If there was more time, and a trained jinsei surgeon, we might have been able to save his shattered bones. But we had neither, and the best I could do was save his life.
“I’m so sorry, my friend,” I whispered.
I was no surgeon, but my soul scrivening experience allowed me to quickly suture Abi’s meridians with threads of jinsei. That would stop the bleeding and prevent the loss of more sacred energy. Abi would live.
I just hoped he’d forgive me for the cost of saving his life.
The brutal operation was the hardest thing I’d ever done. The razor-sharp tips of my serpents traced quick, straight lines along the edge of the stone. Half-blinded by tears, I still saw the bloody work. It lodged itself in my mind like a barbed splinter that I knew would be with me forever.
Abi moaned as I worked on him. He tried to pull his legs from my grip, and I gritted my teeth and held him down with my hands while my serpents finished the grisly operation. His eyes flickered beneath their lids.
I prayed they wouldn’t open.
“Don’t,” he groaned. “Don’t. I saw it. This is how it ends.”
His words crashed over me like a surprise hailstorm. Every syllable stung, because I knew what he meant. Abi hadn’t sacrificed himself because he’d wanted to. He’d done it because it was the fate he’d seen in the cavern where we’d recovered the shards of the Heart. That’s why he didn’t tell us about his vision.
But I was not about to let my friend die because he’d had a dream. The Flame had given us this quest because we defied destiny, not because we meekly lay down to accept our fates. I would not let Abi die in this hole in the ground.
“Shh,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’m done.”
I slung my friend’s unconscious form over my shoulder, held on tight to his robes, and used my serpents to vault out of the pile of rubble that had almost been his tomb. The instant I landed, I glanced over my shoulder at the heretics.
The dust had long since settled, and I’d expected another barrage of burning spears the instant I reappeared. What I saw, though, was something far different.
The sunlight that streamed through the holes in the ceiling was blotted out by a web of darkness. Threads of jinsei held that cloak of shadows in place, transforming the ruins into a gloomy maze of crumbled stone. My mother’s forces had gathered around her in a protective circle. She guided them with a beam of silver light that lanced from the center of her palm. The beam wavered, as if confused by something, and I knew they hadn’t spotted me yet.
I took advantage of the unexpected darkness to head deeper into the ruin. I didn’t dare summon a light of my own, which made the going much slower. The zigzag fault-line cracks that had opened in the floor didn’t make things any easier. Navigating around those fissures ate up precious time, and checking the floor for weak spots chewed up even more valuable seconds.
“This way,” Clem hissed from the darkness off to my right.
She and Eric were crouched inside a massive sandstone building that looked sturdier than those that had collapsed behind me. Thick buttresses supported the walls, and the stone archways that served as doors had been reinforced by crystalline structures that gleamed with captured jinsei. The two of them waved at me, frantically gesturing for me to join them.
With a sigh of relief, I changed direction, jumped over a hole in the ground, dodged around a falling chunk of the ceiling, and finally sprinted to safety inside the building. Sheltered for the moment, I kneeled down and lowered Abi to the sandstone floor.
His dark face had gone ashen, and his eyes rolled fitfully beneath their lids. His pulse was still strong, though—he wasn’t losing any more blood or sacred energy. If we survived to reach the Forge, he’d be fine.
“His legs,” Eric said in a choked voice. “What happened?”
“He saved our lives,” I said. “I did the same for him.”
Clem rested her hand on my shoulder and her forehead against mine. We stayed like that for long seconds, glad to be alive, horrified by the cost our friend had paid. I wanted to stay like that for days, soaking in what comfort I could. Instead, I stood up.
“We need to keep moving.” I hoisted Abi back onto my shoulder and stood up. The thrumming power of the Umbral Forge was so strong it felt like a fist squeezing my core. “We’re close. We have to keep moving.”
Before we could move, though, the air snapped and hissed all around us. Thin slits of light opened in the darkness, and black-robed figures stepped through the portals. They surrounded us in the blink of an eye, fusion blades held at the ready. There were only three of them, but their cores burned with power far greater than my own.
“Get out of my way, Sanrin,” I warned him. “I don’t have time for this.”
The elder showed me his empty hands and bowed low to me in a sign of respect.
“Jace,” Sanrin said. “Let us help you. You don’t have to carry this burden by yourself. We’ve blinded your mother’s cult, for the moment. Tell us what else we can do.”
I wanted to lean on Sanrin. Nothing would have made me happier than to turn this mess over to someone wiser and more powerful. All I had to do was give him the key and tell him what the Flame had told me. We could use the portal return token to take us back to the School of Swords and Serpents. We’d
