Chapter 134 The Pass Part 1
The pass narrowed to a knife's edge, snow drifted in gray seams along the stone, and every sound echoed like a threat. For a breathless moment, even the wind stilled. Only the faintest, almost imperceptible hiss sounded as stray snowflakes struck Cornelius's blade—soft as static, sharp as warning. Cornelius made them walk in silence, even Oliver biting down on his need to fill the air with jokes or worry. It should have been safe: no sign of pursuit, no birds, no movement but the wind and the brittle crunch of their own boots.
Daisy felt the chain in her blood coil tighter with every step. Inside her, the magic thrummed, foreign and restless, as though each heartbeat pressed old iron deeper into her veins. She pressed a trembling hand to the locket at her throat, thumb worrying the cold metal as if the pressure there could calm her pulse. The locket was heavier now, pulling at her neck, a lodestone for things she didn’t want to name. Sometimes she felt as if the chain's magic wanted to flare, to spill into the open, and she could sense its hunger drawing at her strength. Her stride shortened, shoulders curving inward as though she might shield the weight from the others, or from the world itself.
They were halfway across the razorback when Cornelius stopped, hand raised. Everyone froze. The wind shifted and, just for an instant, Daisy caught the muddled pattern of bootprints breaking the windblown snow—too fresh, headed the wrong way, pressed deep by a crouching weight. The hush was absolute, touched by the faint tang of spent oil in the air. Ahead, a black shape crouched low behind a boulder. Its eyes gleamed, daubed dark against the pallor, and it held a bow drawn with an arrow nocked. The tip glimmered with an oily, blue-white light that burned like a promise.
Cornelius held up two fingers, then pointed left and right. Standard spread, easy if you had all day to plan, suicide in a funnel like this. Mira moved first, darting low. Xeris followed, taking the right, claws already slipping from his gloves.
“Stay down,” Cornelius mouthed to Daisy, Delia, and Maribel. He didn’t wait for them to answer—just charged the tracker, a flash of gray against the snow.
Everything after that happened at once.
The arrow launched, blue fire trailing behind, aimed not at Cornelius but at Daisy. She ducked, felt the air crackle as it passed, then saw the world lurch as the spell tried to strip the magic from her bones. For a split second, the chain inside her went dark. The effect hit her like a blow: with the chain's magic gone silent, a dangerous void opened inside her, as if the spell threatened not just to weaken her, but to break the bond entirely. If the chain's power disappeared for too long, Daisy knew she might lose herself—or worse, lose control over the force tied to her blood. She fell to one knee, head splitting, ears ringing so sharply she nearly retched. A metallic taste flooded her mouth, bitter as blood, and her skin prickled with cold sweat. The magic left her not just empty but strangely hollowed, as if part of her had been scraped raw from the inside.
Oliver was there, hauling her upright and shielding her with his own body. “Move!” he hissed.
Delia and Maribel clambered after, but Maribel’s legs gave out. Daisy tried to help, but her arms wouldn’t answer. The magic was gone, replaced by a dead weight inside her.
Cornelius slammed into the tracker, both of them tumbling in a mess of limbs. The tracker drew a knife, the edge also lit with that uncanny blue. He drove it in. Deep. Cornelius’s thigh jerked. He grunted but twisted, breaking the tracker’s wrist with a sickening pop.
On the right, Xeris reached the other flank. Two more trackers emerged, one wielding a blue-charged chain, the other a spike-tipped club. Xeris bared his teeth, and for a sharp breath, Daisy remembered the warnings from childhood stories: never watch the shifting, or risk being marked by the old curse. Shifters, it was said, paid a price for every change. He shifted then, just for an instant, into something less than human. The air around him flickered with a smoky scent, sharp as burnt pine, as if the world itself recoiled from the change. He swept an arm, claws raking across faces, a guttural phrase slipping from his lips—half prayer, half warning—too low for Daisy to catch. Then he jerked back as the blue chain lashed his leg. Smoke sizzled where it touched him, and Xeris howled, half dragon, half human, eyes blazing with murder.
Daisy felt the world start to flicker back. She looked down and saw the black veins on her arms retreat, just a hair, as if the chain was hiding from the blue spell. For an instant, something inside her pulsed—faint, almost like another heartbeat not her own—before fading. There was a low whisper she could almost hear at the edge of her mind, not quite words, but a hush of intention. The sensation passed, leaving the chain settling deeper, as if waiting for its moment.
Mira was gone, vanished into the rocks.
Another arrow screamed through the pass, this one angled for Oliver. He jerked Daisy out of the way, but the arrow clipped his shoulder. Instead of blood, a blue glow spread from the wound, snuffing out his own minor magic—Daisy saw the old scars on his skin darken and then vanish.
“It’s a null,” he gasped. “They’re using anti-blood magic—shit, that hurts.”
“Keep moving,” Cornelius shouted, dragging himself upright, tracker’s body limp beneath him.
Delia was already pushing Maribel forward, hands under the older woman’s arms, face set in stubborn panic.
Ahead, three more Eldergrove soldiers appeared on the ridge above. They carried crossbows and blue-lit darts, aiming with a precision that had nothing to do with mercy.
That’s when Samuel Thompson made his play.
For one heartbeat, Daisy saw him hesitate at the back, a shadow among shadows. Samuel's hand, speckled with age and old ink stains, lingered at his side. The familiar scent of chalk and paper, a reminder of quieter days and lessons, hung in the air. Yet beneath these memories lay the bond between them, shaped by his steady care and gentle words in difficult moments. In that instant, Daisy understood: Samuel hesitated not from fear, but because leaving them, even to save them, was the hardest choice he had ever faced.
Then the air snapped tight, and he was nothing but motion. He strode into the open, cane in one hand, the other bleeding freely from a self-inflicted gash. The air around him turned metallic, dense, the way it did just before a blood-mage worked serious power.
He shouted, voice cracked but booming, “Run! I’ll hold them.”
Daisy wanted to protest, but Delia’s grip was iron, and Maribel was already sobbing, “Don’t let them get you, Sam, please—”
Samuel ignored her. He flicked the cane, drawing a circle in the air. The blood from his palm sparked, then expanded into a shield that glowed with every color Daisy had ever bled. The next volley of arrows hit the shield and sizzled, blue eating into red, red pushing back.
He turned, met Daisy’s eyes, and shouted: “Find the missing links, even in yourselves. It’s the only way to break the chain!”
The pass shuddered as the blue and red spells clashed, the pressure enough to make Daisy’s teeth vibrate.
Xeris, now limping but lethal, closed the distance to Daisy and Oliver. He swept them both up, half-carrying, half-dragging, eyes flicking back to where Samuel stood.