Page 44 of The First Scar
But I thought of the wards. The mission. Serenya's face if I came back broken—or didn't come back at all.
I opened the door.
The Shadow surged up, hungry and wanting, and I felt the Light flare in response—two forces slamming together. Heat and cold at once, fire in my lungs and ice in my spine, my skin straining against what was happening beneath it. My breath caught and my vision fractured.
"Don't separate them." Dreadscale's voice broke through. "Let them meet. Let them touch."
They'll destroy each other. They'll destroy me.
"Three heartbeats, Amaria. Hold."
The Light and Shadow crashed together—light and truth, Grief and clarity—
One heartbeat.
My ribs stung like they were being pried apart from the inside. A cord behind my sternum pulled taut, vibrating at a frequency I could feel in my teeth.
Two heartbeats.
Heat bloomed up my throat as a chill sank into my gut.
Three heartbeats.
I let go.
My eyes flew open. I was on my knees, gasping, hands braced against my thighs. Both Marks arced. The world had turned hyperreal—edges crisp, colors saturated, every detail dialed up to a frequency I'd never accessed before.
Dreadscale watched me with quiet approval. Or just the absence of disappointment maybe.
"Three heartbeats," he said. "You'll need more than that to breach the wards. But it's a start."
"Felt like a lot more than three," I managed.
"It always does." He was already pulling back into the shadows before I'd finished the sentence. "Don't let fear make you clumsy. The Shadow knows when you're lying to it."
By the time I blinked, he'd vanished. I sat there shaking, but somehow more prepared than I'd been five minutes ago.
Serenya offered me her waterskin. "See? Just three minutes."
I took the water and drank deep, not trusting myself to speak.
Brannick's voice rang out across the chamber. "We move in two. Finish up."
I wiped my mouth, threw back my shoulders, and buried the trembling deep enough where no one could see it.
We surfaced through a drainage culvert on the city's outer edge—a rusted grate that Brannick shouldered open, spilling us onto a dirt slope above a dry canal bed. After hours underground, the open sky hit like a slap. Stars still out, but fading. The air tasted different up here. Thinner. Colder.
The predawn chill went straight through my leathers. Wonderful. Cold, dark, and heading toward something that wanted to kill me. Just another Tuesday.
We crouched in the rubble of the Ruined City, pressed against a wall that had been grandeuronce—temple, merchant's hall, didn't matter now. Just disintegrating stone and creeping vines, the bones of a place nobody had bothered to bury. Wind moved through the empty window frames with a sustained moan. The whole place smelled like wet limestone and rust and the green rot of things growing where they shouldn't.
Brannick settled beside me. Extended a canteen wordlessly. I pulled my own from my belt instead.
His expression didn't change. He'd learn.
His usual warmth was banked now, replaced with an edge. Professional.
"Tower's abandoned," he murmured, barely a whisper. "Perimeter isn't. Crown runs skeleton patrols along the wall every hour." His eyes tracked the darkness ahead. "Don't engage unless you have to."
