Page 45 of The First Scar
I nodded once. Didn't need to be told twice.
Ahead, Maxx slipped between the shadows like he'd been born in them. Ryla and Torin flanked him, moving in that eerie synchrony of theirs—two bodies, one intent. Maxx's hand rose, hooking into the air as if catching a thread. Showoff. Even his magic had swagger.
Then light bloomed on the far side of the wall.
Not real light. A shimmer. A suggestion. The false patrol lamp cast the silhouette of movement where there was none—flickering torches, the shadow of a helm, the rhythm of boots on stone.
Mirage-marked.Of course he was. It explained the easy lies, the slippery charm—his whole existence was built on making people see what wasn't there.
I'd have to remember that. Everything about Maxx was a trick of the light.
We waited.
Brannick eased into a practiced stillness beside me, weight centered and shoulders loose.
Voices carried from a distance, growing closer.
I pushed flat against the stone. Through a crack in the rubble, two Crown sentries rounded the corner—and took the bait like fish hitting a worm. Their eyes caught Maxx's phantom light and they adjusted course, boots scraping cobblestone as they marched toward something that didn't exist. The Crown really needed to raise its hiring standards.
Away from us. Away from the tower.
Brannick touched my shoulder.Now.
We moved through the rubble in single file, picking our way over shattered stone and the remnants of lives long abandoned. Someone had hung curtains in one of the shattered windows. Faded blue, still holding their shape after gods knew how long. The last optimistic thing anyone had done here.
A tingle near my sternum—even through the amulet's dampening. Faint at first, then insistent, a warning creeping up my spine and settling at the base of my skull.
I froze. Raised a fist.
Behind me, Brannick stopped mid-step. Waited.
I couldn't see them. But I could feel them—a grid of energy stretched across the ground ahead, threads so fine they'd be invisible even in full daylight. Trip-runes. One wrong step and the whole tower would light up.
"Wards," I breathed. "Fifty paces out. Maybe less."
Brannick squinted at the empty air ahead of us. He couldn't feel what I was feeling, but he'd been doing this long enough to trust someone who could. He nodded once.Your call.
I mapped the gaps in my mind. The grid wasn't uniform—some threads sat close together, others left pockets wide enough to place a boot. I picked my line, exhaled, and stepped.
Left foot between two threads. Right foot wide, angled, landing on the ball. A half-step forward, then a full stride left where the weave thinned out. Every placement deliberate. Every breath shallow. The runes buzzed on either side of my ankles, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off them.
Behind me, Brannick matched my path exactly—boot to boot, stepping where I'd stepped. Then Maxx. Then Ryla and Torin. A single-file chain of bodies threading through invisible tripwire, each one trusting that the person ahead hadn't just killed them all.
Forty paces. Thirty. Twenty.
My calf brushed a thread I'd misjudged. The rune flared—a brief, hot pulse—and I froze. Everyone froze. The jolt rose, wavered, and sank back to its baseline.
I didn't breathe for five full seconds. Then I adjusted my line and kept moving.
We slipped into the shadow of the wall without a sound.
For a few seconds, nobody moved. Just five bodies pressed against the basalt, breathing hard and pretending they weren't. The grid hummed behind us — patient, indifferent, already forgetting we'd passed through.
Brannick recovered first. Hand signals, quick and practiced. Ryla and Torin peeled off toward the south wall — high ground, sightlines, crossbow range. Ryla didn't look back. Torin didn't need to. Maxx drifted north, fingers already working the air, feeding his phantom patrol fresh light to keep the sentries chasing ghosts.
That left Brannick and me at the base of the tower.
He dropped to a knee and laced his fingers together. "Up you go, little flame."
