When the time’s right, you shed blood.

Like lightning striking inches away, a Forged brick smashed into the rock wall beside his head with all the force an Iron could muster. Chips stung Lindon’s face, and he flinched away so wildly that he fell to the ground. His ear rang like a struck gong.

Any closer, and he would have died. For a second time.

Deret still roared in the illusion, with no idea how close he’d come to victory. But that brick caused the reality of Lindon’s situation to come crashing down.

He had almost died. His story had come within an inch of ending here. The heavens had already intervened once, a celestial messenger had reversed death and caused even time to flow backwards…and none of that would have mattered.

For reasons he didn’t understand, he reached into his pocket for Suriel’s glass marble. It was warm to the touch, and he rolled it in his fingers as he thought.

One thing was perfectly clear: with Deret sharing this chasm with him, Lindon was in mortal danger. And he couldn’t trust heaven to save him a second time.

His gaze was drawn to a spear, abandoned from Yerin’s last fight, half-buried in the snow. He kept low to avoid any potential flying bricks, crawling over to the weapon and cradling it in both hands.

You shed blood.

Before he had a chance to inspect the spear, he ran out of time. A brick struck the banner, and the field instantly blew away like mist on the wind. To Lindon, it really was like watching a cloud drift through the air, but Deret actually staggered as he was jerked from one reality to another. The banner itself wasn’t broken, but it had been knocked out of alignment with the rest of the formation. The boundary was gone. In less than a breath, Deret would regain his bearings and turn around, ready to kill.

Lindon gathered himself. No matter how he reasoned, there was only one thing to do here. He gripped cold, slick wood in shaking hands.

Then he stabbed Deret.

There was less to it than he’d expected. The first stab was basically like sinking a blade into the earth; he jammed it into Deret’s back, then quickly withdrew. The Kazan didn’t react until Lindon pulled the spear out, and then he jerked forward as though something had stung him. He didn’t look wounded at all.

Lindon panicked. Deret would turn and hurl a brick through Lindon’s head at any second, and that would be the end. So he followed the other man forward, stabbing him again and again, expecting any second to end with a missile of Forged madra through the skull.

With no art, with no skill, Lindon stabbed Kazan Ma Deret until a bleeding body fell onto the snow-covered ground. He fell with it, swallowing air as though he couldn’t get enough, still clutching the spear.

And a Remnant rose before him, and he choked back bitter tears.

Made of Mountain’s Heart power, this Remnant was like the outline of an ogre painted in dirt. It stumbled around for a while, flailing at the air with heavy hands, but it was weak and barely coherent. Lindon held his eyes open until they watered, afraid to blink, but the Remnant never gave any indication that it saw him. It pressed into the wall and oozed away, squeezing into tiny cracks like soft mud.

Lindon dropped his weapon as the spirit vanished, panting, his stomach churning. He thought he might be sick.

He’d always accepted the fact that he would kill someone someday. Combat was a part of the sacred arts, and the clans were encouraged to kill one another within reason. He knew his parents had killed people in their younger days, though they rarely talked about it.

But there was supposed to be more to it. He’d imagined standing in triumph over a blood enemy, veins pumping with the thrill of battle, proving his superiority in a final showdown. Not huddling in the cold, stabbing a blinded man.

Deret had given him no choice, and besides, the Wei elders would have given him a reward for killing a Kazan Iron. No one would blame him. If he had hesitated, even for another second, he would have certainly died.

Even so, he kept his eyes off the body. Despite what he’d been told as a child, there was nothing to celebrate here.

Another flash of gold light, this time sweeping in a horizontal arc, and Elder Whitehall shouted, “Stop her! Hold her down!” A black-and-red blur flashed over the chasm as Yerin leaped past.

Lindon snapped himself back to reality, rushing to collect his formation banners. He didn’t look forward to killing anyone else, but leaving an ally to fight alone was the act of a coward. He had to at least try something, even if he was too weak to contribute much.

Once he’d gathered up all the banners, he slipped them inside his outer robe and steadied his grip on the jagged stone wall. His vision was swimming; the day of cycling, the night without sleep, the strain on his madra, and the burden of his emotions were all getting to be too much for him.

One more stretch, he said, focusing on the climb in front of him. He forced himself to forget the march out of Sacred Valley. Just this one last thing, and then I can sleep.

Inch by inch, he hauled himself up.

At the top, the patchy snow had been sprayed pink. Heaven’s Glory disciples lay here and there, mostly wounded, a few probably dead. One held pressure on a deep gash in his arm, his face pale. He stared straight at Lindon, but seemed to see nothing, only rocking back and forth.

Elder Whitehall landed in a crouch at the bottom of a tree, snow flying away from him in a ring. He whipped a line of golden light forward, and the beam slashed through a tree in front of him, dividing it into two charred and smoking halves. It creaked as it toppled, sending splinters spraying into the air. The attack left deep, blackened gouges in the other trees nearby, but none of them collapsed.

Yerin slipped out from behind one of those trunks, her sword flashing. A thin wave of distortion blew outward from her weapon, like the edge of a gleaming sickle. Elder Whitehall ducked, and the sword-madra sliced deep into a boulder behind him. He gathered light to a point in his hand, but she had already disappeared.

Lindon prepared to jump back into the chasm. He’d only ever had personal experience with one Path, and while the elders of his clan could do some astonishing things with illusions, they’d never displayed anything like this. This was a true battle between Jades, and he would be safer if he hid until it was over.

…then again, Suriel had suggested that by leaving the valley, he could gain power even beyond Gold. The very idea beggared his imagination, but that only meant his imagination was too limited. He hadn’t seen enough, hadn’t experienced enough. If he wanted to travel his own path to its end, he had to do so with eyes wide open.

At that moment, Elder Whitehall spotted him.

The elder snarled, whipping a scorching stream of light Lindon’s way. Lindon released the stone, letting himself fall, hoping it would be fast enough…and as he did, he glimpsed a slender figure in black robes leaping up behind the childlike elder, sword bared.

He landed heavily on his back, wind knocked from his lungs. Even as he gasped for breath, he was grateful for the snow and his pack cushioning his fall, but he hoped he hadn’t broken anything. Especially his ribs. Even the thorngrass pill had started acting up, tingling in the most unpleasant way around his injuries.

When he finally caught his breath again, the world outside the chasm was silent. Samara’s ring had all but vanished, and the sun had slipped a peek over the mountain. Only the wind continued, an unending and invisible stream.