Chapter 48
Adeep, resonant horn blast echoes from the imperial dragon riders above, a sound that vibrates in my bones. The rock beneath my feet trembles, a low, grinding shudder that seems to rise from the very depths of the chasm. The other champions tense, hands instinctively flying to their weapons.
What is that? My thought is a sharp point of alarm directed at Zeriel.
He doesn’t answer. His gaze is fixed on the abyss, his body a coiled spring.
Then, from the sheer black walls of the gorge, they emerge.
My blood turns to ice. They don’t look like dragons, not in any way I have ever known.
They are nightmares. Skeletal, bone-white bodies, long and emaciated.
They move with a horrifying, clicking gait, their claws digging into the rock as they crawl upward from the darkness.
Their heads are elongated, skull-like, their jaws lined with serrated bone that open and close with a dry, rasping sound.
Their eyes are so hollow they look like empty sockets, cold as the abyss itself.
Abyssal Reavers, the name screams through my mind, a piece of forgotten lore I didn't know I had.
They crawl up both sides of the chasm, their impossibly long limbs reaching across the void, intertwining, locking together. They are forming a bridge. A living, writhing, terrifying bridge of bone and sinew.
“The path is laid,” Overseer Pellvorn’s voice booms from above. “Cross it.”
For a horrified moment, no one moves.
Then the spell breaks. Damiar Korren lets out a roar of defiance, but Zeriel is the first to move, one hand clamping around my wrist.
Climb on my back. No arguments this time.
There are none. I move as if we are two parts of the same whole, my body finding his with a chaotic familiarity.
I scramble up, my fingers trembling as they grip his shoulders, my legs wrapping around his waist. The hard line of his spine presses against my softer flesh, and I feel the raised ridges of scars where his wings should be, the heat of his skin burning through the thin fabric between us.
My chest molds against his back, cheek brushing the curve of his neck as I tighten my hold, fingers fisting in the weave of his tunic.
Every muscle beneath me is a tightly wound cord.
And then it comes—like a suffocating tide.
His resolve washes through me, a wildfire igniting in my veins, unbidden yet impossible to resist, consuming every flicker of doubt.
His ferocity becomes mine, and with it the rest of him—rage, grief, hunger.
Yet beneath it all, something quieter, still fiercer: the primal need to protect what he once failed to save.
Before I can begin to unpack it, the precipice erupts into a mad scramble. Champions shove past one another, a desperate, feral pack lunging for the writhing bridge.
Our first step onto it is more than a nightmare.
The bone is slick under Zeriel’s boots, coated in some foul cave slime.
The entire structure shifts, undulating with the collective, unnatural life of the creatures that form it.
A dry, clicking sound rises from all around us, the gnashing of a thousand skeletal teeth.
They are not a passive walkway. As we run, skeletal claws snap up from the gaps between bodies, aiming for ankles and legs. A reaver’s head twists on a neck of vertebrae, its hollow sockets fixing on me, jaws gaping with a sound like grinding stones.
Before it can strike, Zeriel’s boot slams into its skull, sending it recoiling with a screech that echoes into the depths.
Is this how they hunt? I wonder. Pretending to be prey or a pathway, tempting creatures to approach?
I risk a look back and see the eleven remaining champions strung out across the living bridge, all of them now on this side of the rock.
At least a couple have lost or left behind their wards already.
I don’t see Elara’s friend, that younger woman whose name I never caught, and never will.
Hers was possibly the first scream I heard.
Blaise is immediately behind us, eyes glinting with that reckless, feral hunger.
Zeriel is a steady press of raw strength and focus.
You’re too calm, I can’t help but think, trying to distract myself.
You like it.
My pulse stutters. Not when the ground’s made of dragons.
Especially then.
Then it happens. There’s a convulsion, a ripple like a wave traveling the length of the bridge, and all at once the reavers move in unison, their bodies twisting, then unlocking. The truth slams into me: the bridge is a trap, not a passage.
With a sound like the cracking of a thousand spines, the entire structure shudders and splits, fracture lines shooting along its length. The segments beneath our feet begin to break away, each section dropping its cargo of champions into the abyss.
For a moment, we’re weightless. The world falls out from under us. The blackness below opens wide.
This is it—
No. Hold to me.
We plummet.
Wind screams in my ears. My grip on Zeriel is steel, my face pressed so hard against his back I can feel the hammering of his heart through his ribs and mine.
Your heart—
Matches yours.
Too fast.
Not fast enough.
The fall is an eternity of vertigo and roaring air. Below us, screams are swallowed by the vastness of the gorge.
Then impact. An explosive, shocking cold that steals the breath from my body and plunges us into blackness.
The water is frigid, a liquid abyss that swallows sound and light. It feels like there’s an invisible current pulling at me. My grip has loosened, and I flail, reaching for Zeriel—until his arms are suddenly a cage around me.
Don’t fight me.
You’re dragging me down—
Up. Always up. Trust me.
My lungs burn, desperate for air. He kicks hard, his powerful legs propelling us upward. Just when the weight of the water drags at me, he surges with a brutal stroke, forcing us higher, refusing the abyss its claim.
We break the surface with a collective gasp, sputtering and treading water in the murky gloom at the bottom of the gorge. Cold bites into my bones, the roar of the fall still ringing in my ears.
You’re stronger than I thought, I send.
You think too much.
Around us, champions thrash for air, scattered wreckage in the black water.
Then skeletal forms surge toward us—from the walls, their bone-white bodies terrifyingly visible in the gloom.
Alestir Velthorn’s ward, a young man with wide, terrified eyes, surfaces beside him.
“My lord—” he chokes out, reaching for him.
A reaver lashes into the water, its serrated jaw snapping.
Without a flicker of hesitation, Alestir shoves the man directly into its path.
His scream is cut short by a sickening crunch of bone.
The water around them churns red. Alestir uses the moment of distraction to swim for the gorge wall.
Bile rises in my throat.
Well, that’s one way to use a ward.
The wall, Zeriel sends, his thought a blade cutting through my horror. Get to the wall.
The water roils around us. More reavers slide from the walls, their bone-white forms a horrifying contrast to the black water. Another champion, Elian Merrow of the Eastern Isles, screams as two of them drag him under, his body torn between them in a spray of red.
Zeriel shoves me toward the nearest, slick black rock, and we claw up, dragging ourselves onto its glistening surface.
The reavers are faster in the water, their skeletal bodies propelling them with an unnatural, serpentine grace. One lunges toward us, its jaw unhinging. Zeriel’s blade flashes in the gloom, lodging into its right eye. With a shriek it flails in the pool.
Another comes for him from his blind side, a silent torpedo of bone just beneath the surface.
Panic seizes me. No time to think strategy.
I react on pure instinct, reaching out with my mind with a sharp, dissonant pulse of pure wrongness, aimed directly at the creature’s predatory focus. Prey is behind you. Danger is above.
The reaver’s attack falters for a half-second, its trajectory shifting just enough. Its jaws snap shut on empty water, inches from Zeriel’s thigh. He spins, reacting to the splash, a flicker of surprise in his eyes as the creature slips back into the water.
That wasn’t luck, I send.
I noticed.
You’re welcome.
Save it. We’re not done.
The water is a churning chaos of death. Nearby, Rook Fenvale is a whirlwind of flashing blades, but he’s surrounded and a second away from being torn apart.
My eyes find Blaise. He moves with an annoyingly fluid ease, the water…
almost seeming to flow with him rather than against him.
A reaver lunges, wide jaws snapping for him—and then, for no reason I can see, it jerks, its momentum breaking.
Blaise drives his blade into the exposed joint, bone splintering in a muffled crack.
To others, it might seem like a lucky strike.
But the gleam in his eyes tells me luck had nothing to do with it.
I keep a wary eye on three more reavers circling us, nudging at them with my gift as subtly as I can to drive them back, while Zeriel and I search the walls for any path of escape.
Damiar Korren catches my eyes as he struggles to find a handhold, his massive frame a liability in the water.
His ward, another terrified woman whose name I never knew, clings to his back.
A reaver closes in. With a guttural roar, Damiar rips her from his back and thrusts her into the creature’s path.
Before I can stop it, the reaver’s jaws close on her torso.
Damiar uses the precious seconds her death buys him to secure his hold and continue to climb.
Yet another display of sheer, callous brutality that steals my breath. These aren’t people anymore. They’re animals, chewing off their own limbs to escape a trap.