[Ayame's POV]
We are running through the woods. My breath is steady, but his is ragged. My current form is tall and unrestrained, and it has much stamina to spare, even with the lingering effects of the drug and the injury from the blow. I can still go. I can still run.
Everything happened in a flash. The guards. The cultists. Their hands grabbing. The syringe. The cold floor of the cart. The chanting in the ruined cathedral. It all happened so quickly. I had my suspicions about this town, a deep, instinctual distrust. However, I did not know the specifics. I did not know they were conducting blood sacrifices to that corrupted flame. I, despite being someone trained in shadow, someone experienced in the bloody, heartless operations of a world at war, was naive. I saw the signs, but I did not parse their true meaning. A failure of analysis. I will not make that mistake again.
Shouts resonate from a distance away. They are chasing us through the blue-tinged forest. Though it is night, the ambient light from the twin moons does nothing to hide our moving silhouettes. The trees thin ahead. Beyond them, I see only star-flecked darkness. A cliff. The end of the continent. The ground simply stops, and the Great Void begins.
The Celestial Rails are not on land. They are suspended in the void itself, just beyond the ledge, hovering in the air at a terrifying distance from the solid ground. We are, of course, not at the proper boarding point. There is normally a bridge of concentrated, solidified fate essence leading to the dock. We have strayed far off course. We are headed into open emptiness.
He takes my arm. A flash of surprise runs through me. I do not reject his grip. His hand is firm, an anchor point.
With his other arm, he gestures forward. A bright, glowing chain of pure white energy shoots from his hand. It streaks through the air, and with a sharp tug, it pulls us forward. He leaves the ground in a powerful arc, pulling me with him. We soar over a dense thicket, landing roughly but moving, putting more distance between us and the shouts.
We lose them momentarily as the trees clear. We are in an open grass field now, the cool blades whipping at our legs. We are running directly toward the ledge. Toward the absolute end of the world.
It is suicide.
But I do not care.
With him, even this feels possible. The cold logic of survival is overridden by a different current. A trust that defies reason.
The angry shouts grow quieter, fading into the rustle of the grass and the wind. He is laughing. A low, breathless chuckle escapes him as we run.
At a joke? I think. What joke? Is something funny?
I ask, my voice steady despite the run. "What is so funny?"
He looks back at me, and his expression shifts to something uncomfortable, as if he has been caught in a lie. "Nothing," he says quickly. Then he corrects himself. "A friend of mine is saying something funny. No, I mean… they said something funny." He changes the tense, from present to past.
Why? The correction is deliberate. Sad. It tells me this 'friend' is no longer present. Is no longer able to speak. The laugh was not at a joke, but at memory, or at the absurdity of our situation. I do not understand the impulse.
Well, whatever it is, it must have been a truly potent joke. Jokes, I do not get them. I have never understood them. They are supposed to light joy in humans. I find the mechanism odd. Illogical.
He is an arm's length from me as we near the precipice. I glance up. The cosmic debris is visible here, at the edge. Rocks of various sizes, some as large as houses, suspended motionless in the air. Though it is night, the void is not empty black. It is a deep, velvety purple, speckled with countless distant, shimmering lights that are not stars, but fragments of other realms, glowing minerals, and condensed fate essence. It looks like an endless, inverted starry sky. And in the distance, within that void, is the structure. A faint, ancient platform with carved stone pillars, silhouetted against the cosmic glow. The Sky-Dock.
Lucid, in front of me, turns suddenly. He grabs my other arm. I gasp slightly, caught off guard. My form is too big, too tall in this state. Our balance is precarious. We will tumble. We will fall over the edge.
I start to fall forward, over him. He does not let go. Instead, he drapes both of my arms around himself, pulling me close. He looks up at me, his misted face tilted back. I think he is smiling. A real, wide, suggestive smile that seems to cut through the fear and the chase. It lights something unfamiliar inside my chest. A quick, warm spark.
"Buckle up!" he yells, his voice full of a wild energy I have not heard before.
We fall.
We step off the solid ground and fall into the void.
For a heart-stopping moment, there is nothing under our feet. Only the infinite drop. My instincts scream to change, to grab, to claw at the retreating cliff face. But he holds me. Hand in hand, then he hugs me tight just below my chest with one arm, his body pressed against mine. With his free hand, he shoots another chain. This one is longer, brighter. It whips through the void and wraps with a solid *clank* around a massive, floating rock the size of a small hill.
The chain goes taut.
Our fall does not stop. It becomes a swing.
We are flung in a wide, soaring arc through the open nothingness. The wind screams past us. The cliff face rushes by in a blur of rock and grass, then is gone. Below us is only the mesmerizing, star-dusted purple abyss. Above us, more floating debris hangs like ancient, silent sentinels.
It is terrifying.
It is exhilarating.
He lets out a whoop, a pure sound of adrenaline and triumph. The chain pulls us, not down, but forward, across the gulf. We are a pendulum swinging through the cosmos. He releases the chain at the perfect moment, and for a second, we are in free flight again, soaring toward the distant stone platform.
Another chain shoots out, then another. He uses them like grapple hooks, like the limbs of some agile void-creature, pulling us from one floating anchor point to the next. Each release and catch is a jolt that runs through both our bodies. Each arc is a trajectory calculated in a split-second by his will.
I hold on. I do not close my eyes. I watch it all. The impossible architecture of the void. The determined set of his shoulders as he concentrates. The way the cosmic light reflects in his swirling mist.
The fear is gone. In its place is a thrilling, electric clarity.
We are not falling to our deaths. We are flying.
The final chain pulls us up and onto the solid, worn stone of the Sky-Dock platform. We land in a stumbling heap, our momentum carrying us forward a few steps before we collapse together onto the cool, ancient stone, gasping for air.
The shouts from the cliff edge are gone, swallowed by distance and the vast silence of the void. We are alone, on an island of rock and history, suspended in everything.
My heart is pounding, a rapid, strong drumbeat against my ribs. His is too, a frantic rhythm I can feel where our bodies are pressed together.
He rolls onto his back, chest heaving, and lets out another laugh. This one is less frantic, more amazed.
I sit up, looking back the way we came. The continent is a dark, jagged silhouette against the void's glow. It looks small from here. Insignificant. The town, with its secrets and its malice, is an invisible speck.
I look down at him. He is staring up at the strange, star-filled 'sky' of the abyss, his mist calm.
"It…" I begin, searching for the right word. The feeling is still buzzing in my veins. "It was fun."
He turns his head toward me. I cannot see his eyes, but I feel his attention. The smile is back in his voice. "Yeah," he breathes. "It really was."
Fun. A simple human word for a complex cocktail of terror, trust, and triumph. I did not understand it before. I think I am beginning to now.
I stand, offering him a hand. He takes it, and I pull him to his feet. We stand together on the edge of the dock, looking around, The Sky-Dock has people, many people, some looking at us puzzled from the way we had just come. There is desk carved of stone and just past it lie the Celestial Rails, glowing pathways of fate essence, stretch away from the Sky dock into the infinite void, waiting to carry us to the Kingdom of Vex.
The path is still there. But the way we walk it has changed. We are no longer just survivors trudging across land. We have flown through the void itself. And somehow, that makes all the difference.