Chapter 135 The Pass Part 2
A third wave of trackers appeared, above and behind, ready to flank.
Samuel reached into his coat, pulled something—Daisy couldn’t see what, but it looked like another locket, or maybe a charm. He pressed it to his own chest, then flung his arms wide.
The shield pulsed. Instantly, the air thickened, sharpening into a clarity like glass. At first there was a single, perfect note—a silence before destruction—then, a thunderous roar erupted as the mountainside above the pass fractured and gave way. Stone, snow, and ancient magic surged down together, overwhelming the trackers and inundating the ravine below. Amid this confusion, for one breathless moment, a blue-fletched arrow—its shaft cracked and its tip still glowing—appeared, tumbling end over end atop the rushing debris. It spun briefly on the avalanche’s surface before being engulfed by the cascading mass of snow and stone. The image flashed and disappeared, yet Daisy would always remember that fatal color blazing within the avalanche, a warning momentarily revealed before it was swallowed by the world.
Samuel was gone, buried beneath it all.
Daisy stumbled into a crevice with the others, the collapse sucking every sound from the air. Xeris huddled over them, body a fortress. Delia clung to Maribel, who was now unconscious but breathing.
Daisy couldn’t cry, not yet. Her face felt carved from stone.
When the dust settled, Cornelius poked his head out and checked the way ahead. “Clear,” he croaked, voice hoarse.
Oliver tried to lighten things. “Remind me never to piss off a schoolteacher again.”
No one laughed.
Mira reappeared, her robe torn, but otherwise untouched. She studied Daisy, eyes narrow. “He did it for you. He knew what you were.”
Daisy glared back. “And what’s that?”
“Not just the chainbearer,” Mira replied. “The chainbreaker. He always said you’d do more than survive.”
Daisy shook. She felt the locket at her throat, suddenly ice-cold. She fumbled it open.
The daisy petal inside was gone, burned to ash. In its place was a thin slice of parchment, curled and yellowed. Daisy pried it free, found it covered in script—ancient, but she could read it. Maybe she’d always been able to.
“Original Chain,” she read aloud, the words pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Beneath the title was a map—just a fragment, but enough to point the way. As she unfolded it, a faint scent of old ink and burnt paper drifted up, sharper and older than anything the mountain carried. For a moment, it seemed a cold, threaded wind curled from inside the parchment itself, brushing her cheek and making the hairs rise on her arms. Daisy realized that the map was more than a navigational aid: it held profound significance, promising not only a physical route forward but a path toward understanding the chain’s origins and perhaps breaking its hold. The map pressed its presence not just on her sight but into her senses, as if some ancient power, barely contained, lingered in its lines.
Looking closer, Daisy realized certain symbols along the map’s edge shimmered with the same blue-white as the magic that had nearly torn the chain from her. She had the uneasy impression that the paths marked here were not only routes through the mountains, but warnings of perils deeper than stone and snow. Whispers in the back of her mind suggested the map might reveal the source of the chain’s magic—and perhaps the secrets needed to remake or destroy it. Yet that same certainty hinted at danger: whatever lay at the map’s destination was a secret someone had killed to guard, a puzzle powerful enough to unmake worlds or bind them tighter than before.
Delia read over her shoulder. “What does it mean?”
Daisy looked at the snow, at the rocks, at the space where Samuel had been. For a moment, her thoughts flickered back to a lesson of his, one quiet afternoon, sunlight on the floor while he spoke not of magic but of courage: "What you carry is never just for the world—it is for yourself first. One day, you’ll have to decide what you want to change." She breathed in, tasting ash and cold. "It means we go on. We finish what he started," she said. But her voice was different now, softer, trembling with something held close. "Not just because we have to, but because if I turn away now, I’ll never forgive myself. I need to see it through. For him. For us. For the chance to be free of this."
Xeris placed a hand on her back, steady as always. Oliver just nodded, as if he’d expected this all along.
Daisy stared at the map, her own blood smearing the ancient script, and made herself believe they could do it.
Because the alternative—becoming the next link in the Emperor’s chain—was too awful to consider.
She tucked the map away, wiped her face, and led them forward, into whatever the world had left for them.
But as Daisy stepped onto the churned snow, a surge of uncertainty constricted her breath, anchoring her in place for a single heartbeat. She glanced at the others—companions relying on her courage, each bearing scars of sacrifice. Despite her resolve, doubt gnawed at the edges of her conviction, and in a voice scarcely more than a sigh carried by the wind, she confessed to herself the question that haunted her deepest thoughts: What if I am the weakest link?