The last four rose together.
Wings beat in the same count. Feathers shook ash loose in rings. Their blades lifted until the edges met. Light braided between them. It was hard and bright. The air tightened. Stone dried and cracked. The smell turned to hot lime dust and burned iron.
Noctis stood inside broken steps and fallen arches. Blood ran down his chest in slow lines. Steam lifted from a hole above his heart. His right forearm was a blood construct to the elbow, pulsing and leaking. Three wings were gone. One wing twitched against scorched muscle each time he breathed. His halo was a dead ring of soot. Feathers stuck to his shoulders and ribs.
He set his feet on grit and fracture. He raised the Twilight Reaver with the blood arm and felt it vibrate from strain. He bared his teeth.
"Come."
The braid came down.
He pulled Sovereign Bulwark IX into place. Plates of crimson force locked, angled to shed impact. He layered false sanctity through the seams. He laced Shadow Veil in the gaps. The shell set with a heavy sound.
The first touch hit like stone dropped from height. The barrier rang. The ring lived in his bones. The floor cracked under his boots. Dust leapt up and stuck to sweat. His blood arm split along its length and sprayed. The Grid closed it with a hard tug. He tasted copper and ash.
The light did not push. It bored. It pressed through edges and sought joints. It found them and widened them. The Bulwark held for one long breath and then began to fold. The top plate bent inward. The force hit his sternum and split cartilage. He heard ribs pop. He could not hear anything else for a count of three.
He pulled more. Command threads, Radiant Barrier inverted, Eucharist Chalice turned to drain. He forced them to sit together. The braid kept coming. The color at the edge went white. The smell went to hot bone. The hair on his neck burned away.
The Bulwark fractured. Shards kicked outward and buried in the walls. Light poured through and cut him. It took skin without tearing. It erased what it touched. The front of his chest opened. The wound did not bleed as blood should. It steamed and showed rib. The heat dried his tongue.
Stone failed under him. The braided light drilled a shaft as it drove him down. Each level took the shock and shattered. He fell in short drops and hard catches. His spine struck edges. His shoulders hit corners. His back struck planes and slid. Each stop took another piece of the Bulwark and threw it into fragments.
He stopped three levels down. Rubble pinned one leg to mid-calf. The other leg had room to move. His hip joint ground. He dug the heel free and kicked debris off his boot. He sat upright against a broken step. The wound in his chest hissed.
He pulled breath. It scraped and caught. He spit black. He pulled the Grid half open. Inversion crawled. It moved slow, like a hand through sand. It found thin sanctity clinging to burned tissue and peeled it free. It fed a little. It could not close anything.
He looked up into the shaft they had made through him and the temple. Four silhouettes hung there inside dust. One's wing drooped. One's helm was split across the skull and showed hair stuck to blood. Their blades still held light. They circled a little to keep distance. They did not speak. They were tired and they still came.
He pushed himself to one knee. He planted the Reaver and used it to stand. His legs shook. The blood arm trembled and reformed at the fingers twice before it held shape. He rolled his jaw to see if it moved without pain. It did not. He held it anyway.
"Again," he said.
They dove.
One spear came low at the thigh. He turned and took it through meat and into stone so the haft stuck. He stamped with his free boot, pinned the shaft, and dragged the angel forward by its weapon. The second blade came high and went across his back. It cut a strip down to bone. Heat filled the cut. He did not look. He stepped in and wrote an answer with the Reaver. The edge chewed through gorget and throat and spine. Blood splashed his chest and steamed when it hit the wound.
The third came along the wall of the shaft, aiming for the side where his ribs showed. He lifted an elbow and took the edge on bone to turn it enough. It cut under his arm and out. He caught the helm with his left hand and squeezed. The shell buckled and the skull with it. He dropped the body.
The fourth did not strike. It clipped him with a shoulder and carried him two paces so the others could set again. The impact drove grit into the wound. He fought for breath, found it, pulled it in with a sound.
They rose two body-lengths. Their wings beat together. The light on the blades steadied again.
The first hit of the second pass took his remaining wing at the root. It ripped free and left bare muscle. He did not look. He put the Reaver across his body and locked both hands on the grip, one flesh, one blood. The next strike landed into metal and threw sparks. The next slid along and bit into the meat of his shoulder and stuck for a half-inch. He turned under it, trapped it, and slammed his forehead into the visor. The edge came free. The visor caved. He put the scythes out and drew a low circle. Ankles parted where metal was thin. An angel fell and took its blade with it.
The pressure in the shaft did not let go. Heat held. Dust hung. His lungs fought it. He swallowed dry air and ash.
They kept their timing. They were trained for this. They had been trained for hours like this for years. They did not let their arms shake. They did not rush. They placed cuts where he could not guard both places at once.
His speed dropped. Dominion Step took a long count to answer. The displacement came late and short. He moved a body-length when he needed three. His phantom showed for a half-swung cut and burned out. He tasted the failure like metal.
They pressed on that lag. One blade took his shoulder socket and opened it. One spear scraped his sternum and lodged. He turned to break the shaft. He did not turn far enough. The haft braced against stone. The blade drove deeper.
He braced on the Reaver and pushed off with both feet. He used the weight of his body to tear free. The spear slid out in an ugly sound and took a strip with it. He turned on the man who held it and bit him in the throat. The heat in the blood fought him. He swallowed until it did not.
Two moved on him while his mouth was full. One cut along his jaw and opened it. Teeth showed through. The other cut his calf so the knee almost went. He set his heel and kept it. He spit blood. He lifted the Reaver across his body like a wall and caught both blades on the flat. He shoved forward a step. It moved them another. It made room.
They rose again and spread.
He stood in the center of the shaft. Blood ran off the Reaver and off his chin. His chest steamed. The cut on his back burned like wire. The scent was burned feather and iron and ash. He kept his grip.
They came together one more time. All four. It was not a braid. It was four edges at the same moment. One took his bicep. One took his side. One took his cheekbone. The spear went through him. It entered high and left out his back and into stone with a hard knock. The shaft pinned him to the step. The point made the floor ring.
His body tried to stand and could not. He put both hands on the wood and pulled. The muscles in his chest slid wrong. Something tore. He bared his teeth. Blood fell in a heavy rope. He sucked air that did not feed him.
The angel on the spear stepped in and braced. It pushed. The wood drove him a hand's width deeper. He saw a short white flash behind his eyes. The next breath did not come. The pressure inside his chest went to nothing. His head sagged.
The Grid threw a warning and then went thin. The sanctity lodged in the wound blocked the work. The lines slowed to a crawl. He could feel them scraping along the edges of the damage and failing to catch.
Hands pulled him off the wood. He hit stone. The spear slid free with a wet sound. He rolled until a broken pillar stopped him. He lay on his side. Blood leaked and ran along the groove of the floor and down into cracks. His eyes were open and did not track. The air left through the hole and made a soft sound.
The four held the shaft rim again. They watched. They waited through time enough for a man to die. Their blades lowered. Their wings eased. They turned. Two took the Reaver by the grip with spearpoints, flicked it away from his reach, and let it skid into a heap of feathers and bone. The others dragged his ankle two paces and left him under a beam that creaked and did not fall.
They rose through dust and smoke toward the strip of sea.
He lay still.
Heat moved up through the shaft and kept the air hot. The smell stayed thick. Feathers settled in slow spirals. Blood ticked where it dripped from edges.
The wound in his chest steamed. The steam thinned. It came again. It thinned again. His lips went dry and cracked. He swallowed nothing.
Hunger shifted.
It came first as a pressure under the ribs, a hand closing where the heart had been. It tightened. It pulled. The Grid, even throttled, heard the pull. It opened a little. Blood essence bled from reserve into the hole. Sanctity burned it and threw it back as steam. He exhaled a thin cloud and tasted burnt metal.
The smell of nearby blood cut through that taste. It was close. It was his work. The pool under a split skull still ran. He moved a hand. The fingers dragged. They found grit, then warm slick. He closed. He slipped. He closed again. He brought it to his mouth.
He bit. He swallowed. The heat ran along his throat and into the hole and stung. He forced another mouthful. He forced another. The sting dulled. The Grid found a path where the sanctity had cooled enough to let it pass and took it.
He put his mouth to the floor and licked blood out of the lines cut by falling stone. He breathed in thin gasps between swallows. He crawled a hand and then an elbow farther and found another pool and drank it.
The beam above him made a small sound when rubble shifted. It did not fall.
He did not rise. He ate until the floor under his mouth was dry and the blood on his teeth had gone from hot to warm.
The air on his tongue started to taste like iron only, not iron with fire under it.
He kept his eyes open and looking in one place so the world would stop rolling.
He stayed like that for a count of long breaths.
He turned his head and took a new breath and it did not break.
He rolled to his back. The edges of the wound pulled across stone and burned. He did it slow. He set his hand behind him and pushed himself a hand's height up the step. He sat against stone and put his head back.
The shaft above showed a strip of sky. Smoke crossed it in long lines. The color had gone from white to iron. The sea beyond burned in small places where oil floated. Black birds crossed once and then were gone.
He let his hands rest on his thighs. He watched the shaft until the edges stopped breathing in and out with him. He lowered his gaze to the floor so the room would sit still.
He heard wings. Not above. Far. It was a patrol turning, not here yet. He made a note and did nothing.
He closed his mouth and pressed his tongue to the wound's inside edge to bring the taste of iron up and keep his head clear.
He did not stand. He did not move more than a hand's width for a long count.
He waited for the next blow that did not come.
He set his jaw and pulled the Grid open another finger's width.
It took a little more sanctity from the edges and cut it out. It moved it into blood. It pushed blood into the hole. It held it there. It began to knit lines of meat across another line. It kept rhythm for the missing thing and made a beat against bone.
He did not speak.
He breathed.
He listened to stone, to air, to wings far away, to the quiet sound blood makes when it runs into a crack in old steps.
He let the beat take hold.
He looked down and put his hand on the floor to stand.
His legs argued and then took weight.
He pushed off the step and stood in the broken chamber with blood drying in lines across his chest and ash on his shoulders.
He looked up the shaft again at the absence where the four had been.
He picked a point on the wall and walked to it. He put his fingers in a crack and pulled. Stone came away in a chalky pinch. He used the crack for a ladder.
He climbed one body-length and stopped and breathed and climbed another and stopped. He did not spend the Step. He did not reach for speed. He conserved what he had.
He reached the first ledge and pulled himself onto it and let his legs float for a count and then drew them under him and stood again.
He looked down once.
Blood lay in a wide map across the floor, dark against pale dust, cut by feather drifts. Heat moved off it in bands.
He looked up.
He kept climbing.
He reached the second ledge. He stood. He rolled his shoulders to set the joint. It clicked in place and stayed.
He reached the lip of the shaft and put both hands on the edge and lifted. His chest burned with the strain and kept the beat. He slid onto the broken platform above.
Wind met him. It tasted like salt and ash and hot iron. It ran cold along the wet on his skin. He let it. He took it into his mouth and lungs and held it and let it out slow.
The temple square lay wrecked. Columns were cut in half. Roofs were gone. Feathers lay in piles. Armor lay open like shells. Some bodies burned still where oil or sanctity had found them. The smell was cooked meat and soot and brine.
He looked for the Reaver and saw it three lengths away under a drift of feathers and a broken brazier. He walked to it. He pushed the brazier with his foot. He cleared the feathers with his hand. He lifted the blade with the blood arm and then put his other hand to the grip too. The weight steadied him. He rolled the edge along his thigh to feel if it would catch on dents. It did not. He nodded once.
He stood there a count more with the blade in his hand and his breath steady and his eyes on the shaft.
He waited to see if anything moved.
Nothing did.
He turned his head and tracked the line the last two had taken toward sea.
He could not see them.
He was not done with them.
He set his shoulders. He took one step, felt what it cost, and made the second.
He crossed the square toward the outer edge where the platforms broke and the wind came in hard from the water. He did not hurry. He did not call the Step. He kept the beat.
He reached the edge and looked down. The sea slapped the floating foundations. Oil burned in long sheets. Bodies moved with the water and hit stone with dull sounds. Gulls fought over them and lifted.
He raised his head and studied the sky for movement. Light at distance. Not near. He marked it and watched and then let it go.
He turned from the edge and went back to the shaft and stood at it again and looked down.
He had not left it clean. He did not care. He was not done.
He stood and listened.
He let the cold air dry the blood on his chest to a tack.
He kept his hands on the Reaver and felt the tremor in the blood arm slow.
He waited for their return or for his next breath to fail.
Neither came.
He set the blade's tip on stone and let it take some of his weight.
He blinked ash out of his eyes and rolled his neck to keep it from locking.
He stood there until day moved toward dusk and the light at the edge of the sky went from iron to darker iron.
He did not leave the shaft.
He did not speak.
He kept the beat and held the square.