Dust-grey dawn found Kael's cohort staring up a near-vertical throat of stone and iron. Two titanic chains crossed the cliff like intersecting bridges, each link the size of a merchant barge. Where they met—a welded splice twenty meters overhead—runic seams glowed a dangerous red-orange. Every pull from the Chain-Crowned Leviathan far above made the splice blister, ooze metal, then cool in twitching pulses. If it parted, both chains would snap back like whips, and the anchors they'd labored to secure would unravel.
Elias leaned forward, squinting at rune-flares through the morning haze. "Temperature spikes cycle every ninety seconds. During the dip we can climb without cooking alive."
"Can," Rei echoed, rolling her shoulders. Blue sparks crackled along her collarbone before fading; her legs still trembled from the furnace sprint. "Will is another story."
Thorn thumped the ground with his shield rim, testing the rock's mood. "We go now or watch the beast yank the ridge apart."
Veyra's fox-mask figment drifted upward, glassy eyes glinting. It dissolved in a hiss ten meters high—the heat line where flesh would blister.
Kael studied the melt pattern, the Nullglaive's weight familiar against his spine. The heirloom blade's matte shaft and moon-silver inlays drank the glow and seemed to grow colder, reminding him of nights when his great-grandfather had shown it by lamplight, muttering that it was forged to cut things no mortal steel could touch. Today it would cut distance.
He pointed at the left-hand chain. "Rei and Veyra first. Stormbind a lightning tether across the worst gap; figment ladder for Thorn. Elias rides Thorn's throw to halfway. I'll follow, lock the weld."
Rei inhaled, Essentia sparking in her limbs. When the runes dulled to sullen orange she leapt, driving a dagger into hot iron. The blade's edge glowed blue—Stormbind condensed lightning down the metal and spat out a crackling cable that anchored itself on the opposite side of the weld. The charge cost eight units; Rei's breath hitched but she held.
Veyra flicked her wrist; the fox-mask reformed into a staircase of shimmering steps, each lasting exactly the span of her stride. She ascended beside the lightning line, skirt brushing molten drips that hissed on illusory glass.
Thorn crouched. Elias planted one foot on the shield boss. "On three," he said, but Thorn hurled him on two, the sudden kinetic shove sending Elias ten meters skyward. His patched gauntlet gave off a pained whine, vector field sparking around boots just enough to let him redirect onto a safe rung.
"C-core stable," Elias muttered, more hopeful than certain.
Thorn followed by brute force, gauntlet runes venting heat into columns of curling steam whenever his hands closed on glowing iron. Emberguard drank the burn, skin beneath reddening but not charring. He climbed like a siege tower wearing a man's shape.
Kael waited for the next heat lull. When it came he pushed off, Phantom Step blurring him six meters up the side of the chain—no Essentia cost for the short phase, only a hot slice of wind tugging at hair and cloak. Gauntlet fingers found a rivet. He hauled himself onto the splice lip where molten iron bulged like a cauterized wound.
The runes flared orange-red again, and every climber felt the temperature spike. Elias cursed, gauntlet crystals warping faintly. Rei's lightning tether vibrated, bits of slag dripping from its length into the canyon. Veyra's figment steps flickered thin. Thorn growled as metal hissed beneath his palms.
Kael drew the Nullglaive. In the welding glow the dark shaft looked ashen, the silver inlay lines quietly pulsing. He wedged the blade between two chain segments, levered until the sagging gap cinched tighter. Sparks showered his shoulders, stinging through cloak and tunic.
"Thirty seconds," Elias rasped from above, tracking the rune pulse with trembling fingers.
Rei slammed her second dagger into the opposite side of the weld, channeling another four Essentia—less lightning this time, more steady charge. Blue shocks raced across the joint, forcing molten iron to solidify in a glimmer-frost sheen. The strain cost her; sweat rolled down her neck.
Veyra whispered to the wolf-mask figment, letting it surge across the chain surface and flatten into a skin of shimmering shadow that covered fissures like a patch. For an instant the weld drank the illusion, cooling faster inside the shade.
Thorn arrived level with Kael. One hand braced the chain; the other lifted the shield's rim and slammed it onto the softest bulge, Emberguard flashing white. Heat bled into rune channels carved on the metal face, then vented upward in a hiss. The bulge set like tempered glass.
The runes on the weld guttered from angry orange to a steady gold.
System text scrolled in mid-air, letters pricking the eye like starlight:
[Splice Reinforced — Chain Tension Reduced]
Kael's Essentia meter slipped from 34 to 28—acceptable. Everyone else gained a small surge as the chain fed stable energy back into Veilcores. Above, the Leviathan's pull slackened; a deep, rumbling exhale rolled across the sky.
"I'd call that a day's work," Elias said, voice stripped raw.
"Day's not done." Thorn pointed down-chain. Molten slag had seeped from earlier cracks, pooling into serpent shapes the length of wolves. They shivered, eyes igniting cobalt blue.
Four Slagwyrms reared, jaws dripping iron threads that hardened mid-air into razor wires.
Rei's tired laugh was almost hysterical. "Of course."
Kael planted the glaive blade-down, balancing on the weld lip. "Hold fast footing. Strike cores—iron's brittle where the blue light shows."
The first wyrm lunged for Thorn. He met it shield-first; Emberguard devoured the impact heat but left a bar of glowing steel stuck to the rim. Thorn twisted, shearing the worm's jaw. Veyra's fox-mask darted in, its illusory tail wrapping the wyrm's neck. It thrashed at emptiness—opening its core to Kael's descending glaive. The weapon's mirror-dull edge cut through molten hide, splitting the heart-spark within. The body hardened to black slag and crumbled away, raining pebbles.
Two wyrms targeted Rei. She exhaled, forced a final jolt of Stormbind through her knives—lightning arced between their open maws, chaining them together. They shrieked, coils twisting inward around the tether until cores met and fused. One exploded in a fountain of sparks, the other tumbled lifeless past Kael's boots.
The last wyrm coiled around Elias's perch. The engineer muttered a curse, shifted stance, and burned his newly-patched vector reserve: a single gravity spike disgorged, pulling the wyrm off the chain into empty air. It whirled wildly, snatched a length of molten iron mid-fall, and flung it upward desperation-fast—straight toward Elias's face.
Thorn moved first. Heat-heavy shield swung like a hammer, intercepting the iron spear. Metal clanged, ricocheted into space. Thorn's gauntlet glowed white from the absorbed heat, but he exhaled slowly, venting warmth in a plume of harmless steam.
System letters flickered once more, this time with a softer glow:
[Slagwyrm Threat Neutralized — Essentia +6]
With danger past, silence rushed in—a silence of cooling iron and rattled hearts.
Rei slumped against a rivet, panting. "No more lightning today. Not even for dramatic effect."
Elias slithered down beside her, shaking out his gauntlet hand. "Vector core held. Miracles counted."
Veyra dismissed the wolf-mask with a finger snap; the fox lingered, curling around her shoulders like a shawl made of shadow.
Thorn balanced his shield against the chain and flexed scorched fingers. "Next splice is another hundred vertical meters," he said. "Better to camp lower and climb cooled iron tomorrow."
Kael wiped slag flecks from the Nullglaive's blade. The silver inlays drank the firelight and glimmered faintly, as if pleased. He remembered his great-grandfather's warning: Good steel shapes fate; this one cuts it. He wasn't sure he believed that— fate felt heavier than any blade—yet holding the glaive made the climb seem possible.
"Down-chain ledge looked flat enough for camp," he said. "We patch whatever burns we can, ration Essentia, and watch the Leviathan for fresh tugs."
They descended carefully, moving with the fatigue of people who'd spent more coin than they'd earned today. As they reached the ledge, the sun finally broke through violet cloud shear, spilling hazy gold across rusted anchors and molten drips. The light painted each survivor in a hopeful glow—brief, fragile, but real.
Kael set the butt of the Nullglaive against rock and leaned his forehead on the shaft, feeling tired steel pulse with remembered fire. Above, iron links groaned their endless warning. Below, the world waited to see if climbers could stitch chains tight before dawn demanded another toll.
Coin spent. Coin yet to earn. The climb continued.