Chapter 84: What He Could Have Done

Chapter 84: What He Could Have Done

Silas lunged toward the open end of the lane and caught Alden around the waist with Remote Grasp. He hauled Alden past the lane’s end, out from beneath the leaning partition. Alden hit the clear floor and rolled.

The slab struck the next partition before Silas could follow.

Stone broke with a deafening crack. The upper half remained tangled in the overhead guides, dragging the neighboring partition sideways. The lower section smashed against its own carriage, twisted, and slid toward Silas.

He tried to jump back. The broken corner caught his left leg, swept him down, and settled across his thigh and hip. The rest of the section lay propped between the carriage frame and the floor.

Pain tore through him. He heard himself cry out before he could stop it.

Then Supreme Regeneration began its work. Heat spread through his crushed leg, and beneath the pain he felt damaged flesh drawing together. He forced himself to look beyond the stone pressing into him.

Still awake. Still breathing. Where can I go?

The overhead frame shrieked. Ferrow landed beside the broken carriage and caught the leaning upper slab on his shoulder. With his other hand he seized the buckling guide junction above it.

The neighboring partition stopped tilting.

Ferrow could move the slab; Silas saw him lift it several inches. But the movement pulled at the guides and tipped the next partition toward the lane. He lowered it back, bracing both loads where they were. His strength was keeping one failure from dragging the rest down.

"Cross!" Ferrow shouted. "He’s caught under the broken end. Get him clear! I can’t shift this frame while he’s underneath it."

Dust spilled over Silas’s sleeve. The piece across his hip stayed still, its weight unpleasant but bearable now that the first shock had passed. Ferrow had the larger collapse contained. Silas needed only to get himself out.

The slab Ferrow held cast a deep wedge of shadow over Silas. Through a gap in the debris, he could see the dark mouth of the nearest striker bay, eight paces away. Its floor was clear, the shadows deep enough to receive him.

Shadow Passage needed a deep shadow to leave from and a visible deep shadow to arrive in. He had both. His reserve was a little under half, which was more than enough for one passage. He could feel the Talent waiting under his thoughts, the way it always did.

He could be out in a breath, lying safely inside the striker bay while his leg finished healing.

He began to reach for it.

Then he saw Alden.

Alden was on his hands and knees on the other side of the debris, scrambling back toward him. His face was white with dust and something else. He was saying Silas’s name over and over, not loudly, the way people say things when they’ve forgotten they’re speaking. He grabbed the edge of the broken section with both hands and heaved, and it didn’t move, and he made a sound Silas had never heard from him.

Silas stopped reaching.

In the game, it had taken failure. Repeated failure, with someone Alden couldn’t afford to lose standing between him and the thing that was going to kill them. The game had shown that much and no more. It had never explained what happened inside him when Second Attempt broke open.

Silas didn’t know if this was that. He didn’t know if anything was.

The bay remained in clear view. Ferrow held the frame steady, and feeling was returning to Silas’s foot. He could afford a few seconds. Alden needed this power, and Silas wanted him strong enough to face what was coming. He wanted a future where keeping himself and Mara safe didn’t also require saving the entire fucking world.

A few seconds, he thought. If nothing happens, I go.

It was a rotten thing to do to a friend. He knew that. He did it anyway.

Alden couldn’t see Silas’s face properly.

There was too much dust. There was a hand, palm up on the stone, and a shoulder, and the broken slab lying across the rest of him from the hip down, and there was blood. It was coming out from under the stone and running along the edge of the rail in a dark line, and there was a lot of it.

He knew Silas had regeneration. He’d seen him take the seed. But he couldn’t see what it was fixing beneath that stone, and Ferrow couldn’t hold the hall in place forever. Every scrape from the frame above made Alden look up, afraid something else was coming down.

He’s under there because of me.

Silas had pulled him out. Alden had felt it, the grip round his waist, the yank, the floor. He’d been standing still, staring up at that slab like a fool, and Silas had thrown him clear and taken his place.

Two nights ago, Silas had sat beside him and explained why this trial might suit Second Attempt. He had bothered to find it, check it, and ask Alden to come. Alden had spent the walk here hoping he wouldn’t disappoint him.

Please. Let me get him out.

He couldn’t lift the slab. He’d already tried.

He forced himself to look at how the stone lay. Most of it rested between the carriage frame and the floor. A cracked corner projected beyond those supports, pressing across Silas’s hip and thigh. Beneath its outer edge, rubble sloped toward the empty lane. If Alden could break that corner away and drive it outward, it had somewhere to fall. He wouldn’t need to move the whole section.

He drew his sword and stood, and pushed mana into his arms and the blade, as much as he could gather, and struck the crack.

The blade hit stone and skidded. Chips flew. The whole section shuddered under the blow and jolted down a finger’s width, and from underneath it, Silas made a sound that went through Alden like a knife.

The crack hadn’t opened. He’d hit it wrong. He’d made it worse.

Again. Like the dungeon. Standing there with my sword up and nothing I do matters.

He hated it. He hated himself for it. He was so angry his hands shook.

He looked at the stone again.

It was the same feeling he’d had a thousand times. The feeling from the striker’s feint that morning, from every drill where he’d done it wrong once and seen, afterward, exactly why. Second Attempt, doing what it had always done. He’d come in at the wrong angle. He’d spread the mana along the whole blade instead of putting it where the blade met stone. He’d hit across the crack instead of into it.

But this time it didn’t stop there.

The correction kept unfolding. The blade’s recoil, the fresh chips, the way the cracked corner had shifted—he could use all of it. His failed strike had shown him where the stone resisted and where it was already separating. He felt the waste in his reinforcement, mana spreading through muscles that weren’t helping the blow. His grip adjusted as he moved one foot onto the broad carriage footing. From there, he could drive the corner outward instead of down onto Silas.

Something moved in his chest, under his breastbone, the way it had once before, when he was fifteen and woke one morning knowing a name he hadn’t known the night before.

Battle Evolution.

He didn’t have time to wonder at it.

He settled his weight over that foot and lifted the sword again.