Anchor Six's next heartbeat rolled up from the molten dark like a hammerblow. Kael felt it in his teeth. Two side-trenches were already sealed, but the main fissure still gaped half-open; molten glass twitched inside it like a muscle. One more pulse and the plateau could split again.
Steam hissed through a hundred hairline cracks. The heat smelled of copper and burned citrus. Kael settled his stance and braced the Nullglaive's silver edge against the glowing slit. Every friend within ten steps glanced his way. Thorn hauled the Emberguard shield into a low brace, knees bent; Rei caught the mule's panic and whispered soothing nonsense; Veyra steadied a pale fox illusion on the rim, its tails sweeping vapour aside. Elias closed his cracked lens, rune wheels hovering around his gauntlet like fireflies. Gerrin and his apprentice Sena crouched over their frost coil, coaxing the last of its dwindling chill. Liora Vale's three remaining Silver-Leaf archers nocked frost-glyph shafts, ready to stop any crawler that dared.
Kael took one breath, tasting glass dust on his tongue.
"Three," he called.
Sena laid her hands on the coil; blue vapour spilled across molten rock, icing the fissure lip.
"Two."
Anchor Six rumbled, deeper than thunder. Kael felt the ribs under his boots tense.
"One."
He drove the Nullglaive downhill in a single clean stroke. The blade's seam erupted; a silver ribbon sliced straight through the molten glass. Light flared. Sparks skittered outward—soft at first, then abruptly loud, like breaking icicles. Molten edges shrank away from the silver glow, closing behind the cut. Elias's rune wheels flared violet, catching the pressure surge and forcing it sideways in a tight arc. The fissure snapped shut with a hiss like water poured on iron.
A single, perfectly pitched gong rolled across the basin. Everything hushed. Steam trails collapsed to thin vapour. Kael's ears rang with silence that felt fragile as spun glass.
White text marched across his sight:
Anchor Six sealed. Exit-Gate fuse engaged. 23 h 59 m 54 s …
No bonuses. Just the unforgiving clock.
The hush broke as a crawler burst from a side vent and scuttled toward Gerrin. Liora shot it clean through the face. Frost bloomed; the creature shattered.
Kael managed one breath of relief—and then Daric Rhal's Malkyre squad crashed out of the haze.
Two soldiers hauled a sled stacked with raw Essentia shards, a third carried Gerrin's spare frost coil, its runes flickering like a dying lantern. Rhal himself led them, helm under his arm, mouth twisted between triumph and fear.
Thorn swore under his breath. "That coil holds the exit bridge."
Kael stepped forward. "Rhal! Bring it back!"
Rhal never slowed. "We risked lives for this haul. Find another coil." He gestured to his haulers. "Move!"
One hauler's boot clipped a weak glass plate. The plate shattered; hissed steam shot upward, and the man sank to his knees, sled tilting. The second hauler tried to yank him free. Their arms locked like chain links—but the ground opened. In an instant both men and the sled were gone, swallowed by orange glow, glass popping like oil.
Rhal stumbled backward, scraping molten dust off his coat, still clutching the coil. A fresher crack skated past him. Gerrin snarled, took one step, then checked himself—Sena still needed him. The choice carved tension across his face.
Steam wavered. Crawlers, roused by the tremor, poured from vents in clusters of five and six. The first wave converged on Sena. Thorn lunged, shield high, but not fast enough. One crawler struck, its glass hooks stabbing through the apprentice's robe. The blow slammed her to basalt. Gerrin shouted her name, but the claws were already through her chest. Sena gasped once—still thinking, maybe, about frost sums and rune order—then went still, eyes open.
Gerrin screamed—a raw, tearing sound—and hurled his coil's last burst. Ice flash-froze the crawler, cracked, shattered, then sputtered uselessly against the next.
Liora's point archer loosed two arrows that pinned crawlers to the slope, but a third beast leapt the gap and tackled her at the waist. Frost wood snapped. She drove the arrow into its head point-blank; shards of mirror flesh sprayed—but its weight dragged her toward a vent plume. Heat and ghost-vapour roared together. She vanished in white bloom. When vapour cleared, only her bow lay smoking on glass.
Two dead in ten seconds. The plateau roared to remind them that victory had a greater price.
"Form shield!" Kael bellowed.
Thorn slammed the Emberguard rim into rock, kneeling so the shield's curved face became a wall. Rei lashed her Stormbind rope around the mule and yanked it behind cover. Veyra split her fox illusion into two glowing doubles that harried crawlers from the flanks. Elias, voice trembling, flung a rune cluster that trapped a crawler in a violet gravity twist; the creature compressed into a neat cube and clattered harmlessly to the ground.
Gerrin crouched over Sena's body, grief carving deep lines in his ice-burned skin. Kael wanted to pull him clear, but more crawlers kept coming.
Varin, farther upslope, fed slack through his waist-looped rope, keeping the line taut for any retreating ally. His eyes tracked every moving enemy and every fault line. Steam ghosts twined overhead, sniffing for Essentia.
Anchor Six's pulse returned—now a heavy seven-count, quicker than before. The ground under Varin trembled. A fresh fissure scissored toward him. He hammered a spare piton into a basalt seam, looping rope—trying to anchor them again. The fissure widened. Basalt teeth broke free. Varin slipped, boots skidding. The rope snapped taut, jerking Thorn hard against his shield.
Kael saw the slab tilt. He moved.
Ghostline Step lurched under his skin, the silver blur eager to cut distance, but the drop between Varin and safety was growing too wide. The piton ripped out of rock; rope whipped like a live snake. Varin slid toward orange glow.
Kael forced a thought—the Veilcore seed flexed—then the world split open in a single, silver crease.
One heartbeat earlier Ghostline had been a flicker on stone. Now the System's voice stamped a direct instruction across his sight:
Shear Step – cut a razor-thin slit in space up to four strides long. User (and anything in direct contact) glides through, ignoring surfaces. Normal use costs no Essentia and causes only brief vertigo. Hauling heavy loads or stretching the full distance induces sharp fatigue.
No mystery left. Just do it or watch Varin die.
Kael grabbed the rope tail. The silver slit appeared—no thicker than parchment, vertical as a blade. Cold roared out, numbing his hands. Right through that slit he could see Varin already safe beside Thorn—an impossible mirror image waiting to be filled.
He stepped.
Heat vanished. Sound vanished. The world turned to a silent corridor of white frost. For the blink of a blink he felt as if he held Varin on one side and Thorn on the other, stretched between two points already touching. Then the slit snapped closed with a soft hiss and reality clapped back like stomping boots.
They spilled onto solid basalt four paces uphill from the fissure. Kael's knees buckled; his stomach lurched; stars flickered across his vision. Varin collapsed on all fours, rope still around his waist, panting.
Kael tasted blood, coppery and sharp. Heavy fatigue—yes—but his bones were intact, his hands unburned. Shear Step had cost less than Shardwalk through molten stone would have, but it hollowed his muscles like weeks without sleep.
Thorn shouldered up beside them, eyes wide. "You… sliced air."
"Short-cut," Kael rasped. "One use at a time."
Further upslope Rhal staggered across his cracked ice path, coil still under his arm, salvage crate abandoned. The coil sparked again—unstable. Gerrin's face twisted from grief to fury. He snatched a shard of broken frost coil and limped toward Rhal, but Kael lifted a hand.
"We stabilise the bridge first," he said, voice harsh but steady. "Grief after."
Gerrin nodded once, tears freezing on his cheeks, and limped back toward his last working coil.
Heat spiked: crawlers smelled weakness and rallied. Thorn raised shield; Liora's remaining archers shot arrow after arrow, killing three, but one leapt past and hooked Gerrin's calf. Varin, still kneeling, swung his hammer at the crawler's joint. Hollow bones shattered. Thorn punted the crippled creature into a vent, where it burst in red light.
Elias's voice cracked. "If we lose that bridge coil we can't cross the exit trench before the gate collapses."
Gerrin wiped blood from his leg and slammed the coil onto a cooler fissure. Frost fanned out, forming a spindly blue span toward the first chain link. This bridge looked thinner than the earlier one—seven finger-widths thick at best. But runes pulsed along it like a heartbeat—Kael's one gift for stopping the anchor's.
He faced the survivors. Thorn, armour dented and smoking. Rei, fingers scorched, but blades shining. Veyra, fox masks flickering in exhausting loops. Elias, lens glowing dimmer now, glyph wheels faltering. Gerrin shaking on one good leg. Liora's two archers battered, quivers half-empty. The mule, flank seared, but still breathing.
And Varin—rope coiled around his waist, knuckles split from hammer blows—alive. The small loop of red ribbon on his wrist shone scarlet in heat glare.
"Single file," Kael commanded. "Thorn first, mule, Gerrin, archers, Elias, Veyra, Varin. I'm last. Keep three steps apart. No sudden stops."
Thorn tested the blue ice with his shield. It flexed but held. He moved, boots crunching. The mule balked, but Rei hissed encouragement and tapped its flank. It followed.
Kael dragged himself to his feet, shoulders leaden. Shear Step's chill still clung to his bones, but the ground no longer shook. Anchor Six, sealed, thumped slow seven-counts like a massive tired heart.
Halfway across the bridge, frost creaked like an old hull. Thorn's weight cracked a seam. He shifted onto shield edge, distributing mass; the bridge settled.
The archers crossed next; one slipped, ice splintered, Kael's heart stuttered—then Gerrin froze the fracture with a snap of his coil, buying enough time for them to scramble upright.
Elias and Veyra cleared, the fox masks dashing ahead to scout footholds. Varin edged out next, rope still tied to Thorn. Every time the bridge popped, he whispered numbers—breaking tension with ledger habits. "Seven metres, six, five…"
Kael waited until every boot stepped onto basalt on the far bank. Then he set heel to frost.
Cold bit through his soles. The bridge now hummed with strain, runes flaring irregularly. Each step shot pain up his calves. At midpoint he glanced back. The basin was littered with broken frost, crawler corpses, the shards of a life Gerrin would never get back, and the Essentia sled half-submerged like a lost treasure.
He faced forward. Anchor Six's ribs lay quiet behind him; ahead, the chain climbed in rattling links toward the exit arch, a silhouette against violet sky. Twenty-three hours, thirty-two minutes left.
Kael stepped onto basalt. The bridge groaned, runes flickered out, and the ice collapsed into orange liquid behind him with a roar like wet timber in flames.
He lifted the Nullglaive, planted it point-down, and drew one splitting breath. "We climb," he said. "No stops. The Gate owes us daylight at the other side."
Thorn led the mule toward the first link. Gerrin glanced back once at Sena's distant form, swallowed grief, and followed. Liora's archers moved on silent feet, frost arrows clinking in empty quivers. Elias leaned on Veyra's shoulder, blinking grit from tired eyes. Varin settled rope around his chest, spare hammer tucked into belt, ribbon flashing red.
Kael took the tail, muscles trembling from the cost of Shear Step, but heartbeat steady. Anchor Six thudded far below, a dying giant quieting at last. The chain ahead thrummed like a drumline to urge them skyward.
By the time first link metal burned his palms, he felt the promise again—five drops of old blood, one bright loop on Varin's wrist, and a new razor edge tucked inside his seed. Enough to make it to daylight, or to bleed on the chain trying.
He climbed, every rung another second claimed from the ticking fuse of the Gate.