The shadow split with a sharp, wet rip, venting a burst of rank heat into the sub-zero air.
Mari didn't crawl out of the rubble—she exploded through it, hauling her butchered carcass into the night air. Her left hand clamped her shredded sternum, the hot, slick sludge of dark bile and thick blood pumping past her knuckles, but her right hand gripped the bone knife like a vise.
The air turned foul instantly—reeking of ozone, scorched iron, and the coppery stench of torn flesh.
Cassian scrambled forward on his knees, the jagged granite biting straight through his pants, ignoring Sera’s scream behind him. "Mari—jesus fucking Christ, stay down—"
He reached for her, hands hovering, terrified to touch her torn vest. He could feel the feverish, unnatural heat radiating off her torn skin.
Mari’s head snapped toward him with a sickening, joint-popping crack. Her pupils were dilated to the brim, her eyes ringed in broken red vessels. She glared at his face, then at his blood-soaked hands, her lip curling over crimson-stained teeth.
"You look like shit," she rasped, her voice pure gravel and dried phlegm.
"Me?" Cassian choked out a wild, half-crazed laugh, grabbing her cold, leather-clad shoulders and yanking her clear of the falling stone. "Your fucking chest wall is wide open!"
"Not all mine," Mari spat, wiping black, bitter bile from her chin with the back of her wrist. She slammed her heel back into the fissure.
CRACK.
The tunnel detonated inward with a deafening thump that vibrated straight through their teeth. The black light popped, thousands of tons of stone collapsed, and the abyss was buried under a roaring avalanche of rock, choking ash, and pulverized bone.
Mari’s knees buckled. Cassian caught her as she dropped, her full weight slamming into his chest. A ragged, strangled scream tore from her throat as her split ribs buckled under the impact, sending a fresh splash of warm, dark gore onto Cassian’s collar.
"Vesper!" Cassian roared, dropping to the ice with Mari in his arms, the freezing ground burning through his gear. "Get the kit! Now!"
Vesper sprinted over, the harsh clatter of her rifle slinging violently as she ripped her field bag open. "Hold her! Kaelen, grab the cauterizer! The iron smell is overwhelming!"
"Don't touch the knife," Mari choked out, her bloody, ice-cold knuckles digging straight into Cassian’s forearm hard enough to bruise. "Pull the steel... I bleed out. It's plugging the tear."
Kaelen dropped to his knees, staring at the thick, black blood bubbling and pulsing around the blade jammed below her collarbone. "She forced a necrotic seal," he breathed, his face drained of color as the stench of rotting marrow hit his nose. "It's a plug. Pull the iron and her heart drains in thirty seconds."
Cassian leaned over her, his hands trembling as he cupped her face, smelling the bitter ozone on her breath. "You heard the creature," he whispered, his voice cracking against the whistling mountain wind. "What it said about us. The thirty times."
Mari’s dark, blood-rimmed eyes locked onto his.
"It lied about a lot of shit," she whispered, a faint, dark smirk stretching her split lips over stained teeth. "Not that."
Cassian went rigid, his chest seizing. "Then why dig your way back to me?"
Mari slammed a gore-soaked, burning-hot hand flat against his jaw, her broken knuckles smearing sticky, black blood over his frozen skin.
"Because you owe me thirty-one, you bastard," she growled. "Now move."