When they emerged from the Gate of the Ancients, Malik was overwhelmed with sensations. Wind howled across the peak, rushing up from the sky canyons formed between spires below. Icy rain whipped at his face, drenching his cloak in an instant.

There were no other climbers in sight. Back in the Abyss, they’d heard at least two other climbers fighting dragyrs in the ruined city as they fled the temple. So they weren’t the last, but Malik had a feeling they were in the back of the pack. Squinting against the wind and rain, they carefully picked their way down to the Blade’s Edge.

Malik and Riese followed Yuri’s method of straddling the narrow span of rock and shimmying across. The wind stung Malik’s face as he crossed the spine of rock, and his slick hands could barely feel their grip they were so cold.

He’d hoped to wait back on this side of the Gate to refresh his inner store of hish after a couple of hours of depletion in the Abyss. But with a storm bearing down, they all feared getting stranded up high, if conditions turned worse.

So, Malik suffered the numbness and waited for his spirit to replenish.

The expanse on either side of the Blade seemed to pull at him, luring him to look out at the expanse to the valley far below. But when he glanced over once, the world below was entirely shrouded in churning clouds, and the fear dissipated.

Riese pulled him up as he reached the other side of the Blade. They scrambled over boulders to the edge of the upper spire.

This side was slightly lower and sheltered, and all at once, the wind stilled. Splintered rays of light peered through cracks in the sky. The rain softened to a fine mist.

“Maybe not so bad after all,” Yuri said, blowing on his hands.

“Weather is weird up here,” said Riese. “It could turn back just as sudden. Whatever you do, keep moving.”

“But be safe,” Malik cautioned. “Better to be last than dead.”

The other two nodded, knowing that no one understood this imperative more than Malik. They peered over the side of the peak. The upper spire was manageable enough to face forward at the outset, but Malik knew it would soon fall away to veritable cliffs in sections.

Malik spotted a golden cloak near the base. Maybe they weren’t falling as far behind as he’d feared. The dome of clouds that hovered gave the impression they were alone on an island in the infinite sky. But in reality, they were four spires away from their family, their people. And most of their peers were close.

Still, the Ascent, in the end, was their own to accomplish.

Riese led the way down, then Malik and Yuri.

The upper section was nothing but rock, and the face of the mountains was much more stark than the lower spires, which were strung with more vines and other vegetation. Down climbing proved manageable at first, especially as Malik began fortifying his movements with hish, now that his inner source was replenishing. With subtle surges, he pressed his fingers into the face of the mountain, strengthening his holds, while simultaneous lightening the load with threads of magic pressing up on his body from below.

Halfway down the first spire, Yuri veered down an easier path to avoid a steep decline, choosing the longer path that wrapped around the other side of the spire. Malik fought to keep up with Riese, but she was the better climber to begin with, and she’d been honing her skills at down climbing these past two years, while he’d been torn between his training and learning the intricacies of inter-clan politics and traditions and spiritual matters with his father.

He lost sight of her when the spire turned to a sheer drop, and he was forced on all fours, leading with his feet. The wind had eased up though, and Malik lost himself in the movements. This foothold, then that crack for his right hand, then this divot in the stone for his left. Another foothold. Each maneuver involved fluid coordination between his mind, body, and spirit. Sharp attention, quick decision-making, precise movements, focused magic—every piece of the process utterly vital. The ground leveled off, and Malik was relieved to see Riese’s dark cloak ahead, lingering at a ledge at the base of the spire.

Malik maneuvered his way to her, fingers beginning to feel the strain they’d endured all day on this climb.

“Don’t wait for me,” he murmured, breaths heavy.

“Needed to catch my strength and plot my moves before the big Leap.”

The peak of the next spire loomed in a shroud of mists across an expanse of at least twenty feet, rising past the height of their ledge. If it had formed any other way, the Ascent would be impossible. All the remaining spires were strung together by webs of thick vines. But the only way between the uppermost spires was to jump.

Malik’s heartbeat quickened as he took in the skies below the precipice. This ledge had proved an easy target from the opposing peak on the Ascent. The ledge was over ten feet across. A relatively simple jump from the higher point of the opposing spire.

But there was no ledge to target from this side, just the sharp sides of a levitating mountain.

“Save your hish to slow your fall,” Riese said. “That’s what my father said.”

Malik drew in slow, focused breaths. The mists were thickening again, swirling around the base of the spire, making it harder to see the other side of the chasm, and the rain was picking up.

“The angle looks worse from up here than it really is,” Malik said with a nod, more to remind himself than anything. “That’s what my father said. Aim. Trust the forces of the world to carry you down.”

Riese shook her head back and forth. “Well, here goes nothing.”

Blonde braids flapping behind her, she sprinted across the ledge, gaining as much speed as possible before the edge. Riese’s body shot out from the island of rock, cutting through the mists. She sailed down and down toward the steep face of the second spire, before slowing suddenly, with a precise surge of magic, and grabbing on to a large rock.

Her hands shifted, fingers slipped.

Malik’s heart seized in his chest. But Riese only dropped a few more feet before catching herself on another boulder’s edge.

Her laughter echoed across the expanse.

Malik breathed out with relief. “Thanks the gods!”

“Rock’s a bit slick!” she shouted back. “Damn rain.”

“You good?” Malik asked.

“Your father was right, slope’s not bad over here. Easy enough to stand.”

Once you make the jump, and don’t slip off the edge of the world, Malik thought.

He drew back, and before his mind had a chance to consider the other possible outcomes, he took off. His boots crunched—three, four, five steps—and then, he leapt.

Malik’s stomach lurched up into his chest. The sharp wind pelted his face, laced with rain. His cloak billowed out behind him, body arced sharply downward as the rock stretched out below.

His vision shifted, and so did his body, as he oriented to the opposing angle of the next floating mountain. Then, all at once, there was Riese, ducking beneath his feet. Malik sailed past her. His stomach jolted with terror.

Even without hish, he’d jumped too far.

The rock face rolled beneath his feet. The angle of the mountain opened up, and Malik feared he would fly right over into oblivion.

“Use your bloody magic!” Riese’s voice echoed somewhere behind him.

And Malik reached for the power behind the world, drawing threads of hish into his body in a rush of opposing force, nearly knocking the wind out of him. He drew more, pressing his body downward.

His feet hit first, glancing off the mountain, nearly sending him tumbling. Malik focused with all his spiritual might, drawing more hish, pressing his body harder into the face of the spire. And then, he drew up sharply with a final surge of magic.

The tips of his fingers latched on to the edge of a sharp boulder. Pain lanced up his fingers and into his arms, but he didn’t let go. His feet found purchase. His vision swam.

Finally, he breathed, clutching the side of the mountain desperately.

“God’s breath, Malik!” Riese’s voice echoed from far above where he stood.

He peered into the mists, cursing her grey cloak, but then he glimpsed her golden hair near the top of the spire. Fifty yards above him at least.

“Gods damn it,” he muttered, resisting the urge to pound the mountain itself.

“You okay?” Riese hollered, her voice echoing off the upper spire.

“Y-yeah. I think so.”

Malik’s fingers ached. He drew in more hish and channeled it into his hands, and numbness washed over them. He couldn’t even see the ledge he’d jumped from any longer. Malik tried to figure how he’d managed it. Something about the angles between the two mountains. Or the mists. The entire topmost spire was nothing but a looming shadow, swallowed in thickening clouds.

His eyes settled on Riese, and he calmed his breaths.

The line between life and death is but a thread.

But Malik had landed on the side of life once more. And for that, he must be thankful.

You’re made for this, he tried to remind himself.

“I don’t think… can go that way!” Riese shouted. “There’s… sort of chasm. You shot over it!” Her words were getting caught in the wind.

Shot over a chasm?

Well, that would help explain why his perceptions had suddenly felt so wrong. At this angle from below, he couldn’t even see it.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“I’ll meet you further down!” Malik shouted up. “Just stay safe!”

“Oh, I’ll be just… shaman! It’s you…bloody worried about.”

“I’m good! Really. Let’s see who makes it first, ey?”

“Oh, it’s like that is… I swear to…”

The wind picked up, and Malik lost the rest.

The rain was falling harder, but the way this spire was angled, he could actually walk for a good distance. Near the base he’d have to down climb, and choose between several smaller spires that branched out. Malik moved in a near-crouch, using his hands for balance, trying to conserve his hish, and navigated his way down over sharp boulders.

He couldn’t shake Riese’s words. It’s you I’m worried about.

Two years ago, he felt certain she never would have said that. And yet….

How had he misjudged that leap so badly? It was a simple enough mistake. But the fact that Riese worried for him like some child drove him suddenly to the edge of rage.

Damn you, Derrin!

He hated himself for thinking it, but it was the truth. He knew Riese could have been down to the bottom by now. She’d stuck close to Malik and Yuri because she feared her friends wouldn’t survive without her.

“Be the last down,” his father had said the night before. “There’s no shame in that. We shamans don’t play the same clan games.”

Tell that to Derrin! Maybe if you’d let him train properly, he would still be here.

Or maybe his brother would have been lost to the Abyss no matter what, and all this was just a raveling in his mind. Triggered by that bloody spirit in the Abyss.

But Malik had survived the Abyss, survived his fall. He’d made it this far, and he was determined not make another costly mistake again.

Storm clouds thickened around him. Rain poured steadily, though the wind had calmed once more. A faint voice echoed from the mists ahead.

The ground began to even out beneath his boots, and he spotted the thick twists of vines branching out from the base of the spire. In the midst of the haze, he spotted a cloak. The golden yellow of the Sabers. No, the blue of the Feathered Serpents.

Two cloaks writhed violently in the wind, out in the expanse between spires.

Here at the base of the spire, the wind lashed out with torrents of rainfall. Malik had been sheltered on the other side of the spire, but as he ventured out on to the thick tangle of branches that extended to the next mass of rock, the storm came back with a vengeance.

Malik crossed the remaining distance carefully, picking his way along the web of vines.

As he neared, he spotted two climbers. One clung to the side of a vine as thick as a tree trunk. Another climber latched on to his arms. It wasn’t until he was right upon them that he could make out who it was.

Petyr Bromsein stooped on his knees, directing hish to keep himself planted as he pulled on the fallen climber’s arms. The boy feet dangled over a sheer two thousand foot drop into drowning skies.

When they emerged from the Gate of the Ancients, Malik was overwhelmed with sensations. Wind howled across the peak, rushing up from the sky canyons formed between spires below. Icy rain whipped at his face, drenching his cloak in an instant.

There were no other climbers in sight. Back in the Abyss, they’d heard at least two other climbers fighting dragyrs in the ruined city as they fled the temple. So they weren’t the last, but Malik had a feeling they were in the back of the pack. Squinting against the wind and rain, they carefully picked their way down to the Blade’s Edge.

Malik and Riese followed Yuri’s method of straddling the narrow span of rock and shimmying across. The wind stung Malik’s face as he crossed the spine of rock, and his slick hands could barely feel their grip they were so cold.

He’d hoped to wait back on this side of the Gate to refresh his inner store of hish after a couple of hours of depletion in the Abyss. But with a storm bearing down, they all feared getting stranded up high, if conditions turned worse.

So, Malik suffered the numbness and waited for his spirit to replenish.

The expanse on either side of the Blade seemed to pull at him, luring him to look out at the expanse to the valley far below. But when he glanced over once, the world below was entirely shrouded in churning clouds, and the fear dissipated.

Riese pulled him up as he reached the other side of the Blade. They scrambled over boulders to the edge of the upper spire.

This side was slightly lower and sheltered, and all at once, the wind stilled. Splintered rays of light peered through cracks in the sky. The rain softened to a fine mist.

“Maybe not so bad after all,” Yuri said, blowing on his hands.

“Weather is weird up here,” said Riese. “It could turn back just as sudden. Whatever you do, keep moving.”

“But be safe,” Malik cautioned. “Better to be last than dead.”

The other two nodded, knowing that no one understood this imperative more than Malik. They peered over the side of the peak. The upper spire was manageable enough to face forward at the outset, but Malik knew it would soon fall away to veritable cliffs in sections.

Malik spotted a golden cloak near the base. Maybe they weren’t falling as far behind as he’d feared. The dome of clouds that hovered gave the impression they were alone on an island in the infinite sky. But in reality, they were four spires away from their family, their people. And most of their peers were close.

Still, the Ascent, in the end, was their own to accomplish.

Riese led the way down, then Malik and Yuri.

The upper section was nothing but rock, and the face of the mountains was much more stark than the lower spires, which were strung with more vines and other vegetation. Down climbing proved manageable at first, especially as Malik began fortifying his movements with hish, now that his inner source was replenishing. With subtle surges, he pressed his fingers into the face of the mountain, strengthening his holds, while simultaneous lightening the load with threads of magic pressing up on his body from below.

Halfway down the first spire, Yuri veered down an easier path to avoid a steep decline, choosing the longer path that wrapped around the other side of the spire. Malik fought to keep up with Riese, but she was the better climber to begin with, and she’d been honing her skills at down climbing these past two years, while he’d been torn between his training and learning the intricacies of inter-clan politics and traditions and spiritual matters with his father.

He lost sight of her when the spire turned to a sheer drop, and he was forced on all fours, leading with his feet. The wind had eased up though, and Malik lost himself in the movements. This foothold, then that crack for his right hand, then this divot in the stone for his left. Another foothold. Each maneuver involved fluid coordination between his mind, body, and spirit. Sharp attention, quick decision-making, precise movements, focused magic—every piece of the process utterly vital. The ground leveled off, and Malik was relieved to see Riese’s dark cloak ahead, lingering at a ledge at the base of the spire.

Malik maneuvered his way to her, fingers beginning to feel the strain they’d endured all day on this climb.

“Don’t wait for me,” he murmured, breaths heavy.

“Needed to catch my strength and plot my moves before the big Leap.”

The peak of the next spire loomed in a shroud of mists across an expanse of at least twenty feet, rising past the height of their ledge. If it had formed any other way, the Ascent would be impossible. All the remaining spires were strung together by webs of thick vines. But the only way between the uppermost spires was to jump.

Malik’s heartbeat quickened as he took in the skies below the precipice. This ledge had proved an easy target from the opposing peak on the Ascent. The ledge was over ten feet across. A relatively simple jump from the higher point of the opposing spire.

But there was no ledge to target from this side, just the sharp sides of a levitating mountain.

“Save your hish to slow your fall,” Riese said. “That’s what my father said.”

Malik drew in slow, focused breaths. The mists were thickening again, swirling around the base of the spire, making it harder to see the other side of the chasm, and the rain was picking up.

“The angle looks worse from up here than it really is,” Malik said with a nod, more to remind himself than anything. “That’s what my father said. Aim. Trust the forces of the world to carry you down.”

Riese shook her head back and forth. “Well, here goes nothing.”

Blonde braids flapping behind her, she sprinted across the ledge, gaining as much speed as possible before the edge. Riese’s body shot out from the island of rock, cutting through the mists. She sailed down and down toward the steep face of the second spire, before slowing suddenly, with a precise surge of magic, and grabbing on to a large rock.

Her hands shifted, fingers slipped.

Malik’s heart seized in his chest. But Riese only dropped a few more feet before catching herself on another boulder’s edge.

Her laughter echoed across the expanse.

Malik breathed out with relief. “Thanks the gods!”

“Rock’s a bit slick!” she shouted back. “Damn rain.”

“You good?” Malik asked.

“Your father was right, slope’s not bad over here. Easy enough to stand.”

Once you make the jump, and don’t slip off the edge of the world, Malik thought.

He drew back, and before his mind had a chance to consider the other possible outcomes, he took off. His boots crunched—three, four, five steps—and then, he leapt.

Malik’s stomach lurched up into his chest. The sharp wind pelted his face, laced with rain. His cloak billowed out behind him, body arced sharply downward as the rock stretched out below.

His vision shifted, and so did his body, as he oriented to the opposing angle of the next floating mountain. Then, all at once, there was Riese, ducking beneath his feet. Malik sailed past her. His stomach jolted with terror.

Even without hish, he’d jumped too far.

The rock face rolled beneath his feet. The angle of the mountain opened up, and Malik feared he would fly right over into oblivion.

“Use your bloody magic!” Riese’s voice echoed somewhere behind him.

And Malik reached for the power behind the world, drawing threads of hish into his body in a rush of opposing force, nearly knocking the wind out of him. He drew more, pressing his body downward.

His feet hit first, glancing off the mountain, nearly sending him tumbling. Malik focused with all his spiritual might, drawing more hish, pressing his body harder into the face of the spire. And then, he drew up sharply with a final surge of magic.

The tips of his fingers latched on to the edge of a sharp boulder. Pain lanced up his fingers and into his arms, but he didn’t let go. His feet found purchase. His vision swam.

Finally, he breathed, clutching the side of the mountain desperately.

“God’s breath, Malik!” Riese’s voice echoed from far above where he stood.

He peered into the mists, cursing her grey cloak, but then he glimpsed her golden hair near the top of the spire. Fifty yards above him at least.

“Gods damn it,” he muttered, resisting the urge to pound the mountain itself.

“You okay?” Riese hollered, her voice echoing off the upper spire.

“Y-yeah. I think so.”

Malik’s fingers ached. He drew in more hish and channeled it into his hands, and numbness washed over them. He couldn’t even see the ledge he’d jumped from any longer. Malik tried to figure how he’d managed it. Something about the angles between the two mountains. Or the mists. The entire topmost spire was nothing but a looming shadow, swallowed in thickening clouds.

His eyes settled on Riese, and he calmed his breaths.

The line between life and death is but a thread.

But Malik had landed on the side of life once more. And for that, he must be thankful.

You’re made for this, he tried to remind himself.

“I don’t think… can go that way!” Riese shouted. “There’s… sort of chasm. You shot over it!” Her words were getting caught in the wind.

Shot over a chasm?

Well, that would help explain why his perceptions had suddenly felt so wrong. At this angle from below, he couldn’t even see it.

“I’ll meet you further down!” Malik shouted up. “Just stay safe!”

“Oh, I’ll be just… shaman! It’s you…bloody worried about.”

“I’m good! Really. Let’s see who makes it first, ey?”

“Oh, it’s like that is… I swear to…”

The wind picked up, and Malik lost the rest.

The rain was falling harder, but the way this spire was angled, he could actually walk for a good distance. Near the base he’d have to down climb, and choose between several smaller spires that branched out. Malik moved in a near-crouch, using his hands for balance, trying to conserve his hish, and navigated his way down over sharp boulders.

He couldn’t shake Riese’s words. It’s you I’m worried about.

Two years ago, he felt certain she never would have said that. And yet….

How had he misjudged that leap so badly? It was a simple enough mistake. But the fact that Riese worried for him like some child drove him suddenly to the edge of rage.

Damn you, Derrin!

He hated himself for thinking it, but it was the truth. He knew Riese could have been down to the bottom by now. She’d stuck close to Malik and Yuri because she feared her friends wouldn’t survive without her.

“Be the last down,” his father had said the night before. “There’s no shame in that. We shamans don’t play the same clan games.”

Tell that to Derrin! Maybe if you’d let him train properly, he would still be here.

Or maybe his brother would have been lost to the Abyss no matter what, and all this was just a raveling in his mind. Triggered by that bloody spirit in the Abyss.

But Malik had survived the Abyss, survived his fall. He’d made it this far, and he was determined not make another costly mistake again.

Storm clouds thickened around him. Rain poured steadily, though the wind had calmed once more. A faint voice echoed from the mists ahead.

The ground began to even out beneath his boots, and he spotted the thick twists of vines branching out from the base of the spire. In the midst of the haze, he spotted a cloak. The golden yellow of the Sabers. No, the blue of the Feathered Serpents.

Two cloaks writhed violently in the wind, out in the expanse between spires.

Here at the base of the spire, the wind lashed out with torrents of rainfall. Malik had been sheltered on the other side of the spire, but as he ventured out on to the thick tangle of branches that extended to the next mass of rock, the storm came back with a vengeance.

Malik crossed the remaining distance carefully, picking his way along the web of vines.

As he neared, he spotted two climbers. One clung to the side of a vine as thick as a tree trunk. Another climber latched on to his arms. It wasn’t until he was right upon them that he could make out who it was.

Petyr Bromsein stooped on his knees, directing hish to keep himself planted as he pulled on the fallen climber’s arms. The boy feet dangled over a sheer two thousand foot drop into drowning skies.