The blare of the brass horns cut short, replaced by the rhythmic thump of heavy boots striking slick flagstones along the Spire's descent. Zavien clamped a hand onto Cozmera’s elbow, steering her past the bronze rim of the Weeping Gardens. He offered no backward glance toward Fendryl, who stood rigid beside the broken ceramic vials, his features drawn taut with impotent anger. They were already moving, a blur of motion through the spiraling corridors, past servants cowering in alcoves, past scholars peering from behind half-closed doors.
“Which way, Cozmera? The quickest path to the lower wards!” Zavien’s voice was sharp, cutting through the panicked cacophony. His mouth set in a thin, pale seam. “Varen has too many men. If we can reach Dantel, secure him… then we can buy time.”
Cozmera didn’t answer with words. She tugged him left, then right, instinctively navigating the labyrinthine passages she’d traversed a hundred times in her secret life. The memory of her waking nightmare clawed at her senses—the imagined scorch of dry pine, the heat on her skin. She had dreamt of an all-consuming blaze, and now Dantel remained in the Flotsam ward, trapped among dry timber and tallow.
They burst from a final archway, tumbling onto a narrow, rain-slicked walkway that overlooked the Flooded Wards. Below, the scene was a grotesque tableau of chaos. Iron-armored figures, Varen’s zealots, swarmed like ants around the teetering structures of the lower city. And there, stark against the perpetual twilight, was Dantel’s water-mill, its massive wooden wheel now crowned with plumes of angry, black smoke. Sheets of orange fire bit into the ancient timbers, gnawing rapidly into the support pilings.
“No!” Cozmera screamed, the sound torn from her throat. Her legs propelled her forward, heedless of Zavien’s shouted warnings. She scrambled down the rickety, algae-coated ladders that served as the ward's main thoroughfare, charred ash and the screams of the trapped rising to meet her.
Zavien was right behind her, his own movements unnaturally swift. He overtook her on a perilous rope bridge, his hand seizing her arm, spinning her around. “Cozmera, wait! It’s too dangerous!” He surveyed the smoke churning below, his jaw rigid.
She yanked her arm free, fixing her sight on the smoldering mill. “Dantel is in there! I have to!” She launched herself across the final few meters, landing hard on the crumbling, waterlogged planks surrounding the mill. Heat struck her chest like a solid slab of slate, pulling the air from her throat. Oak rafters snapped above the roar, rattling the wet deck beneath her soles.
“Dantel!” she yelled, her throat raw, just as a blackened crossbeam groaned overhead and snapped free. Cozmera reacted on instinct, shoving herself forward, but it was too slow. The timber crashed onto the planks, pinning her right leg beneath its smoldering bulk. Iron spikes tore through her hem; pain flared red and sharp as she hit the floor, choking on sulfur and wet moss.
Just as in her dream, Zavien was there. He vaulted through the swirling haze, his silhouette framed against the ruined entryway. He stood over her, his face a grim shadow, his hand already rising, just as she’d seen it in her nightmare. She flinched, bracing for the killing blow, for the executioner’s axe. But instead of rage, his eyes held a terrifying resolve. A dark, crimson sheen coated his knuckles.
“No,” he gritted out, his voice strained. “Not this time.”
He jammed his bare palms directly against the charred wood, thrusting through the yellow tongues of fire. Cozmera cried out, not from her own pain, but from the raw, desperate power that flared from him. The air around them crackled, then solidified. The crimson sheen across his fingers flared, branching like crimson spiderwebs through the charred grain. The fire arrested mid-flicker, locking into jagged, ruby-tinted crystal that entombed the beam in petrified facets. The heat vanished, replaced by a sudden, unnatural chill.
Zavien stumbled back, skin gray with exhaustion and sweat beading at his hairline, but the timber stayed motionless, locked in static ruby quartz. His hand, when he pulled it free, was visibly shaking. His breath came in ragged gasps, his lips almost blue. He had used his own life-force, his own blood, to crystallize the flames. He sank onto both knees beside her, struggling to steady his breath.
“Cozmera, are you… are you hurt?” he panted, his voice thin.
But Cozmera wasn’t looking at him. From behind the crystallized hull of the mill, a thin shout cut through the steam. Dantel! He emerged, soot-stained but grinning, clutching a leather-bound ledger. He barely registered the red-crystal embers or Cozmera's pinned knee, his focus locked onto the clatter of approaching plate armor.
“I did it!” Dantel yelled, scrambling to a massive, rusted lever on the outer wall of the mill. “The ledger! It’s an access code! I found the sluice gate schematics! They’re for the old emergency overflow!” With a grunt, he yanked the lever down.
A deep, earth-shaking rumble echoed through the wards. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a roar, deafening and primal, erupted from the heart of the Spire. The water in the central channel, usually sluggish, began to churn violently. From a hidden maw in the Spire’s base, a colossal wall of water, brown with sediment and debris, surged forth. It slammed into the Flooded Wards, a devastating, unstoppable force. Buildings groaned, then collapsed. The rogue Inquisitors, caught entirely off guard, were swept away like dolls, their iron armor dragging them beneath the churning tide.
Half of Varen’s forces vanished in an instant, swallowed by Dantel’s improvised tidal wave. The remaining zealots, including Captain Varen himself, were thrown against the outer walls, battered and disoriented. As the water receded, leaving a trail of wreckage and broken bodies, Varen, bleeding from a dozen cuts, spotted Dantel. A snarl twisted his face. Ignoring his surviving men, he surged through the knee-deep water, seizing Dantel by the scruff of his neck. The boy shrieked, dropping the ledger. Varen hoisted him easily, the small, struggling form dangling in his grasp, and began to drag him toward the precarious, crumbling edge of the Flooded Wards, the deadly, hundred-story drop of the Spire’s Edge opening below them.