The mountain didn’t just split—it dissolved.
Cassian’s heart smashed against his ribs as he grabbed Mari. She was dynamic, bleeding ruin, a walking corpse anchored to life by sheer, violent stubbornness. A blackened blade was jammed bone-deep beneath her collarbone, the steel glistening red every time her chest heaved.
Then the glacier groaned, a brutal, bone-snapping rumble from the earth's throat.
"The collapse—!" Kaelen bellowed.
"Move! Fuck!"
The frozen crust detonated. A jagged, roaring fissure ripped through the snowfield at terrifying speed, chewing up slabs of blue ice the size of siege engines and throwing them into the air.
"Goddammit!" Cassian lunged, snatching Mari around the waist as the ground disintegrated beneath her. Her boots hit the ice and her knees gave out instantly. Pain ripped through her whole body—a hot, jagged tear as the buried blade shifted against her chest. Fresh crimson spurted, soaking through her clothes and pooling down her ribs.
"Don't—pull the fucking thing—out!" she gasped, her vision burning white.
"I'm not, shit!" Cassian slammed her against his chest, her hot blood soaking right into his leather armor.
Vesper grabbed Mari’s other arm, her teeth bared. "We’re not fucking dying here!"
"Brilliant observation!" Mari choked out.
The mountain gave way. A colossal monolith of ice sheared off with a screech that vibrated in their teeth, dropping straight into a pitch-black abyss. Cassian hauled Mari back by sheer muscle and desperation half a second before the edge vanished beneath his heels.
Kaelen threw himself forward, slamming both bleeding palms directly into the ice. "Get the fuck back!"
Blinding, raw magic erupted. Jagged blue-white runes ripped through the snow like burning lightning, locking into the fracturing ice. The falling mountain jerked to a violent halt—a shockwave that blasted the breath from Cassian’s lungs and threw up a wall of blinding frost.
Kaelen screamed—a sound of pure, tearing agony. Blood burst from his nose and eyes, spraying across the ice. A dark, swollen vein pulsed violently against his skull.
"Go!" he roared, his arms violently shuddering under the weight of a million tons of stone. "Fuckers, GO! Before it rips me apart!"
Cassian hauled Mari’s weight over his shoulders. Vesper caught her other side. They slammed their boots into the slick ice, sprinting blindly through the fury of the storm.
Four strides. On the fifth, Mari’s foot skidded.
The dagger twisted inside her collarbone.
Agony tore through her, raw and blinding. Her legs cut out. She pitched headfirst into the ice, but Cassian caught her mid-fall, scooping her violently into his arms.
"Fuck! Fuck!"
"Put me down," she wheezed, dark spots blinding her vision as her head dragged against his neck.
"No."
"Cassian—"
"No fucking chance!"
Another tremor slammed through the peak, throwing Cassian off balance. He dug his boots in, lunging forward through the blinding snow, refusing to drop her.
"You're going to break your damn self," she rasped, her pulse fluttering weak and irregular against his throat.
"Then I break! Fuck it!" He hitched her higher, his lungs burning like fire. "I'm adding every second of this to your goddamn debt!"
Mari forced one bloodshot eye open, a faint, twisted smile touching her bloody lips. "What debt...?"
"Thirty-one," he growled, stumbling over a jagged crest. "You said I owed you thirty-one."
"Never... fucking... said that."
"You were bleeding out. Dying made you generous."
A tiny, broken laugh escaped her throat—a wet, terrible sound that cut through the thunder of the dying mountain.
Then she convulsed.
Mari bent double in his arms, coughing violently. Dark, thick blood sprayed across Cassian’s neck and chest.
Vesper’s face drained completely white. "Fuck."
Mari wiped her mouth with a trembling, red-stained sleeve. "Sorry."
"No, you're not!" Cassian snapped, his jaw locked so tight it creaked.
"Not even a fucking little," Mari whispered, her eyelids fluttering.
"Keep your eyes open!" Cassian roared over the storm. "Don't you dare close your fucking eyes!"
They smashed through the snow onto solid bedrock just as Kaelen let the spell shatter behind them. The mountain behind them literally detonated. An ocean of ice and rock cascaded into the void with a deafening, monstrous roar that shook the marrow of their bones.
Kaelen collapsed face-first into the snow, vomiting blood. Vesper dove, grabbing him by his collar before he slid into the canyon. "Kaelen! Stay with me!"
"Fucking... expensive," Kaelen spat, his teeth stained crimson.
Cassian set Mari down against a shelf of rock, but the moment her spine touched the stone, she let out a shattered scream, clutching her blood-drenched chest.
Vesper dropped beside her, ripping open the ruined tunic. Her face hardened into iron. "The blade is wedged under the bone. If I pull it now, she bleeds out in thirty seconds."
"Then it stays the fuck in," Mari gritted out, her hands shaking uncontrollably.
Cassian stared down at her, terror and fury warring in his chest. "You're going to keep running with a goddamn dagger in your lungs?!"
"Better than bleeding to death in a hole!"
Before Cassian could scream back at her, Mari froze.
The wind shrieked around them, but beneath the noise—something else pulsed.
THUD.
A heavy, sickening impact shuddered through the solid bedrock beneath Mari’s open hand.
THUD.
"Shut the fuck up," Mari breathed, her voice suddenly dropping to a deadly whisper.
"Mari—" Vesper started.
"Listen!"
THUD.
It wasn't a cave-in. It wasn't the glacier breaking apart. It was a heartbeat. A deliberate, massive rhythm hammering against the earth.
Cassian’s hand flew to his sword hilt, staring at the avalanche of rubble covering the tunnel. "What the fuck is down there?"
THUD.
The impact vibrated right up their legs. Boulders cracked. A wave of loose shale cascaded down the cliffside.
"Something survived the collapse," Vesper hissed, unsheathing her blade, her knuckles stark white. "Fuck."
"No," Mari whispered. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the choked entrance. "That’s not survival. That’s a signal."
Ignoring the blinding agony in her chest, Mari forced herself up, tearing away from Cassian’s hand as he tried to hold her down.
Five seconds of suffocating silence stretched over the peak.
Then—
THUD.
A second, massive vibration answered—not from the collapsed tunnel, but from deep within the mountain range ten miles behind them.
The temperature plummeted. The very air felt heavy, sharp, and suffocating.
"That... that didn't come from the tunnel," Cassian said, his voice stripped of all heat. "Shit."
"The first one is trapped," Mari said. Her voice was terrifyingly flat, cold as the frost creeping over her boots. "The second one isn't."
A low, guttural frequency rolled through the stone beneath them—a sound so deep it didn't travel through the air, but vibrated directly inside their skulls. The snow on the ground began to bounce.
Mari’s hand closed around her blade. She knew that frequency. She had felt that exact vibration in her bones once before—right before a whole city was ground into dust and swallowed by the earth.
"Mari?" Cassian stepped closer, his instincts screaming at him to run. "What is that?"
She turned to face them. The pain, the exhaustion, the dark sarcasm—it all evaporated. What was left was the hollow, deadly stillness of a soldier who knew they were already dead.
"The thing that was supposed to stay fucking buried."
THUD.
The collapsed tunnel shattered outward in a explosion of rock.
THUD.
The distant mountains roared in response.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The entire mountain range began to pulse in violently synchronized impacts, the stone buckling beneath their boots.
Mari drew her steel with a sharp, lethal hiss, red blood trailing down the cold metal onto the ice.
"Get fucking ready."
Cassian dropped into a battle stance, drawing his blade as the ground cracked beneath him. "For what?!"
Mari stared into the shaking darkness as the peak ripped open.
"For hell."