Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
The mountain shook with another concussive boom. Not close—yet—but close enough that the stone beneath Aimee’s boots carried the tremor. Echoes bounced off the ridges, overlapping into a steady thrum, the heartbeat of a battle unfolding just out of sight.
Flashes cut the sky beyond the peaks, fire blooming in violent arcs before vanishing in smoke.
A wave of water crashed somewhere below, colliding with stone hard enough to send spray drifting on the wind.
Each clash of elements reverberated through the range, the sounds weaving into a jagged chorus: lightning’s crack, earth’s groan, air ripping in sudden gusts.
The Watch moved around her, squads peeling off to meet each flare.
And at the center of it all, Mira stood tall, braid hanging loose down her back, armor gleaming where the sun hit. Her voice carried with clarity, calling orders down the slope. “First squad, anchor the northern flank! Keep the fire lines steady. Don’t overextend!”
Runners darted in and out, their reports clipped, breathless. “Enemy numbers confirmed. Two hundred pressing the east ridge. Shadows moving with them—spreading.”
Mira looked to Kazuma. “The black substance. What is it? Mana manipulation?”
He frowned, shoulders rigid. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t—” She cut herself off, then exhaled. “Fine. We’ll deal with it when we must.”
The ground rumbled again, a harsher vibration this time, the kind that made grit jump across stone.
Aimee’s calves flexed, her whole body leaning forward as though the mountain itself was pushing her toward the clash.
It hurt to stand unmoving, to hear the fight roaring just beyond reach while her purpose burned useless in her chest.
Another flash lit the far ridge, this one white-hot, blinding for a heartbeat. A ledge fractured, the crack tearing through the air, followed by the grinding avalanche of stone surrendering to gravity.
Mira’s head snapped toward Kazuma. “With Mana—can they bring down a ledge like that anywhere?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“Then move my second squad higher,” she barked to the nearest runner. “Above the southern shelf before they’re crushed.”
The runner bolted.
Aimee’s eyes tracked him, body leaning before she even knew why. She read the pattern of the fight, darkness seeping like oil down a channel of stone. The shinobi were testing, probing, waiting for the Watch to make a mistake. Her body lunged forward before she realized she was speaking.
“They’ll attack there next.” She pointed, pulse racing. “The notch below the western ridge. They’ll funnel through. It’s wide enough for a full push, but too narrow to defend from above.”
Mira turned to her, eyes narrowing. For a beat, silence stretched, punctuated only by the groan of the earth where elements collided. Then she nodded once. “You just saved fifty of mine.”
She raised her hand, signaling. “Third squad—move to the west ridge! Seal the notch. Now!”
The Watch moved as one, fire already sparking between their palms.
Aimee’s chest swelled, satisfaction tangling with the ache to join them. Her blood sang with the Pattern’s hum and the power she had been told to leash. To stand back felt wrong, unnatural, her whole body trapped between the demand to obey and the hunger to leap into the blaze.
“Hold, Aimee.” Mira caught her watching. “Not yet.”
The words pressed like iron across her skin, but Aimee held as the battle moved closer.
Then the cries started—high, sharp, and far too near—followed by silence, more brutal than the noise. Aimee knew what it meant before the report even came running up the slope. A whole squad—gone.
The mountain seemed to swallow their absence. Wind rushed through the ridges in a hollow roar, carrying with it the acrid bite of smoke and something fouler, a rot that clung in her throat.
Mira’s face hardened, but the mask faltered, her eyes pinching shut.
“Let me go!” Aimee stepped forward, but Mira’s hand shot out, seizing her sleeve.
Twisting, Aimee searched for Kazuma. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even lifted his head.
Sadness weighted his gaze, steady and unblinking.
He didn’t need to speak, neither out loud nor in her mind.
She recognized the look, had worn it herself more times than she cared to remember. A soldier’s resignation.
“We will win this day,” Mira whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
Her spine straightened as another runner stumbled up, words tumbling over his tongue.
Mira jerked her chin, forcing strength back into her voice. “Their advance is slowing.”
“But at what cost?” The words ripped free before Aimee could swallow them. “Let me help!”
“You will remain here.” Mira watched the horizon, scanning for the next blow.
Aimee’s mouth opened, ready to strike back, but the moment fractured when a young member of the Watch staggered up the slope.
Barely more than a boy, he stumbled into the clearing and pitched forward.
Blood slicked his lips, and a black cut split his gut.
The wound oozed a greasy, inhuman slick that drew long, writhing threads across the stone.
Aimee could see the intestine then, pale and glistening, clamped back by the boy’s hands as he heaved himself toward them, each exhale a frayed, impossible thing.
The Watch froze, and all other sound died away until the only thing left was that wet, awful noise of torn flesh and the boy’s rasping attempts to move.
“Healer!” Mira moved before anyone else thought to. “Healer—!”
She ran, feet pounding, as he flung himself at her knees, choking blood that stained her pants.
“Seishō—” he coughed, black froth splattering across her skin. “The village—” He forced the words up between spasms. “A second force…nearly there.” Tears cut clean tracks down his gray cheeks. “My little brother. My grandfather. Please—”
Mira sank with him, knees crashing to the rock, one palm on either bloody cheek, and for a second the commander’s mask broke.
“Where is the damned healer?” she demanded, voice shredded with a kind of fury that only came from command, and from knowing he was already dead.
Aimee’s stomach lurched, bile burning the back of her throat. Death didn’t normally affect her, but there was something…
Her gaze locked on the boy’s slack face, and the world tilted, until only his last words echoed in her skull.
“A second…” Panic sank in her belly as the meaning hit. The children.
All of the children were in the village. It was like a blade had pierced her heart.
“Let me go,” Aimee snapped.
“Wait.” Mira’s voice cut across the space.
She didn’t move from the boy’s side. One hand remained cradling his head, the other pressed against his chest as if sheer will might coax life back into him. Tears caught at her lashes, bright in contrast to the blood smeared across her chestplate.
“No.” Chest heaving, Aimee turned instead to Kazuma.
He stood motionless, the sadness in his eyes a ledger she knew by heart. He didn’t speak; he didn’t need to.
“We will still win this day,” Mira murmured. Her jaw set, and with a trembling exhale, she eased the boy flat against the ground. Careful, reverent, she drew his lids shut with her thumb until his eyes were at rest.
“But at what cost?” Aimee spat. “All this death is needless.”
Her throat worked, thinking of the boy’s fingers and the way he’d tried to hold his own guts in. Then, she thought of the children in the village and the small lungs that would not hold through a night of smoke and blade.
“We’re going,” Aimee said.
Mira’s mouth parted, then shut again. Her shoulders sagged beneath the burden of armor that suddenly looked too heavy, and the braid down her back drooped forward as her head bowed. She pressed her palm against the boy’s chest a final time before dragging her hand away and forcing it to her side.
“There are only two of you.” When she finally looked up, her eyes were dry. “I can’t remove anyone from the line. They’re too close.”
Aimee felt the words like cold water. The two women looked at each other then, and the world narrowed.
“I trust you to protect the world,” Aimee said, the pledge oddly formal in her mouth.
Mira blinked, bringing a fist to her chest. “And I trust you to protect our future.”
For a breath, she stood there, feeling the Pattern hum in her blood as if it, too, approved the change. She had wanted permission; what she’d been given instead was responsibility.
“Okay then.” She finally exhaled, turning to Kazuma. “You ready? Two against an army.”
He didn’t answer, at least not out loud.
Until the world burns. His arm extended, and, without fanfare, he closed his fingers around her hand. Then, with a sudden twist, he yanked her forward, using that momentum to sling her past the edge and out into the open air.
It was something they’d been playing with on the ridges, but her heart still jumped into her throat as her boots left stone and the world tipped vertical.
Stone blurred past in streaks of gray and dust, hollowing her stomach for just an instant.
Then she grinned, lips peeling back, fangs piercing in the sun.
And for half a heartbeat, she thrilled in the fall—the rush of speed and the wild promise of what waited below.
She shouldn’t enjoy what was coming. Children’s lives were on the line.
But the dark power stirred inside her all the same, pulsing in anticipation.
Kazuma would follow; she didn’t need to look to know it. He’d make his way down the winding path nearly as fast as her fall. Then, they would meet the enemy.
The thought coiled through her blood, hot and eager, her mouth watering with the promise of violence. A shiver climbed her spine, too close to pleasure, and for a moment she savored it—before shame soured the edge.
Either way, whether she enjoyed it or not, she would kill them all.
And with that vow thrumming in her veins, the mountain opened to take her in.