Chapter 56: The Fall

Chapter 56: The Fall
The wind came from below, not above.

It forced its way into my throat with brutal insistence, choking off any scream before it could form, leaving me voiceless as I tumbled through the air like a rag doll flung aside by a careless child. My body twisted helplessly, limbs flailing without purpose or control.

I saw the sky—that pale, indifferent dome overhead.

Then I saw the bottom of the valley—that dark, all-consuming maw.

The world kept inverting itself, gravity clawing at my body with inexorable force.

During one of those wild rotations, my left hand blindly brushed against something. It was rough and unyielding, possessing the peculiar resilience of living wood. A dead branch, jutting out from a crack in the cliff face where it had somehow managed to root itself in stone.

I had no time to assess whether it could bear my weight. Survival instinct moved faster than conscious thought, and my fingers closed around that branch with desperate strength before my mind had fully registered what I was doing.

The sharp crack that followed was unmistakable.

My downward plunge stopped with savage abruptness, and the sudden deceleration sent a tearing pain through my left wrist. Something in my shoulder joint shifted with a sickening sensation, like gears slipping out of alignment—it felt like a dislocation.

The branch began to bend from its base outward.

It groaned under the burden it was never meant to bear, curving to a dangerous, extreme angle. Its roots still clung to the stone crevice, but I knew it wouldn't last long. I could hear the sound of small rocks being pulled loose from that crevice, bit by bit, by the strain of my weight—my death countdown.

I forced myself to hang there, and despite the excruciating pain in my arm, I didn't dare move even a fraction.

The wind continued to surge upward from below, whipping my clothes into a frenzy. I dangled there on that failing branch with hundreds of meters of empty air beneath my feet.

I made myself look down. Below was a shelf of rock jutting out from the cliff face, like a protruding fang.

That shelf was about six or seven meters below my feet—my only chance at survival. If I fell onto it, I probably wouldn't die from the impact, but it would still be a death sentence. Because here on this desolate mountainside, no one would come to rescue me.

The branch finally gave way.

I fell again.

This time the distance was short—too short even for fear to fully form.

My entire body slammed heavily into that protruding rock shelf with a dull thud. My forehead struck the stone surface, and fortunately my body had landed first, providing some cushioning—otherwise my skull would have been smashed. Still, the violent impact sent a white flash across my vision for a second before darkness began creeping in. I lay sprawled across that rocky ledge like a puddle of broken flesh, my left cheek pressed against the rough stone surface.

I smelled blood. It was my own, from my forehead—warm, flowing down along my brow and into my eyes, staining the world a deep crimson.

In that final second before consciousness slipped away completely, what occupied my thoughts was not the fact that I was dying.

What I thought of was Rendell.

The real Rendell.

I remembered him at eight years old, standing in my study as I learned the elven tongue. He had been half a head taller than me, wearing an ill-fitting squire's uniform newly issued from the Royal Ceremonial Office, the sleeves extending about two inches past his wrists. He stood very straight beside me, his eyes directed toward my desk but never daring to truly look at me. Yet as time passed, when I mispronounced certain syllables, he would sometimes be amused by my ridiculous mistakes and laugh.

At twelve, after I had been caught sneaking out of the palace and Father had confined me, I secretly sought him out in the evening. Unable to resist my pleading, he helped me slip out through the western gate. He walked ahead of me, pausing at every corner to listen before letting me follow. Later we were caught again, and he was punished with standing watch all night. He never complained about it once.

And at fifteen, when he lost his footing during sword practice and fell into the fountain. He climbed out of the water with it dripping from his hair, but instead of anger, he smiled. That was the happiest I ever remembered seeing him smile.

Finally, I remembered the way he lifted that cup of tea.

His hand paused for a moment. In that single second, he understood everything.

But he still drank that tea. He drank it for me.

His pursuit of the dark sorcerer was for me.

His burial in the dark, damp sewers beneath the capital was also for me.

I made myself picture the way he was buried. Someone who loved cleanliness so much, someone so upright—he ended up being swallowed by such filthy mire.

He shouldn't have ended that way. He shouldn't have. And especially not because of me.

Mother's words—"that boy is finally gone"—he was the one who told me. But thinking back now, that was probably fabricated by the imposter.

I didn't know if Mother's condition had truly stabilized, if she was waiting for us. If this was true, she didn't know I was bleeding on this deserted cliff face, didn't know that young knight was already dead in the lightless sewers beneath the capital.

I'm sorry, I repeated silently in my mind.

To the real Rendell.

For all those moments in Aethon when I had entrusted my fate to the creature wearing his face. For making him drink that cup of tea.

I didn't know if he hated me before he died.

I thought he probably didn't.

My senses were beginning to drift away from my body, but I could still smell my own blood, could still detect in the wind that faint scent belonging to the deep underground of the capital—cold and desperate with the stench of decay.

Tears spilled from the eye I could still open, running down the bridge of my nose and falling onto the stone beneath my cheek. The rock was cold, and the tears spread across it, carried away in part by the wind, while the rest seeped into the stone's grain.

By the end, my chest no longer had the strength to convulse, and I simply let the tears fall on their own.

Then my consciousness broke, and I let the darkness swallow me whole.