The technique was called threading, and it hurt like hell.
"Again," Marcus said.
Yuna gritted her teeth and reached for the CHORD. The threads appeared in her mind's eye, silver and gold and a hundred other colors, each one a connection to another person, another place, another piece of the web that held Valdris together.
She grabbed a handful of them and began to weave.
The idea was simple enough. Instead of projecting her boost through open channels that the Herald could disrupt, she would braid the threads together, creating cables strong enough to resist interference. Like armoring a wire against static.
The execution was anything but simple.
Every time she tried to twist two threads together, they resisted. Pulling in opposite directions. Trying to snap back to their natural positions. It was like trying to braid water. Weave fog. The threads didn't want to be combined. They wanted to remain separate, individual, free.
"You're fighting it." Marcus crouched beside her, his massive presence somehow reassuring rather than intimidating. "Stop trying to force the threads together. Convince them."
"Convince them how? They're not sentient."
"Everything in the CHORD is sentient, in its way. The threads carry consciousness. They are consciousness, in a very real sense. You can't just grab them and yank." His dark eyes held hers. "Talk to them. Show them why they should work together."
"I don't know how to talk to threads."
"You did it during the battle. When you pushed back against the Herald, you didn't use technique. You used will. Conviction." A pause. "You told the threads who you were and what you wanted. Do that again."
Yuna closed her eyes. She reached for the threads, but this time, instead of grabbing, she asked.
I need your help. There's something coming that will break us all apart if we can't stand together. Please. Help me build something stronger.
Nothing. The threads drifted through her consciousness like smoke.
She tried again. Softer this time. Less demand, more invitation.
Please.
Slowly, she felt the threads begin to shift. Not resisting anymore. Leaning toward each other. Curious. Interested.
She guided them gently, showing them how to intertwine. How to support each other. How to become more than they'd been alone. The braid formed slowly, awkwardly, but it formed.
"There." Marcus's voice was quiet. "You feel that?"
She did. The braided thread was different from the individual strands. Denser. More resilient. Thrumming with a strength that no single connection could match.
"That's the foundation," he continued. "Build enough of those, and even the Herald won't be able to break through."
"How many is enough?"
"More than you can make right now. But we have time to practice."
Yuna opened her eyes, letting the braided thread dissolve back into its component parts. Her head was pounding. Her hands were shaking. The technique was exhausting in ways that simple boosting never touched. But somewhere beneath the pain and fatigue, something flickered.
Not hope, exactly.
Something smaller. A seed.
She found Aria in the infirmary, sitting beside one of the critical cases.
The woman's name was Sora, and she'd been one of the defenders on the eastern wall when the Herald's attack had broken Yuna's boost. Without the borrowed strength, she'd been overwhelmed by three Hollow at once. The healers had saved her life, but her thread was damaged in ways Yuna didn't fully understand. Flickering. Unstable. Like a candle in a strong wind.
"How is she?" Yuna settled onto a stool across from Aria.
"The same. Not worse, which is something." Aria's single hand was wrapped around Sora's, thumb moving in small circles over the unconscious woman's knuckles. "The healers say she might wake up in a few days. Or she might not wake up at all. They don't know."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You didn't do this to her."
"The Herald did this because of me. Because he was targeting me."
Aria looked up. Her expression was hard, but not cruel. The hardness of someone who'd learned to face ugly truths head-on. "The Herald did this because he's a monster. You're not responsible for what monsters do."
"Aren't I? If I hadn't been here—"
"Then he would have attacked anyway, and everyone would have died instead of just twelve." Aria's voice was flat. Uncompromising. "You want to blame yourself? Fine. Blame yourself for the people who are still alive. Blame yourself for the victory we scraped together against impossible odds. That's your fault too."
Yuna didn't know what to say to that.
"Sora and I came through the portal together." Aria's voice softened slightly. "Three years ago. We were strangers on Earth. Bumped into each other on the street in Hong Kong, both reaching for the same door at the same time. The grey light took us together."
"Were you friends?"
"We became friends. The way you do when you're thrown into hell together." Aria's thumb kept moving over Sora's hand. That small circular motion. Constant. Gentle. "She taught me how to fight one-handed. I taught her how to laugh again after her husband died in the first Hollow attack we survived. We've been through everything together."
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"She'll wake up."
"Maybe. Maybe not." Aria finally looked at Yuna, and there was something ancient in her eyes. The exhaustion of someone who'd learned not to hope too hard. "The point is, she fought. She chose to stand on that wall knowing she might die. That's not your fault or anyone else's. That's her. Being who she is."
"Who she is might get her killed."
"Who she is has kept her alive this long." Aria stood, releasing Sora's hand gently. "Come on. You've been training all morning, and you look like you're about to collapse. Let's get food."
The main hall was quieter than usual.
The battle had taken something from the refuge that went beyond the twelve dead. A sense of safety, maybe. Or the illusion that the walls could protect them from what lurked outside. People ate in small clusters, speaking in low voices, their eyes constantly flicking toward the entrances.
Yuna and Aria found seats near the back, away from the clusters, where they could talk without being overheard.
"Can I ask you something?" Yuna said.
"You can ask. I might not answer."
"The word you carved into your arm. Coward." Yuna kept her voice low. "Do you still believe that's what you are?"
Aria was quiet for a long moment, stirring her porridge without eating it. "Some days. Less than I used to."
"What changed?"
"Time. Experience. Doing things that cowards don't do." She set down her spoon. "The word doesn't define me anymore. It just reminds me of who I was. So I can see how far I've come."
"I keep thinking about the hospital door." Yuna looked down at her untouched food. "The one I couldn't walk through to see my mother before she died. I've been carrying that moment around for months. Letting it tell me who I am."
"And now?"
"Now I pushed back against a Herald. I touched his mind and survived. I've fought in a battle and trained people and made connections that actually matter." She paused. "But the door is still there. Every time I close my eyes, I can see it. Feel myself standing in front of it, unable to move."
"Maybe that's not a bad thing."
"How is it not a bad thing?"
"Because it keeps you humble." Aria's voice was gentle. "The people who forget their worst moments are the ones who repeat them. The people who remember, really remember, in their bones... they're the ones who grow."
Yuna thought about that. About Korvain, who'd had his memories stripped away along with his humanity. About her mother, who'd spent years preparing her for something she hadn't understood. About the threads that connected everything, and the costs of using them, and the way every choice left its mark.
"I want to reach him," she said. "Korvain. I felt something in him during the battle. Something that might still be human. And I keep thinking, if I could just find a way to touch that part of him again—"
"You might save him."
"Or he might kill me." Yuna laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Those seem like the only two options."
"There's a third." Aria picked up her spoon again. "You try to save him, and you both die. Martyrdom without payoff. That's usually how these things end."
"Cheerful."
"Realistic." But Aria was smiling slightly. "For what it's worth, I think you should try. Not because I think it'll work, but because not trying would break something in you. Some people are built to fight. Others are built to reach. You're a reacher, Yuna. It's who you are."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's an observation." Aria nodded toward Yuna's bowl. "Now eat. You're going to need the energy."
Chen Wei summoned her to the archives that afternoon.
The underground chamber was cold and silent, the crystalline lights casting their blue glow over shelves of ancient books. Chen Wei stood at the central table, a collection of scrolls spread out before her.
"I've been researching." No preamble. No pleasantries. "Looking for any records of Seers who attempted to reach the Hollowed."
"Did you find anything?"
"Fragments. Hints." Chen Wei gestured to the scrolls. "Most of the records were destroyed when the Heralds killed the original Council. But there are references, oblique, scattered, to something called the Resonant Bridge."
"What is it?"
"A technique. Theoretical, as far as I can tell. I can't find any evidence that it was ever successfully performed." Chen Wei paused, searching for words. "The idea is to create a direct link between two consciousnesses. Not a thread, which is a natural connection, but a bridge. Artificial. Deliberate. Designed to reach across distances that threads can't span."
"Distances like the gulf between a human and a Herald?"
"Exactly." Chen Wei's grey eyes were intense. "The Seers believed that the hollowing process doesn't destroy the original consciousness. It just buries it. Covers it with layers of emptiness and pain until it can't be felt anymore. A Resonant Bridge might be able to cut through those layers. Reach the person underneath."
"Might."
"It's all might. All theory." Chen Wei sighed. "The Seers who developed this technique were killed before they could test it. The records are incomplete. I can't even be sure the bridge is possible, let alone whether it would work on a Herald."
"But you think I should try."
"I think you're the only one who could." Chen Wei's voice was steady. "You've already touched Korvain's consciousness once. You've felt the spark that might still be there. No one else in Valdris has that connection."
Yuna thought about what Aria had said. Some people are built to fight. Others are built to reach.
"What would I need to do?"
"Learn. Practice. Get stronger." Chen Wei handed her one of the scrolls. "This contains what fragments I could find about the Resonant Bridge technique. Study it. Master it. And when the Herald returns, because he will return, you'll have a choice. Fight him, or try to reach him."
"What if I'm not strong enough?"
"Then you'll die." Chen Wei's voice was matter-of-fact. "But you were going to die anyway, eventually. We all are. The question is whether your death will matter."
It wasn't comforting. But it was honest. And Yuna was starting to understand that honesty was the closest thing to kindness this world offered.
"I'll study," she said.
"Good." Chen Wei turned back to the scrolls, already refocusing on her research. "Marcus will continue training you in the threading technique. I'll work on translating more of these records. We have maybe a month before the Herald gathers enough forces for another assault, if we're lucky."
"And if we're not lucky?"
"Then we have less." Chen Wei didn't look up. "Either way, we don't have time to waste."
That night, Yuna sat on the refuge walls with the scroll in her lap, trying to make sense of the fragmentary instructions for the Resonant Bridge.
The text was old, written in a formal style that made comprehension difficult, and many sections were damaged or missing entirely. But she could grasp the basic concept. A technique for projecting consciousness across impossible distances. Bridging gaps that should be unbridgeable.
The key is resonance, one passage read. Not the resonance of power, but the resonance of recognition. To build a Bridge, you must first find something in the other that exists also in yourself. A shared experience. A common wound. A memory that echoes.
A common wound.
She thought about Korvain. A father who'd watched his daughter die. A Seer who'd tried to save his family and lost everything instead. A man who'd been tortured into a monster.
And she thought about herself. A daughter who'd frozen at a hospital door. A Seer-in-training who kept losing pieces of herself to the power she wielded. A woman who'd been thrown into a dying world and asked to save it.
Were their wounds common? Could the gap between them really be bridged?
She didn't know. But she was starting to think that the answer might not matter as much as the attempt.
David found her there an hour later. Still reading. Still thinking.
"Any progress?" He settled beside her on the cold stone.
"Some. Maybe." She set down the scroll. "There's a technique that might let me reach Korvain directly. Build a bridge into his consciousness. But it requires finding something we have in common. Some shared experience or wound that can serve as the foundation."
"You and a Herald?" David's voice was skeptical, but not dismissive. "What could you possibly have in common?"
Yuna looked out at the grey horizon, where the moons were rising through the wounded sky. Gold and silver and violet, three pale lights against the darkness.
"We both lost someone we loved," she said quietly. "And we both blame ourselves for not being able to save them."
David was silent for a long moment. The wind moved through the wastes below, carrying the faint smell of ash and something older. Something that might have been flowers, once.
He reached over and took her hand. His fingers intertwined with hers.
"If anyone can build that bridge," he said, "it's you."
She squeezed his hand and didn't let go.
Somewhere out in the wastes, Korvain was gathering his army. Planning his revenge. Preparing to finish what he'd started.
But he wasn't the only one preparing.
And when he came, Yuna intended to be ready.