The matriarch hit the bridge like a falling tree.
"Move!" Nia shouted.
She slammed her good shoulder into Ren and sent him stumbling toward the stone rail. The brambleback’s root-crowned head swept through the space where he had been.
Nia vaulted onto its back.
For half a second, she rode the monster through the rain.
Then she drove her blade between two armor plates, kicked away, and vanished into the orchard rows.
The matriarch roared and turned after her.
"Nia!" Ren shouted.
Her whistle answered from the dark—two sharp notes, moving fast.
Elara grabbed Ren’s sleeve. "She is drawing it away."
"With one working arm?"
"She has had worse ideas."
A crash came from the orchard.
Elara winced. "Not many."
Three smaller bramblebacks followed the matriarch between the trees.
The yard cleared.
For now.
Jessa struck the barricaded window with her shovel. Curved goat horns framed her rain-soaked face.
"Two workers are still missing!"
Nia’s whistle sounded again, farther south.
"She heard you," Elara called. Then she pointed beneath the bridge. "Ren, the gate beam is splitting. If it drops, the channel floods completely."
"And the controls?"
"Inside the wall."
"Of course they are."
Elara was already climbing over the rail.
Ren caught her around the waist before she disappeared headfirst into the channel.
She froze.
He froze.
Rain ran down the back of her neck and beneath his hand.
"There is a ladder," she said very carefully.
"Excellent information to lead with."
Her grey-green eyes flicked to his hand.
Ren released her.
Elara descended without comment, which somehow felt more dangerous than a comment.
Ren followed.
Black water hammered through the broken gate below. A boy clung beneath the slats with only his head and one arm above the surge.
The cracked crossbeam groaned overhead.
Gold flared around Ren’s irises.
The Cuff showed him no creature weakness, no convenient answer—only its own trembling alignment and the visible geometry of stone, beam, and pressure.
Stable surface.
Visible point.
Make the ground win.
He planted his boots against the channel wall and slapped his palm onto the bridge footing.
"Holdfast."
A gold line struck the cracked beam.
The entire channel shuddered.
The beam stopped dropping.
Ren’s right arm did not.
Pain punched from his wrist to his shoulder.
"Ren!" Elara called.
"Still attached!"
"That was not the question."
"It was the answer I had."
She crawled into a narrow opening beside the sluice housing. Rusted gears filled the wall beyond her, half-submerged and packed with roots.
Jessa appeared at an interior hatch above them.
"There are four of us in here," she said. "Holl can’t put weight on his leg."
"Get the other two through the service gallery," Elara ordered. "Use the inner shelf as a stretcher."
Jessa looked at Ren’s shaking arm.
"You the guildmaster?"
"No."
"Good. You look too sensible."
Elara’s voice echoed from inside the wall. "He arrived tonight."
Jessa stared.
Ren managed a smile. "The orientation has been aggressive."
The boy below coughed.
Ren looked down. "Hey. Look at me."
Wide brown eyes found him through the spray.
"I can’t hold on."
"I know."
The boy’s lip trembled.
Ren stripped off his soaked jacket with his left hand, nearly losing his footing when the beam shifted against the anchor.
"I’m going to put this around you."
"Are you a warden?"
"No."
"A fighter?"
"Also no."
Elara shouted from the gears, "Ren!"
"I’m being honest!"
The boy made a small, terrified sound that might have been a laugh.
Ren knotted the jacket sleeves through the broken slats.
"I’m new," he said. "I’m scared, and this thing on my arm is trying to cook me."
The boy stared at the glowing Cuff.
"But I am not leaving you here. That part I know."
He lowered the loop.
"Put it under your arms."
The boy tried. The current slammed him against the gate.
Ren’s anchor flickered.
The beam dropped an inch.
Stone dust poured over his hair.
Elara backed out of the control gap, soaked to the skin and furious.
"The release wheel is jammed. I need the gate unloaded for three breaths."
"I’m currently preventing the ceiling from becoming the floor."
"I noticed."
She squeezed into the narrow space beside him.
There was nowhere for her to stand without pressing against his chest. One hand braced on his shoulder. The other slipped beneath the Cuff’s outer plate.
Ren sucked in a breath.
"The focus pin is walking loose," she said.
"That sentence was less romantic than the situation suggested."
Her face was inches from his.
"You are holding several tons of rotten wood over a child."
"I contain multitudes."
"You contain poor judgment."
Her fingers closed around the burning brass pin.
Elara flinched but did not let go.
"On my count," she said. "Shift the anchor from the beam to the iron lift ring."
"That ring is moving."
"I will stop it."
"With what?"
"The original mechanism."
"The one you called jammed?"
Her stare sharpened.
Ren swallowed. "I trust you."
Something changed in her expression.
Not softness.
Something steadier.
"Three," Elara said.
"That usually starts at one."
"One."
The wheel inside the wall screamed.
"Two."
Elara drove her shoulder into Ren’s chest and hauled the release lever with her free hand.
"Three!"
Ren dropped the beam anchor.
The ceiling lurched.
He caught the iron ring.
"Holdfast!"
Gold snapped sideways.
The Cuff burned through the wet leather around his wrist.
Elara held the focus pin in place with both fingers while the gate lifted half a handspan.
"Now!" she shouted.
Ren pulled the jacket sling.
The boy came through the gap in a rush of black water.
Jessa leaned from the hatch, caught the jacket, and dragged him into the service gallery.
The gate slammed down again.
Ren released Holdfast.
His knees folded.
Elara caught him before his face met the stone.
For one breath, they were tangled together in the narrow channel—her arm around his back, his hand at her waist, both of them breathing too hard.
"You trusted me," she said.
"You sounded confident."
"I was not."
"That is deeply upsetting."
Her laugh escaped before she could stop it.
Above them, Jessa shoved open the gallery door. Two workers carried a third between them on a broken shelf. The boy clung to her side, wrapped in Ren’s jacket.
A whistle cut across the orchard.
One clear note.
Elara looked up. "Found."
A second whistle followed.
Three rapid falling notes.
Her face changed.
"Run."
The irrigation wall exploded inward.
Timbers, brick, and muddy water filled the yard.
The matriarch shoved its root-crowned head through the breach, blood running from Nia’s blade wound. Smaller amber eyes opened behind it.
The collapsed wall buried the stairs.
Their only dry exit was gone.