Milo hung against the cliff face, his boots finding space on a sliver of ground no wider than his foot. The wind whipped at his cloak, threatening to tear him from the wall, yet he moved with it, a shadow drifting between the jagged teeth of the ravine.
Beside him, the shadow lynx summon moved. The Beast lacked physical weight, its paws sinking silently into the rock face to test the stability of the path ahead. It looked back at Milo, its white eyes narrowing, and flicked its tail toward a sturdy outcropping three meters down.
Good kitty, Milo thought.
He plummeted down.
As gravity took him, he twisted his mana. The shadow of a protruding boulder caught him. He vanished from the air and reappeared instantly on the lower ledge, his momentum arrested by the darkness.
Breathing out slowly, regulating his heart rate. Ten feet away, a cluster of Stalkers clung to the wall. They looked like nightmares carved from rock—multi-legged insectoids the size of wolves. Their eyeless heads twitched, sensitive antennae sweeping the air for the slightest vibration.
Milo froze in his tracks.
The lynx dissolved into mist and reformed on the other side of the nest, motionless.
The Stalkers settled, their chittering fading into the background noise of the wind.
———
A hundred meters above, Regius stood at the cliff's edge.
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and when they opened, bright violet swirls filled with the glitter of distant stars.
True Sight.
The world stripped down to its essentials. The environment changed to a grid wireframe; the wind became currents of blue trails. Below him, the Stalkers burned with ugly, yellow auras.
And moving through them was a single, cool signature of midnight blue.
Regius watched Milo work. He saw the way Milo managed his mana reserves, releasing just enough to shadow step away, then clamping down to zero to avoid detection.
"He's close," Regius murmured, his voice barely carrying over the wind.
"I can't see him," Kael whispered, leaning over the edge. "Is he safe?"
"He's dancing on a knife's edge," Regius said, the starlight in his eyes flaring. "But he hasn't cut himself yet."
———
Milo reached the wreckage.
The merchant vehicle hung precariously from a limestone shelf, its rear wheels spinning lazily over the void. The chassis groaned, metal shearing against stone.
Milo slipped through the shattered rear window like a draft of cold air.
The interior was a mess. Boxes of raw materials had broken loose during the crash, creating a chaotic barricade near the front of the cabin.
Buried beneath the heaviest pile of rubble lay a man. His leg was pinned under the metal beam of the vehicle, his face grey with pain. Beside him, a woman clutched a young girl to her chest, her eyes wide and fixed on the window where Milo had just entered.
The woman opened her mouth to scream.
Milo moved instantly. He lowered his hood, raising a finger to his lips. He offered them a soft, lopsided smile—the one he used when Tavus woke up from a nightmare.
"Easy," he mouthed. "I'm here to help."
The shadow lynx flowed over his shoulder. It shrank down to the size of a house cat, its form softening from jagged darkness to plush shadow. It hopped onto the girl's lap and nudged her hand with a cold, wet nose.
The little girl froze, then blinked. She reached out tentatively to touch the Beast summon. It purred.
The tension in the cabin broke. The mother's shoulders slumped.
Milo crept forward to the merchant. The man was fading in and out of consciousness. The beam on his leg weighed too much even for Kael; only Regius could pick up the weight.
Lifting this is too dangerous, Milo thought.
The moment the beam was moved, the entire balance of the vehicle would shift, sending them down to their deaths. Milo extended his shadow, sliding it beneath the heavy beam. He fed mana into the darkness, wrapping it around the trapped man.
Step.
The shadow engulfed the merchant, teleporting him beside Milo.
Click.
The sound was small. The entire beam shifted its weight, and a supporting structure groaned and bent. Until—it snapped.
BANG.
The noise echoed inside the vehicle like a gunshot. It reverberated against the metal walls, amplifying as it escaped out the window.
Milo froze. The merchant froze.
Outside, the wind stopped whistling.
Then, the canyon screamed.
It started as a singular hiss and erupted into a cacophony of chittering rage. The Stalkers woke up.
The vehicle lurched. The vibrations of the waking horde shook the cliff face, dislodging the tree roots holding the vehicle in place.
The floor tilted violently.
"Hold on!" Milo roared.
———
"They're falling!" Vera shouted from the cliff edge.
The vehicle tipped forward, sliding off the shelf.
"We have to catch them!" Kael surged forward, his hand reaching for his shield to summon a barrier, to do something. Vera grabbed her hammer, preparing to jump.
Regius's closed fist shot out, barring their path.
"Regius! They're going to die!" Kael yelled.
"No, they won't," Regius said. His violet eyes locked onto the falling vehicle, seeing the mana flare inside. "Trust him."
Below them, the vehicle tumbled into the darkness.
———
Gravity took the transport. The stomach-churning sensation of freefall hit the family. The daughter screamed.
Milo grabbed the mother and daughter in his left arm, pulling them against his chest. He kicked the merchant, catching the man in the gravity well of his shadow.
He tapped into his Soul Palace, draining his mana reserves in a single, violent pull.
The world twisted. The falling vehicle vanished.
Milo slammed into solid ground.
He reappeared on a protrusion twenty feet up from the crash site. He hit the ground hard, his knees buckling under the combined weight of three people.
Below them, the vehicle smashed into the canyon floor, exploding into a cloud of smoke and twisted metal. A massive group of stalkers rushed, circling the crash site.
Milo gasped, dropping the family onto the ledge. Warm liquid trickled from his mouth—blood. The mana cost of teleporting four people had overloaded his capabilities.
"Stay down," Milo wheezed.
Another group of stalkers ignored the wreckage below. They turned their eyeless heads toward the ledge, drawn to the massive flare of mana Milo had just released.
Then, they swarmed. It looked like a carpet of gray rolling up the wall.
"We have to climb!" Milo hauled the merchant to his feet. "Up! Move!"
He pushed them toward a narrow path cut into the rock. The mother scrambled up, dragging her daughter. Milo took the rear, supporting the limping merchant.
He looked up. The rim was still fifty feet away.
A Stalker crested the ledge above them, cutting off the path. It hissed, mandibles dripping with saliva.
Milo raised his dagger, but his arm trembled. He was nearly out of stamina.
The monster lunged.
Swoosh.
A condensed blade of wind struck the Stalker between the mandibles. Its head split in two in a spray of green liquid, and the carcass tumbled backward into the maw of the ravine.
Milo looked up.
Olin stood at the edge of the cliff, Zephyr on his shoulder.
"Come on!"
Vera appeared beside him. She dropped a heavy, reinforced chain down the face of the cliff.
"Grab on, short-stack!" Vera bellowed.
Milo wrapped the chain around the merchant and the girl. "Hold tight!"
Vera heaved. With a grunt of exertion that bulged the muscles in her armor, she hauled the entire group upward as if they weighed nothing.
They scrambled over the lip of the canyon, collapsing onto the flat, grassy ground of the high road.
"They're coming over the edge," Regius said.
The Stalkers kept up their pursuit. Driven by the frenzy of the hunt, the horde poured over the cliff lip, hundreds of them scrambling onto the flat ground.
Regius stepped forward, his sword drawn.
The squad held the high ground. The monsters were funneled into a choke point as they crested the rim.
Kael slammed Bastion into the earth. The blue energy wall expanded, knocking the first wave of insects back into the drop.
Vera swung her hammer like a pendulum of death. Every impact shattered bones and liquefied organs, sending broken bodies flying back into the ravine. Her Iron Boar charged, stampeding over the monsters and launching the surviving ones back to the ravine.
Olin stood calmly behind the line, his Wind Elemental, Zephyr, painting targets. He fired with extreme precision, putting a wind blade through the heads of any Stalker that managed to flank the vanguards.
Regius moved through the chaos like a dancer. He stepped inside the guard of a lunging stalker, severing its head with a single, fluid arc of his blade. He spun, kicking another into the path of Vera's hammer.
For five minutes, the cliff edge was a grinder.
Then, the screeching stopped. The horde, realizing the prey was not worth the danger, retreated back into the shadows of the ravine.
Silence returned to the high road.
Regius flicked the green blood from his sword and sheathed it. The bright purple light faded from his eyes, leaving them a warm, dark violet.
Milo sat on a boulder, heaving. The merchant family huddled nearby, shaken but alive. The little girl was clutching the hem of Milo's cloak.
Milo looked up. His face was pale, blood smeared on his upper lip, but he offered a weak grin.
"Told you," Milo wheezed. "Five minutes."
Regius smiled, placing a hand on Milo's shoulder and squeezing. "Good job."
He looked at the scout—a man who had just thrown himself into the abyss to save strangers.