables before her brain caught up.
“Rynna.” A whisper. Barely there. “I’m…Rynna.”
It steadied her. A little. Enough to try standing on her own.
Her breastplate hung askew, pieces twisted, cracked open like an exoskeleton molting mid-battle. Sparks guttered in the seams, blue-white and fading. No backup. No command feed. No tactical net. She was alone.
Again.
“What now?” Each ragged exhale bled into the cold, leaving quick ghosts of vapor behind.
The answer didn’t come. It never did.
Another world. Another slow unraveling waiting on the horizon.
She pressed a hand to her temple. Tried to piece together the threads of where she’d been—who she’d been fighting for, what she’d been running from. Flashes only. Faces already slipping away. The Mission? Forgotten. The war? Over. Or lost.
Rynna squared her shoulders beneath the remnants of her battered coverings, exhaled, and took her first step forward into whatever hell awaited her on this world.
It didn’t matter. Not anymore.
She staggered forward through the undergrowth, boots sinking into supple loam. Her heartbeat still pounded in her ears, louder than the wind threading through the trees.
She didn’t look back.
Forward. Always forward.
Then—
The press of cold metal met the base of her neck.
A voice followed, spilling over her senses in a warped rush of sound—syllables folding, breaking, reforming as the Weaving’s power clawed its way into place, enabling her to understand and speak the local language.
“—where… come… from?” The distortion tightened, snapped into clarity.
“Now, where did you come from?” The words fell into arrangement as the voice glided over her senses, tenor-warm and dangerously close.
Her body reacted before her mind caught up, heat blooming low, traitorous, and sharp as hunger.
What the fuck.
She crushed the reaction beneath a snarl of will, forcing her spine straight against the blade’s edge. Anger came easier. Shame, too. She hadn’t heard him approach.
Sloppy.
Her senses remained tangled from the fall, from the tearing apart and piecing back together. And her mind scrabbled for footing.
Find the words. Say something normal. Buy time.
“Just…um…taking a…walk?”
Idiot. A walk? Really?
Her armor gave one last pitiful spark against her skin before dissolving in a slow, shimmering cascade, motes of fractured light floating down around her like the scatter of cosmic embers.
Metal sloughed from her limbs, leaving her in nothing but loose black cotton pants bound at the ankles and the wide strap of cloth wrapped across her breasts.
“Stone and silence!” The blade pressed harder.
She felt the sting, the warmth of blood welling thin at the break in her skin.
“What happened to your clothes?” The voice was closer now.
She hadn’t heard him move, but heat bled from his body to hers through the narrow sliver of space between them.
Stars, I’m tired of it all.
She exhaled, letting it sound like boredom.
“Look, man, whoever you are, wherever this is, I’m really not in the mood.”
Her body folded forward without warning, pitching her into the empty space ahead. Then, she dropped into a crouch, sliding under the knife and around his flank in a soundless sweep.
Straightening, she pivoted behind him until her palm hovered just shy of his spine.
“I don’t need a knife to carve out your lungs, friend.” Her lips thinned against her teeth. “Just walk away.”
He shifted, one step forward—measured, casual—then turned. His attention roamed over her from head to toe, slow enough she felt the pressure of it as if he’d laid hands on her bare skin.
He had long black hair tied in a high tail; no stray strands escaped to soften the severity of his angular face. High cheekbones, sharp enough to cut glass. And eyes dark as pitch with the faintest thread of violet glinting when the light caught them wrong.
“You’re just a woman.” His mouth stretched, not quite a smile, more an invitation to mistake him for less dangerous than he was. “Nearly naked. No weapons that I can see.”
His fingers flexed against his side, squeezing over ruined fabric as his stance faltered with a shallow inhale drawn through clenched teeth.
“Should I be scared?” Pain broke across his features before he smoothed it away.
The scent hit her next. Copper-sweet and heady.
Fresh blood seeped through his palm from an ugly puncture wound in his side. And his chest looked wrong, somewhat caved in.
Still, his mouth curved—taunting.
Holy shit. Rynna blinked. How is this asshole even standing?
Her tongue pressed hard into the roof of her mouth as points slid down behind her gums, watching the crimson drops leak onto the ground.
No.
“Just leave me alone.” She turned, shoulders hunching against the Hunger. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Oh, good,” he coughed. “Because I don’t think I have any trouble left to give.”
She heard the sharp exhale, then the thud of a body hitting dirt and dead leaves.
The muscles between her shoulders tensed as she half-turned, glaring down at where he’d fallen.
“Stars above…” The words ground out as her fingers flexed into fists at her sides. Of course, she’d get dumped into another world only to be saddled with some wounded idiot who couldn’t even stay on his feet.
“I should just leave you here.” Her hand settled on her hip as she gave him a pointed once-over. “You hardly look worth the effort.”
“I suppose that’s an option,” he grunted, trying to get his feet planted.
The lean cut of muscle beneath loose black layers wasn’t for show. Neither were the dark leather bracers hugging wired forearms.
“Or…” He pushed himself halfway up, finding support from a nearby tree. “Or you can get me out of here. The Ember Warden will be most appreciative, I’m sure.”
Ember Warden? She licked her lips. A leader on this world?
No weapons edged from his form, but the shape of them lingered: the flattening of cloth at the thigh and hip where hilts and blades had once hung.
Her brows drew together as she stared down at him.
Everything about him pointed to precision over force. He wasn’t a typical soldier.
Just where had the Weaving cast her, and why leave this man sprawled at her feet?
“You don’t exactly strike me as one of the good guys.” She chewed the inside of her cheek.
He coughed again in response, dark blood spattering across his chin.
“Oh, pet. Just give me the chance…” His tongue stretched out, impossibly long, skimming over his bottom lip. “And I’ll show you exactly how good I can be.”
Heat crept beneath her skin before she could stop it, and her gaze lingered on the smear of blood glistening at the corner of his mouth.
“Unlikely.” She smothered the reaction, nails digging into her palm. “I—”
The forest behind her groaned, swallowing the rest of the thought.
Vibrating beneath her boots, the ground pulsed through roots and soil as leaves shook loose from the canopy overhead, drifting down in uneasy spirals.
“What is that?” Her eyes narrowed, searching the shadows as something massive pushed through them.
“We should go.” The man shoved against the ground, chin tucked low as he tried to force himself fully upright.
“We?” She threw him a look, already stepping closer despite herself. “Why on earth would I help you?”
She hooked his elbow, slinging his arm over her shoulder.
“Because you’re clearly a hero.” He grunted again as she hauled him up, pain folding his features.
Rynna sputtered a laugh. “A hero?”
She dragged him with her as the noise behind them grew louder—branches popping, earth shuddering beneath the slide of something massive getting closer.