Ramona’s fingers welded to the broadsword hilt, her knuckles flashing stark, blinding white as the aged leather groaned beneath a terrifying surge of pressure.
“You think I don't know the odds, Julian?” Ramona hissed, her voice a low rasp that tore the heavy silence of the landing wide open. She spun on her heel, jaw locked, eyes burning with a sub-zero, feral fury. “I didn’t raid the military archives, siphon plasma charges, and buyout your contract just to sit here waiting for a polite execution!”
Julian didn’t flinch, though a muscle hammered frantically in his jaw.
“There’s a razor-thin line between bravery and diving head-first into a meat grinder, Monroe,” Julian snarled, stepping directly into her space. His voice dropped to a vibrating, razor-sharp edge, slicing through the distant thud of construction hammers. “You charge into Kevin’s Pass half-cocked, and you aren’t saving your father—you’re just offering the swarm fresh meat four years early.”
“Then pray your blade moves fast enough to keep me from tearing them all apart with my bare hands,” Ramona snapped, her gaze narrowing into pin-point slits.
Without another word, she surged past him, her heavy cloak snapping like a dark whip as she plummeted down the grand staircase of the Monroe estate, leaving the air electrified in her wake.
The courtyard was a howling funnel of grit and iron when Ramona hit the flagstones, her combat boots slamming down with the force of an anvil. The air tasted of hot grease, wet pine, and weapon oil.
“Saddles up!” Ramona roared, her voice cutting clean through the shriek of a blacksmith’s grinder throwing white-hot sparks into the gloom.
Julian dropped from the stone steps a half-step behind her, his cynical veneer stripped away, leaving behind the hardened edge of a vanguard veteran. He didn't waste breath arguing. He grabbed the nearest stable hand by the leather jerkin, shoving him toward the mounting rails.
“You heard the Commander!” Julian bellowed, drawing his blade with a metallic ring. “Thirty riders! Double-time! If I see a single unpolished buckle, you’ll be walking the pass in your shift!”
In the center of the muddy churn, thirty warhorses stomped and snorted, their massive chests heaving against heavy leather harnesses lined with repeating crossbow casings. The men of the estate guard moved with grim, synchronized terror—the rhythmic clank of plate armor and the frantic cinching of girth straps echoing against the stone. They didn't know about the coming rift collapse, but they knew the northern border was changing; they knew the cold had set in three weeks early.
Ramona vaulted into her stallion’s saddle with lethal precision, her thighs locking around the beast’s flanks before its hooves had even settled. She wrenched the iron bit, turning the animal’s head toward the main gate where the timber palisades met the mist-shrouded foothills.
High above on the balcony, Princess Eleanor stood clutching the wooden banister, watching them with pale, silent horror.
“Open the gates!” Ramona shouted, raising her father's broadsword high as the steel blade caught the pale, dying light of the sun.
With a deafening groan of rusted pulleys and straining chains, the iron-plated doors swung outward, revealing the dark, jagged expanse of the wilderness stretching toward Kevin’s Pass like an open grave. Ramona kicked her heels deep into her horse's flanks, launching into the gray fog without a backward glance.
The estate dissolved behind them, swallowed whole by pine forests and swirling mist. The air grew rapidly colder, stripping the warmth from their skin and turning every breath into ragged clouds of white frost. Beneath them, the horses' hooves pounded a frantic, thunderous rhythm against the frozen mud—a relentless heartbeat driving them deeper into the wilderness.
Julian rode hard to Ramona’s left, his eyes darting restlessly between the shadowy tree line and the snow-capped peaks looming ahead like broken teeth. The canopy overhead grew denser, choking out the dying daylight. Every snapping twig whispered of the early anomalies—the subterranean horrors that had devoured her past life at the Da Nang line.
Ramona stared straight ahead, her face carved from ice, the hilt of the broadsword warm against her thigh. She had defied the capital, shattered the timeline, and set her course straight into the abyss.
Up ahead, where the narrow pass choked into a labyrinth of black rock, a faint, sickly violet luminescence pulsed against the snow—the unmistakable signature of an early rift.
Ramona raised her fist, signaling the column to halt, and drew her blade with a singing rasp of steel.
“Check your bolts and prime the plasma charges,” Ramona commanded, her voice slicing through the biting mountain wind with unyielding authority. “The world ends here for them. We move.”