Chapter 11
The sound hit her before the shore did. Shouts overlapped with the violent crash of waves against hull and rock, and magic detonated in concussive bursts that rattled her bones.
Wind tore off the Neshuin Sea and blasted into her, dragging her hair back and stealing her breath as the full scene snapped into focus.
All she saw was blood spraying, water rushing, and magic shattering from every direction.
Imani couldn’t move as she took in the full scale of the battle raging around her.
With a brief touch to her arm, Ellisar urged her forward.
Steeling her spine, she moved with him through the press of soldiers, and even amid the chaos, the reaction rippled outward.
Heads bowed as they passed, bodies turning to make space without being told.
Eyes followed her, drawn not only to her presence but to the crown woven from her own form, staring with something deeper than curiosity—reverence and the uneasy awareness of what she might be.
They stopped at a cliff overlooking the beach and sea below.
Norn soldiers held the shoreline in scattered ranks, some braced in the surf with weapons raised, others retreating step by step as waves surged around their legs.
Beyond them, Norn-built ships cut across the water, their hulls angled defensively as spells flared from their decks toward the advancing line.
Lochheim vessels pressed in from the open sea, darker and lower in the water, moving with a predatory glide that defied the tide.
Figures moved between ship and sea with disturbing ease, rising from the water as if it welcomed them, closing the distance faster than the Norn line could stabilize.
Lochheim.
Until recently, the name had meant almost nothing to Imani.
A sealed third kingdom somewhere beyond Essenheim and Niflheim, cut off from the rest of the Mesial Realm for longer than she knew.
She first heard whispers of it in Tanyl’s rooms, where he spoke of unrest along the borders and strangers testing weaknesses in the Fabric.
Her grandmother had once told her something similar years ago, back when Imani had been too young to understand the warning.
When one realm began to fail, its people did not always wait for it to collapse around them.
Sometimes they searched for a way into another.
At the time, Imani had thought Ara was speaking in generalities.
But looking at the ships bearing down on the Norn coast, she no longer believed it.
Spells tore through the air in jagged arcs, colliding mid-flight in bursts of light that shattered and scattered across the water like glass.
Bodies moved without rhythm or formation, as soldiers broke ranks to dodge, strike, and drag the fallen back before they disappeared beneath the surf.
Shouted orders were swallowed by the noise the moment they were given.
What had begun as a coordinated defense had collapsed into a looser, more desperate reaction among the mass of elves.
The attackers moving between ship and sea had to be Lochheim breeds. Imani had never seen their people before and knew almost nothing about what lived inside the sealed kingdom, but their bodies made one thing obvious: whatever Lochheim was, its people had been shaped by water.
Some swam beneath the surface for impossible stretches before rising again.
Others cut through the sea with powerful, fluid strokes that no Norn could match.
She caught flashes of webbed fingers, slick skin, long hair plastered against unfamiliar faces, and bodies built to move through currents as naturally as Norn elves moved through the Draswood.
Kelpies? Merfolk? Something else entirely? She couldn’t tell, but these were not land-born witches forced into the sea.
The sea belonged to them.
A wave rose at a Lochheim breed’s command, cresting high before igniting midair into a roaring arc that slammed into a Norn vessel and exploded on impact.
Their magic twisted together, fluid and volatile, shifting between states in ways that made it impossible to predict or counter.
The impact splintered wood, buckled decks, and hurled men like debris, spreading destruction outward as if the sea itself had turned against them.
Imani watched their coordination closely.
Their attacks flowed together smoothly instead of scattering like the Norn’s.
Their method was a highly skilled system.
Lochheim was becoming a far more formidable opponent than anyone had anticipated, and the purpose behind the attack grew harder to ignore.
Every formation drove toward Essenheim rather than merely striking Norn ships, and the vessels behind them carried far too many people for a simple military incursion.
Figures packed the decks who were not fighting at all.
Behind the armed Lochheim witches, ordinary people crowded every available stretch of deck, packed so tightly that some had nowhere to sit.
Women held children to their chests while older boys and girls grabbed sleeves, skirts, and railings to keep from being thrown down by the waves.
Bags were piled around their feet, overstuffed satchels, bundles tied in blankets, and small trunks that looked hastily packed rather than prepared for a journey.
One child hugged a wooden toy to his chest while another dragged a soaked cloth doll by an arm. A mother crouched over two little girls near the mast, shielding their heads whenever magic flashed across the water.
More civilians waited on the vessels farther back, still dangerously close to the fighting because there was nowhere else to go.
No one knew how long the slip would remain open.
Lochheim was forcing as many people through as possible while the passage existed, sending soldiers ahead to hold the route while families followed behind them into a battlefield.
Imani’s hand went to her mouth.
If what she had overheard in Tanyl’s room was true—if the Fabric beyond Essenheim was failing badly enough that entire kingdoms were seeking safer ground—then Lochheim must be desperate.
Desperate enough to attack them in search of a safer place to live.
Whether they intended conquest, refuge, or both, Imani could not know for certain.
But no one brought this many people through a collapsing border merely to win a battle.
Past the deluge of ships and soldiers lay the slip. It stretched beyond the melee, enormous, warping the air into a slow, rippling wave that held its shape with eerie, unnatural strength.
The one that had taken her parents had been uncontrolled, with the Fabric tearing itself apart, unstable and collapsing even as it consumed everything around it. This slip had not just morphed into an event. It held, spreading wide against the horizon, sustained in a way that looked intentional.
Magic around the slip bent and distorted, with spells veering off course or unraveling mid-cast as if the Fabric itself refused to hold them.
The sea churned unnaturally beneath it, its currents twisting against one another and ripples of instability spreading outward, unsettling everything they touched.
Ellisar stayed just behind her, his eyes sweeping the shoreline and the sea as if recording every change rather than reacting to the chaos. While others cried out and hurried around them, he focused on what mattered and ignored the rest.
“This is your opportunity. We’re nearly as close as we can get from here,” he said, pointing toward the slip.
She drew a deep breath, unable to respond to Ellisar in the face of such death and magic.
“Only a queen has the power to control raw Fabric magic like that,” Ellisar said, leaning near her ear. “If you can’t, it proves everything we need to know.”
Imani studied the roiling tear, her grip on her wand tightening just enough to betray the strain she refused to show. “You brought me here to close that?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
“There won’t be another chance like this to prove you’re the true monarch,” Ellisar said.
“This is bigger than anything you suggested,” she said. “And you want me to get involved while it’s already falling apart?”
She tracked the line of Norn soldiers as it faltered, their bodies giving inch by inch as the Lochheim push tightened from the sea.
The slip pulsed behind it all, each ripple sending another distortion across the battlefield, bending magic and momentum alike.
This was an unraveling, unfolding faster than anyone could contain.
Ellisar caught her arm and pointed toward the beach below. “We need to get closer before you try anything.”
He led her toward the rough-cut stone steps carved into the cliffside, choosing their route as soldiers surged around them.
Imani followed without argument. She had plenty of nerve, but the Ascension Assessments had taught her to survive a melee, not to navigate a formal battle with armies, ships, and commanders. Ellisar knew what he was doing.
The wind hit harder with every step. By the time they reached the shoreline, the roar of the sea and battle swallowed nearly everything else. Sand shifted beneath Imani’s shoes, and salt spray struck her face while Norn soldiers rushed past them in both directions.
An officer hurried toward Ellisar. “Boat?” Ellisar demanded.
The officer pointed farther down the beach. “Waiting beyond the second line, sir.”
Ellisar changed direction, and Imani followed. They crossed behind the Norn line, where several elves held a low war vessel against the surf. Waves slammed its hull sideways while two sailors fought to keep the boarding rope taut. Ellisar stepped aboard first and turned back.
“Stay near the center until we clear the fighting.”
Imani took his hand long enough to cross the gap, then released it. The deck pitched violently beneath her feet, forcing her to catch the nearest railing while sailors worked around them.
The vessel pulled away from the shore. As it drove farther into the surf, the slip tugged against Imani’s magic with increasing force. The center of the deck was safer, but it was also too far back.
Ellisar shouted instructions to the crew as Imani made her way toward the front of the vessel.
“Imani.”
She turned.
“You can work from here.”
“Not well enough.”
He ran a hand through his sea-soaked hair. “You have never fought from a ship?”
“No.” Another swell rocked the deck beneath her. Imani tightened her hand around the railing. “But I need to feel the slip.”
Another distortion rolled outward from the fracture, and she moved before he could argue further.
Imani worked her way toward the bow, one hand on the railing whenever the vessel pitched beneath her.
She did not know how to command a naval battle, but she knew her own magic, and the closer she moved toward the fracture, the more clearly she felt the pressure beneath its surface.
The distortion brushed her signature first, an invisible weight pressing inward. Beneath that pressure, she could sense a structure she did not understand. And unfamiliar Lochheim magic clung to the fracture’s weakened edges, holding them apart whenever the Fabric tried to draw itself closed.
Imani slowed, shielding her eyes to get a better look.
The pattern beneath the distortion became clearer. She didn’t think the Lochheim witches were controlling the slip, not truly. Their magic fastened itself to weaknesses already present in the fracture, reinforcing the opening every time the Fabric tried to contract.
They couldn’t cast a doorway, not like Imani could, so they found a slip and refused to let it close.
Beyond the fighting, more vessels appeared through the distortion in the horizon, their shapes first warped into dark smears before resolving into hulls on the Mesial side.
So that was how they were coming through… her thought trailed off as she watched the ship bulge through the opening. Lochheim was moving ships and people through the slip, using the fracture as a passage between sealed kingdoms.
Another dark hull emerged.
Then another.
A roar rose beneath the sounds of battle.
Imani whipped her head to the sky, her hair plastering itself around her cheeks, as she initially mistook it for thunder. She swiped her hair off her face and turned back to the Neshuin Sea.
Then the water rushing below their ship vibrated. The tremor traveled upward through the hull, rattling the planks under her feet. Ropes shook against their fastenings. Masts shivered on nearby vessels, and several ships rocked at once, even though the waves moved in another direction.
Her stomach churned at the movement, because she knew what it meant.
The slip was the first warning, and the disturbance beneath the sea was another. A Fabric event was beginning.
If the fracture continued widening, Lochheim could keep forcing ships through while the instability spread beneath the water. What began as a tremor could become a ground quake powerful enough to break the coastline, overturn vessels, or rupture the Fabric somewhere else entirely.
Another vibration passed beneath her feet, stronger than the first, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the railing.
There was no time for deliberation. The slip widened with every pulse, admitting additional Lochheim vessels while the water beneath them continued to tremble. If she waited, this would stop being an invasion and become a catastrophe.
Magic flashed along the battle line before she could fully register it. Heads turned, spells faltered for half a breath, and she felt the weight of their attention as they watched her.
Visibility was important today. It was a resource in her arsenal, a way to prove she was the monarch.
Imani pushed farther toward the bow.
Ellisar stood a few paces back, his mouth in a hard line, but he didn’t stop her.
The slip loomed ahead, and its pressure grew with every yard the vessel crossed. Magic moved around her in unstable currents, pulling against her signature. The water below churned harder as the fracture widened.
She reached forward with her wand, and a splash of water dripped down her face.
The world narrowed. While the battle continued around her, she knew what she had come here to do.
Behind the slip waited families desperate enough to cross into a war. In front of it stood Norn soldiers fighting to keep their own home.
No version of this choice left everyone safe.