The rock was no safe ground.
It jutted from the river like a black tooth, slick with moss and the spray of the current. Water surged around it in a deafening rush, tugging at boots and dragging the wounded closer to the edge. They had made it here — barely — but the price was written in blood and silence.
Liora Veyrn was gone.Vanished in the chaos.And Vaeryn… also nowhere.
Eliakim's eyes scanned the banks, the current, the enemy lines — anywhere she could have been taken, anywhere he might have slipped away. Nothing. No sign.
The four-way battle had not stopped to notice their absence.Dark Elves pressed in from the left bank. The black-armored third force surged from the right, shoving enemies into the current just to clear space. And the fourth faction — wild, snarling raiders — had begun firing from both shores, hitting anyone they could.
Gideon braced against the incoming surge, Kaelvryn's twin axe locking with a massive halberd in a spray of cold mist and steam. Caleb fired what few scavenged arrows he had, his hands trembling with fatigue. Ezra leaned against the rock itself, eyes glassy, barely able to summon sparks from her fingers.
Eliakim's mind hammered against the Codex of Imreth's fading imagery. Skyling's last recorded survey still hung there — grainy, broken, but showing a narrow eddy downstream where the current dipped behind a ridge of stone.
It was their only way out.And it was suicide if mistimed.
The water would sweep them into the enemy's blind spot — but the same current could also slam them against the ridge hard enough to break bone, or drag them under before they could surface.
"Eliakim!" Gideon roared over the water, slamming the axe into another attacker. "Call it now!"
He froze — not from indecision, but from the gnawing thought that Vaeryn's disappearance wasn't random. If Vaeryn had Liora, if this was his game from the start… every move Eliakim made now was exactly what Vaeryn wanted.
The frustration boiled over.The roar of the current became the pounding of his own blood in his ears.
"This is madness," he hissed under his breath, half to himself, half to the river. "We're killing ourselves for someone else's board game."
But there was no time for rage.Only for choice.
Eliakim turned sharply to the others. "We're going downstream. No matter what happens, you keep moving. No hesitation, no looking back."
Ezra blinked. "If we miss—"
"We don't miss."
He drew his worn out dagger, slashing at the next Dark Elf that leapt for the rock, kicking the body into the current to open a path. Gideon broke formation just long enough to smash the axe into the enemy line, creating a brief, bloody breach.
"Go!" Eliakim roared, and they leapt into the churning dark.
The river swallowed them whole.