The gnawing hunger did not subside with the waybread. It was a deep, cellular ache, as if my very flesh was protesting the energy I had expended. The clarity I'd felt moments before was now clouded by a leaden fatigue that made my limbs feel heavy and my thoughts slow. The simple act of rolling up my bedroll required a focused effort of will.
"The power draws from more than just your mind," Croft observed, watching me struggle. "It consumes the body's vitality. You have taxed yourself."
"It feels like I haven't eaten in a week," I grunted, slinging the pack over my shoulder. The familiar weight was an agony. "And my mind is... frayed." It was a peculiar sensation, a mental bruise where I had pressed too hard against the nature of reality.
"This is your new reality, Cassian. Every act of will, every shaping of the shadow, carries a cost. You must learn to measure it, to know the limits of your strength as you know the length of your stride."
We emerged from the fissure into a damp, grey dawn. The mist clung to the hills, but to my shadow-attuned sight, it was no obstacle. I could see the subtle currents of air moving through the fog, the way it eddied around rocks and curled away from the sparse, hardy brush. The world was a tapestry of minute movements and still points, and my vision instinctively sought out the quietest, darkest paths.
The compass pull was a constant, low thrum in my chest, a silver thread of purpose leading east. But the terrain was changing. The rolling hills grew steeper, their slopes strewn with more rubble and scree. The patches of tough grass became scarcer, replaced by exposed bedrock that gleamed wetly in the flat light. We were climbing into the foothills of the Spires, which now dominated the horizon, their jagged peaks piercing the belly of the low clouds.
We moved slowly, my body demanding a cautious pace. I used my staff not just for support on the uneven ground, but as a probe, testing the stability of stones before committing my weight. Croft ranged ahead, his black form disappearing and reappearing through the tendrils of mist, a scout whose senses were now complemented by my own strange sight.
After several hours of arduous climbing, we found the road—or what was left of it. The great, paved Dawn Road was shattered here, its stones tossed aside like a giant's discarded toys. A raw, recent-looking chasm split the earth, a hundred yards across and bottomless. The road simply ended at a precipice.
"The map showed no such break," I said, my voice tight with frustration. I unrolled it, confirming the unbroken line that was supposed to lead to Eastwatch.
"The land is still dying," Croft said gravely, landing on a jagged stone at the chasm's edge.
The compass in my chest tugged me relentlessly toward the other side. There was no alternative. We had to cross.
My enhanced sight scanned the chasm's edge. It was too wide to jump, too sheer to climb. But then I saw it—a narrow, terrifyingly fragile-looking natural bridge of stone arching across the void about a half-mile to the north. It was a thread of rock, no wider than my shoulders, worn smooth by wind and time.
"There," I said, pointing.
Croft followed my gaze. "It is a path for the desperate."
"Then it is the perfect path for us."
The walk to the bridge was a tense, silent march. The chasm seemed to breathe a cold, damp air that smelled of deep stone and age. The wind howled up from its depths, a constant reminder of the consequence of a single misstep. The stone arch, when we reached it, was even more precarious up close. It was slick with moisture, its surface uneven.
I took a deep breath, feeling the dull ache of my body and the faint, residual fuzziness in my mind. This was no time for doubt. I stepped onto the spine of the world.
The stone was cold and slick beneath my boots. I moved with a slow, deliberate grace, my staff providing a third point of contact. My shadow-sight was a blessing here; I could see the variations in the stone's surface, the slight depressions that offered better purchase, the patches of treacherous, invisible moss. I focused on the rhythm of my movement, on the next six inches of the path, and nothing else. The wind tugged at my cloak, a insistent hand trying to pluck me from my perch. The void to either side was a yawning mouth of silence.
I was halfway across when I felt it—a subtle vibration in the stone, a shiver that was not the wind. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. A low, grinding rumble echoed from the chasm walls far below. A crack appeared in the arch ahead of me, snaking across its width.
"Cassian!" Croft's cry was sharp with alarm.
There was no time for thought. Only instinct. I poured my will into the Spark, not to create a void, but to enact the principle of my own being. I commanded the shadows around me to deepen, to thicken, to accept me.
The world went quiet. The howl of the wind vanished. The grinding rumble became a distant, muffled threat. I felt my body become insubstantial, my weight dispersing into the darkness that clung to the stone bridge. I was a ghost, a wisp of smoke.
A large section of the bridge ahead of me sheared away with a sound like a mountain breaking its teeth. Stone plummeted into the abyss, but I felt no shock, no tremor. The shadow-state made me immune to the physical collapse. I was part of the crisis, not a victim of it.
But the cost was immediate and brutal. The gnawing hunger in my gut exploded into a ravenous fire. My mind, already frayed, screamed in protest. It felt like I was holding back a tidal wave with my bare hands. I could not maintain this.
As the last of the falling stone vanished into the depths, I released my hold on the shadows. Solidity returned in a nauseating rush of sound and sensation. I stumbled, my boots scrambling for purchase on the now-narrower ledge. I was on the final third of the bridge, which had held. The other side was agonizingly close.
I didn't dare look back for Croft. I pushed forward, my body trembling with exhaustion and depletion, my vision spotting at the edges. Every step was a battle. When my boot finally crunched on the stable ground of the eastern side, my legs buckled. I collapsed to my knees, gasping, my whole being shrieking for sustenance and rest.
A moment later, Croft shot past my head, landing heavily a few feet away. He was silent, his small chest heaving.
I lay there for a long time, facedown on the cold stone, until the world stopped spinning. I had used the shadow-state to save my life, but the price had nearly claimed me anyway. I had learned the limits of my power in the most brutal way possible: by straddling the edge of them and staring into the void below.
Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself up. The compass pull was still there, a thread of silver leading deeper into the rising mountains. But it was fainter now, muffled by the profound exhaustion that sat like a stone in my soul. The path ahead was not just dangerous. It was hungry. And I was its only meal.