Chapter 26 — The Fall
The stone beneath Tibbin's heel split with a sound like tearing paper.
For a frozen heartbeat, he hung there — one arm windmilling, fork still clutched like it could somehow save him.
"Tibbin!" Lenara's voice cracked. She lunged forward, but the cliff groaned, shedding loose shards into the mist.
The eye in the fog didn't blink. It swelled, huge and unblinking, glimmering with a depthless, alien curiosity. The low voice rumbled again, closer now.
"You. Do not. Belong."
The cliff gave way in an explosion of gravel. Tibbin dropped.
Without thinking, Aaren stepped to the edge, Levitine already flaring in his hands. The blade's weight felt alive, tugging toward the mist.
We can reach him, Levitine's voice urged in his mind. But you must trust me.
Aaren planted his feet, heart pounding. "If you've got a plan, now's the time!"
Lenara grabbed his shoulder. "Don't you dare jump—!"
Too late. Aaren hurled himself into the empty air.
---
The mist swallowed everything. Cold stung his skin, and the roar of the wind became a hollow, crushing silence. He could just make out Tibbin flailing below, a blur against the endless white.
"Levitine—!" he shouted.
Hold tight.
The blade's steel rippled like water, elongating into a hooked shape. A pulse of golden light surged down its length, and in the next instant, a tether of shimmering energy shot from its tip. It coiled around Tibbin's waist just as his fork spun away into the abyss.
"Got him!" Aaren yelled — but the moment the tether tightened, the mist around them convulsed.
---
Something moved beneath.
A shadow the size of a fortress wall slid closer, its outline jagged and wrong. That enormous eye rose again through the swirling fog, now so close Aaren could see veins of molten light pulsing behind the glassy surface.
It spoke without moving its mouth — if it had one. The words were inside his skull.
"One of you carries the forbidden thread."
Aaren's grip tightened on Levitine. "What does that mean?"
Ignore it, Levitine hissed in his mind. We leave, now!
---
Above, Koro had anchored himself against a boulder, arm outstretched. "Pull them up!" he barked to Withered Flame, who had braced beside him. Lenara, pale but furious, knelt between them, reaching down like she could pluck Aaren from the air.
The tether jerked hard. Aaren kicked against nothing, dragging Tibbin closer, but the shadow below surged upward, faster than the pull of their friends.
"Come closer, threadbearer," the voice whispered.
The mist thinned for an instant, and Aaren saw it — the thing's shape. Not a single body, but a writhing lattice of limbs and coils, all connected to that one, vast, staring eye.
His gut turned to ice.
---
Levitine's tone sharpened to a blade's edge. Now, Aaren! Swing me!
Aaren twisted midair, slicing the tether upward like a whip. The line snapped them both toward the cliff, the force enough to send them crashing into Koro and Lenara's waiting grip.
They landed in a heap. Tibbin, still wide-eyed and shaking, gasped, "That was amazing! I nearly died!"
"You still might," Lenara shot back, half laughing, half crying as she smacked his shoulder.
But the victory was short-lived.
The mist at the cliff's edge bulged. Fingers — long, spindly, jointed in too many places — hooked over the stone. The eye loomed just below, unblinking.
"I have found you," it said again.
And then it began to climb.