They stood on the rooftop of a fifteen-story building in District 21, the highest vantage point Zayne had been able to find in this area.
And there, in the distance, visible for the first time since Nana had arrived in Avalon—
The Wish Bridge.
It hung in the air like a dream made solid, impossibly suspended between the gray sky and the broken city below. Even from this distance—maybe five kilometers away—Nana could see it clearly: a bridge made of ice and light, crystalline structures that gleamed with otherworldly beauty, connecting to a swirling portal that looked like frozen lightning.
"That's it?" Nana breathed, her hand finding Zayne's automatically. "That's our way out?"
"That's it" Zayne's voice was quiet, but she could hear the emotion underneath. Hope. Fear. Determination. "I've spent two years trying to figure out how to reach it again. And now..."
"Now we're going to make it." Nana squeezed his hand. "Together."
The bridge was still far—farther than it looked, distance deceptive in Avalon's strange geography. But it was visible. Real. Not just a story or a hope, but an actual, physical thing they could reach.
"Tell me everything," Nana said, not taking her eyes off the bridge. "I need to know what we're walking into."
Zayne moved behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. For a moment, they just stood like that, two survivors looking at their impossible goal.
Then he began to explain."The Wish Bridge only appears during the blood moon cycle," he said quietly. "Once a year, for approximately six hours. The exact timing varies, but it's always when the moon turns red—hence the name of the cycle."
"Six hours," Nana repeated. "That's our window."
"Six hours from when the blood moon rises to when it sets. After that, the bridge begins to collapse. Anyone still on it..." He didn't finish, but Nana understood. Fall. Die. Or worse—get trapped in the collapsing portal.
"And it won't appear again for another year."
"Exactly." Zayne's arms tightened slightly. "Which means we get one chance. One attempt. If we fail—"
"We don't fail." Nana turned in his arms to face him. "We can't afford to fail. So we won't."
The confidence in her voice made Zayne smile despite the gravity of the situation.
"You sound so certain."
"I am certain. Because the alternative is spending another year in this nightmare, and I refuse to do that." She cupped his face in both hands. "We're going home, Zayne. Tomorrow. Together."
He kissed her —soft and lingering, tasting of hope and desperation in equal measure.
When they pulled apart, Zayne gestured to the horizon beyond the bridge. "See that massive structure? The one that looks like a dead tree but isn't?"
She squinted. There—rising above the broken cityscape like a skeletal hand reaching for the sky—was something that defied description. It looked organic, with twisted branches spreading in every direction, but it was too large, too wrong to be a real tree. And even from this distance, she could see things hanging from those branches. Dark shapes. Hundreds of them.
"The Ancient Tree," Zayne said. "The vampire nest. That's where they sleep during the non-cycle periods. And that's where we need to go."
"How many?" Nana's voice was steady, but her heart was racing.
"The last time I attempted this, I counted over three hundred young vampires. There are older ones too, deeper in the nest, but they tend to stay dormant unless directly threatened."
Zayne's clinical tone didn't quite hide his concern. "The young ones sleep hanging from the branches, wrapped in their wings like cocoons. They look almost peaceful. Beautiful, even."
"Until they wake up and try to kill us."
"Until they wake up and try to kill us," he agreed. "The key is to move silently. Vampires have incredible hearing, but they're deep in their sleep state during non-cycle periods. As long as we don't make loud noises or sudden movements, we should be able to climb past them."
Should being the operative word.
"in Avalon is guaranteed." Zayne turned her to face the tree again, pointing to specific locations. "See the way the branches twist? There's a path—not obvious, but if you know what to look for, you can trace a route from the ground level up to the crown where the bridge connects. That's the route I took last time."
Nana studied it carefully, committing the path to memory. "How long does the climb take?"
"At a cautious pace, avoiding the vampires? Forty-five minutes to an hour." He paused. "But once the blood moon rises and the cycle begins, they all wake up. Every single vampire. And then it becomes a race—climb as fast as possible, fight through any that catch you, reach the bridge before it collapses."
"And if we don't make it to the bridge in time?"
His silence was answer enough.
"Okay," Nana said, taking a deep breath.
"So we climb during the sleep period, get as high as possible before the blood moon rises. Then we run. Fight. Survive. Make it to the bridge and jump through the portal."
"Essentially, yes." Zayne's hand found hers again. "But there's one more critical detail you need to understand about the ice portal itself."
The way he said it made Nana's stomach tighten. "What detail?"
"The portal only accepts humans." Zayne's voice was carefully neutral. "If anything else tries to pass through—demons, hybrids, vampires—their bodies begin to disintegrate. Fade into mist. The portal... destroys them. Slowly. Painfully."
Nana processed this. "So if a vampire tries to follow us through—"
"They will die. Or cease to exist. Whatever happens to creatures in Avalon when they turn to mist." He turned to face her fully. "Which means if you get bitten, if you start to turn—"
"I won't be able to use the portal." The full horror of it settled over Nana. "If I get bitten and start transforming, I'll be trapped here. Or worse—I'll try to go through and just... fade away."
"Yes." Zayne's hands framed her face.
"Which is why we cannot—cannot—let them bite us. A single bite during the vampire cycle means instant transformation. There's no three-hour grace period like with demons. One bite, and you're gone."
The stakes had never been clearer. One mistake. One bite. And everything was over."so we don't get bitten," Nana said firmly. "Simple."
"Simple," Zayne echoed, though his expression said it was anything but.
"Nana, I need you to understand—if something goes wrong, if one of us gets bitten—"
"Nothing goes wrong." Nana pulled his hands away from her face and held them tightly. "We've both survived too much to fail now. I didn't lose Mina, didn't lose everyone I cared about, didn't find you after months of searching, just to fail at the last moment. We're getting through that portal. Both of us. Together."
"Together," Zayne agreed softly.
They stood in silence for a while, both of them staring at the Wish Bridge, at their impossible goal that was suddenly, terrifyingly close.
"There one more thing," Zayne said eventually. "About time."
"Time?"
"Three years in Avalon," he said carefully, "equals approximately three hours in the real world."
Nana froze. "What?"
"Time moves differently here. I don't understand the mechanics—maybe it's because Avalon exists between dimensions, or because it's not fully part of our reality. But I've done the calculations based on my knowledge of when I arrived versus what should have passed in the real world." He met her eyes. "Three years for me. For the real world? Maybe three hours. Four at most."
"But..." Nana's mind was reeling. "I've been here for months. That means in Linkon, it's been—"
"Minutes. Maybe an hour." Zayne's thumbacross her knuckles. "Tara and Nero probably just found you unconscious in the middle of forest,They're probably calling for medical help right now."
The implications were staggering. Everyone she knew—her team, her friends, her entire life in Linkon—had experienced only minutes of her absence. While she'd lived through months of horror, learned to kill, lost Mina, found Zayne, became someone completely different.
"That's..." She couldn't find words. "How is that possible?"
"I don't know. But it means when we get back, almost no time will have passed. We can..." His voice roughened. "We can go back to our lives. Together. Like none of this happened."
"Except it did happen." Nana's hand moved to Mina's necklace, still around her neck. "We're not the same people who fell through that portal. We've changed."
"Yes." Zayne pressed a kiss to her forehead. "But we can still have a life. A real life. Together."
The word hung between them like a promise.
Together.
"Tomorrow," Nana said firmly. "Tomorrow we climb the tree, cross the bridge, and go home. No more Avalon. No more monsters. Just... us. In the real world. With hot chocolate and strawberry candy and all the normal things we've been dreaming about."
"Tomorrow," Zayne agreed.
They made their way down from the rooftop as evening fell, heading toward the abandoned hospital Zayne had identified as their final staging ground. It was in District 22, close enough to the Ancient Tree that they could reach it quickly, far enough away that vampire patrols—which would begin tomorrow when the blood moon rose—wouldn't detect them tonight.
The hospital was in better condition than most buildings in Avalon. The structure was sound, the rooms mostly intact. Zayne had clearly scouted it before, because he led Nana directly to a specific room on the third floor—corner location, two exits, good sightlines.
Their last night in Avalon.they set up camp in silence, both of them checking weapons, organizing supplies, preparing for tomorrow. Nana sharpened her sword with methodical precision. Zayne inspected his twin blades, tested the balance, counted ammunition for his crafted gun.
As the sky darkened to its deepest gray, they sat together on the hospital bed—an actual mattress, slightly moldy but still functional. Luxury in Avalon.
"Are you scared?" Nana asked quietly.
"Terrified," Zayne admitted. "I've attempted this once before and barely survived. And back then, I only had to worry about myself.
Now..." His arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her close. "Now I have you. And the thought of something happening to you, of you getting bitten right in front of me and not being able to save you—"
"That's won't happen." Nana's voice was firm.
"We're both too skilled, too experienced. We've survived this long. One more day. One more challenge."
"One more challenge," he echoed.
They lay down together, Zayne's arms wrapped around Nana, her head on his chest. Tomorrow would be brutal. They needed rest.
But neither of them could sleep.
"Zayne?"
"Mm?"
"When we get back..." Nana's voice was small. "What happens to us? We're from the same city, but our lives are so different. You're a doctor. I'm a hunter. We live in different worlds."
"Then we figure out how to make those worlds overlap." His hand stroked her short hair.
"I'm not letting you go, Nana. Not after everything. If that means I learn about hunting and you learn about medicine, if it means we find a way to combine our lives—we'll figure it out."
"Promise?"
"I promise." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Besides, you'll need someone to scold you about kicking Wanderers with your bare legs. Might as well be me."
Nana laughed softly. "And you'll need someone to make sure you actually eat instead of just drinking coffee and performing surgeries. Might as well be me."
"Sounds like a fair arrangement."
They fell silent again, holding each other in the darkness.Tomorrow they would face the vampire nest.
Tomorrow, they would climb the Ancient Tree.
Tomorrow, they would cross the Wish Bridge and escape Avalon.
Or they would die trying.
But tonight—their last night in hell—they had each other.
And that was enough.
.
.
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To be continued.