The Tear hung in the air at arm's length from Dren—a vertical slice of black that cut straight through nothing.
No wind. No heat. Just a steady pull centered on his chest.
Raya shifted to his left with her rod low. Keffa moved to his right and dropped a coil of rope from her shoulder. Mitan hammered a piton into the glass shelf with three fast blows. Brann took position behind them, wide stance, hands already reaching for the line. Neral's weather pane flickered, spat static, and went dead in her grip.
"Talk to me," Keffa said.
"It's the same tone as the Vow's core," Dren said. "A door. Not ours."
"Back up," Keffa ordered. "Rope to rail. Anchor him."
Mitan clipped a carabiner, ran the line through, and hurled it. Keffa wrapped the rope twice around Dren's waist and set the knot hard against his hip. "Two more anchors."
Brann drove a second piton. Orn fed a second rope through a low ring on the rail and tied it off. The Law Cart down the shelf went still. Above them, people on the gallery stopped and stared.
The Tear widened a finger's width. Dust slid forward in a thin stream and vanished at the edge.
Dren felt the pull climb. His lightning flared under his skin, then crawled along his forearms like it had found a signal it trusted. The Tear pulled harder in answer.
"Hold position," Keffa said. "Nobody touches it."
Raya hooked her arm through Dren's line and leaned back with him. "I've got you."
Dren tested his stance. "It's locked on me."
The air pressure dropped. Buckets rattled and lifted off their hooks. A coil of wire rolled, rose, and drifted toward the slit. The first thread hit the black and disappeared. No sparks. No flash. Just gone.
"Anchor two set," Brann said.
"Three is live," Orn called.
"On my count," Keffa said. "Lean back. Take the load—now."
They leaned. The ropes went taut. For a heartbeat, force and muscle matched. Then the pull doubled.
Loose tools slid. Pebbles lifted. Chalk dust rose and drew a pale line toward the Tear. Ila's goat tried to follow and got dragged back by one horn and a stream of curses.
Mitan's boot squealed against stone. "We're not holding."
"Keep it," Keffa said. "We only need a minute."
"For what?" Raya asked.
"In case it stops."
It didn't. The Tear pulsed. Dren's boots scraped forward three inches. The forward piton groaned.
Raya pulled. "Dren—"
"I know."
He set both hands on the belt-line rope and turned his body to break the pull. It didn't care. The force stayed centered on him like a magnet on steel. His gut tightened—the same locked feeling he'd had when the Vow first chose him.
Neral shoved the dead pane away and grabbed the tail of the rope. "More bodies!"
Sorev, two shelf-boys, and three Ladder hands piled on. The line stiffened. Dren stopped sliding. The pull kept climbing.
"Why only him?" one of the boys gasped.
"Signature match," Dren said. "It knows my lightning."
The Tear answered with more power. Dren's vision edged white from the strain.
"Look at me," Raya said.
He did. Her eyes were steady. "We're here," she said. "We don't let go."
The forward piton screamed and tore free. The rope snapped across Brann's shoulder and burned a welt. He jammed himself against the rail and took the load.
"Anchor Two!" Orn shouted. "Drop to the ring!"
They shifted the angle. The line dropped from chest-high to thigh-high. It bought them seconds.
The Tear brightened. The pull went from heavy to crushing.
Dren's heels left the ground.
Raya locked both arms around his waist and hung on. Keffa clamped a hand on Raya's belt and anchored. Mitan wrapped the line around his forearm and leaned back hard enough to make the rail bend. Everyone on the rope cried out from the shock.
"Cut it," Dren said. "If I go, I take you."
"Shut up," Raya said through her teeth. She crawled her grip higher. "You're not going."
The last anchor shifted. Stone cracked. Orn dropped to one knee to keep it seated.
"Three, don't you dare," Keffa growled at the metal.
The pull spiked again. Cold rolled off the Tear. Not wind—just absence. Dren's skin prickled like his lightning was trying to climb out of him.
He felt the decision hit. Not random. Chosen.
"Raya—" he started.
"Don't."
The anchor ripped free with a gunshot crack. Everyone lurched. The rail caught and bowed. Keffa's boots left the ground and slammed back down. Mitan screamed once as the rope chewed skin and held anyway.
"Cut it!" Dren barked. "Now!"
"No!" Raya snapped—
—and the line at Dren's waist broke.
Momentum hurled him forward. Raya went with him, arms still locked. Keffa pitched and caught herself on her elbows. Brann threw both arms around Raya's legs. All three slid together.
Dren twisted and hooked his forearm over the rail. His shoulder screamed. He held.
Raya crawled up his body with raw hands. "I have you!"
"Let go," he ordered.
"Denied."
The Tear took another half-step toward him without moving at all. It was inches from his face now: a straight line of black through the air. The pull pressed hard enough to make his ribs ache.
He looked past Raya to Keffa. Blood on Keffa's arms. Calm in her eyes. She gave him one tight nod.
He took a breath. "Checks before glory," he said.
Then he peeled Raya's fingers from his belt.
She fought him. He was stronger. He got one wrist, then the other, shoved her backward into Brann's locked arms. She swore at both of them. Brann didn't loosen.
Dren grabbed her hand again for a heartbeat, palm to palm. Heat. Grit. Work.
"Left," he said.
The Tear took him.
He went forward like a winch had snapped tight. Black filled his vision. Cold folded around him. The roar cut off. The last thing he saw was Raya shoving off Brann's chest, Keffa rising, Mitan bleeding, Neral sprinting for the chalked ring—everyone doing their job.
The Tear closed behind him with a clean, flat crack. Everything in the canyon dropped: ropes, tools, dust. Silence hit like weight.
Raya staggered to the lip and grabbed at empty air. Rope burns striped her palms. "No," she said to nothing.
"Head count," Keffa said.
They answered, one by one. The goat sneezed and tried to steal Ila's cloth again. Ila slapped its nose without looking away from where Dren had been.
Mitan unwound the rope from his forearm. Skin came with it. He hissed once and shut up. "He's alive," he said. It wasn't comfort. It was a promise he intended to keep true.
Neral looked at her dead pane. "It killed the instruments. Like weather wasn't invited."
Keffa wiped blood on her trousers and stared at the air where the slit had been. It looked normal. It didn't feel normal. "We don't wait," she said. "We hold the city until he needs a door."
Raya pushed off the rail. "I'm re-priming the ring."
"Go," Keffa said. "Mitan, new anchors. Brann, damage sweep. Orn, fresh coil, clean ledger. Neral, if the pane wakes, I want it in my hand before it decides to lie."
They moved. Not fast. With purpose.
Raya paused long enough to press her forehead to the rail where Dren had braced a minute before. The metal was warm. She set her jaw and ran the inner ramp for the perfect room, boots ringing on glass.
The canyon exhaled. Work resumed.
⸻
Dren fell through black—and then he understood he wasn't falling at all. He was being carried.
There was no up or down. There was forward, pushed by a steady force that pressed on his sternum in slow pulses, like a heartbeat outside his body. Cold wrapped him without freezing. His ears rang in a tone he knew from the Vow: travel, locked and true.
Lines of pale light slid past on both sides, stacked like lanes on a road he couldn't see the edges of. Some ran straight. Some curved away and vanished. Every time he tried to focus on one, three more appeared, thinner and faster.
His lightning tried to flare. With no air to grab, it ran along his nerves instead, bright and contained. He kept his hands tight to his sides. No reaching. No grabbing at things he didn't understand.
He passed windows that weren't windows at all—thin places where the black thinned and the world showed through like a film played too close to his face.
On one side, an ocean hung in mid-crash, a mile-high wave shaped like a ridge of glass. On the other, a city glowed inside a bowl of its own light, streets repeating the same slow turn like a clock that wouldn't admit it had broken. Far below—or far above—mountains folded into themselves like paper, then unfolded again without snow. A sun blinked and came back smaller. A long line of white birds hung in place, wings frozen mid-beat.
He didn't have names for any of it. He didn't try to invent them. He kept breathing—short, even pulls that didn't seem to take anything from anywhere—and let the corridor use him like freight.
A slow drift began to the left. He didn't cause it. The corridor did. The lanes of light tilted like a banked turn. Dren rolled with it and clamped down on panic. He glanced at his hands. They were steady.
He tried one thing: a controlled pulse of lightning under his skin, not a strike, just a push.
The drift answered. He slid a little right, then let it settle. Good. He could adjust, not command.
He passed another thin place. A moon with dark water. A ring of fire in a black sky. A plain of blue grass moving like water under a green storm. None of it made sense. All of it was real.
Ahead, the dark brightened—no color, just a flat plane of light like someone had stood a wall up in front of him.
The pressure on his chest increased. The lanes tightened into a single channel. The hum in his ears climbed a note.
"Easy," he told the part of himself that always wanted to push harder.
He angled his shoulders and gave himself the smallest pulse of thrust. Not a flare. A nudge. His lightning obeyed. He steadied into the center of the channel and let it take him.
The bright plane rushed toward him. It wasn't a wall. It was a skin, stretched thin. He could feel the difference in his teeth. He braced, hands still in, chin down.
Impact was clean. Blue first. Then white. Then everything stopped.