Yann sat up and hugged his arms around his shoulders to try to keep warm. The wind whipped across this high rock shelf and cut straight through his clothes.

His father, Wesh, and the other Watchmen lay asleep around him. They huddled close to the center of the shelf so none of them accidentally rolled off it in the middle of the night.

The hard surface made it impossible to sleep. Sitting on it chilled Yann’s bones, but he could hardly complain. At least he and the others were still alive—which they might not have been if they hadn’t gotten through all those Layers.

Faint shimmers of dark blue shone in the night sky. Were those Dark Layers breaking through to threaten the party?

He tried to shake that thought out of his head. He couldn’t start seeing danger everywhere even though it was everywhere.

Eliska’s voice whispered to him out of the darkness nearby. “You should be asleep. You’ll need it when we leave here tomorrow.”

He found himself smiling. Her presence made him happy for some twisted reason. He shouldn’t be under the circumstances.

Her being here made it so much better somehow. He could go through all of this because it gave him a chance to spend more time with her.

He didn’t even mind the Darklings attacking. Darkling attacks stopped her from leaving.

She could have left whenever she wanted to. She could have abandoned the group in that Island of thorns, but she stayed to make sure they all made it out.

Was she changing her mind about the group—or about him in particular? Could she possibly want to stay?

The thought made him indescribably happy. He couldn’t imagine a worse outcome than her leaving. He couldn’t explain why because, as she and everyone kept pointing out, she was nothing special.

“You’re awake, too,” he whispered back. “You should go back to sleep.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep yet. I keep expecting something to happen.”

He didn’t have to ask what might happen, so he decided to change the subject. “Thank you for what you said to Barsali. He has a big heart, especially where his family is concerned. I don’t know if you meant what you said about them maybe still being alive, but it was kind of you to give him hope either way.”

She looked away. “It’s always a possibility, I suppose. We keep surviving these collapses, so why couldn’t they?”

He found himself studying the dark outline of her silhouette. He didn’t ask about her family.

She already told him she spent years searching. She must have failed and given up—and why shouldn’t she? A person couldn’t keep living on borrowed hope forever.

Eventually, she must have just reconciled herself to the harsh fact. She was alone and she would stay alone. No amount of searching would change that.

In the end, searching might have caused her more pain than just cutting the cord and moving on. At least then she could stop dwelling on it.

In that moment, Yann thanked High Heaven for his father and the men of the Watch. Yann never had to go looking for any of them.

He never had to wonder who he belonged to or why. He never had to wonder where he came from or where his home was or who would be there waiting for him when he went back.

What a nightmare she must have been living all these years—and to think it had always been like that for her—all the way back to her earliest memories.

She had never known any of those things—not even in the farthest distant reaches of her earliest toddlerhood. She had never known where she came from, who she belonged to, or even who she was.

She never had a home to go back to or anyone who would claim her as their own. She had no one of whom she could even ask those questions.

Thinking of her that way stabbed him in the heart, but the happiness flooded back when he looked at her right now.

She grew up and became strong, powerful, resourceful, self-reliant, and intelligent. She did all of that by herself with no help from anyone.

Now she was out here keeping the Watch alive against impossible odds. She said a thousand times that she would leave them to their deaths, but she never did. Of course not. She was too good for that.

Her voice startled him to high alert. She lowered it to a barely audible hiss, but the words wiped all that happiness out of his mind.

“It’s coming!” she whispered. “We have to act now. We can’t wait for morning.”

She swiveled sideways and grabbed the first man she came to, who happened to be Niyazi.

“Wake up!” she breathed. “All of you—wake up! We have to move!”

She went from man to man shaking everyone awake. She came to Wesh last.

“Wake up, Wesh!” she whispered. “They’re coming in fast!”

Yann didn’t understand. Wesh floundered out of a sound sleep. “Huh?”

“The Dark!” she hissed. “It’s gathering! We can’t wait for morning. We have to go now.”

“What the hell?!” Rien snarled. “Leave me alone, girl!”

She ignored him. “Hold onto each other. I need to shatter the Layer before they get here. We’ll fall through…”

“And then what?” Yann asked. “What do we have to do to get to the Ancestral Empire?”

Eliska opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment, a flying torpedo erupted out of the darkness.

It fired from somewhere deep in the gorges far away from the group’s rock shelf.

A torch of light streaked up the gorge and smashed into the pillar’s bottommost walls.

The impact shuddered up the walls and through Yann’s feet. He and the other Watchmen instinctively moved inward to the center of the shelf.

Wesh stumbled to his feet. “Hurry, Wesh!” Eliska told him. “We have to shatter the Layer before they……”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Another colossal explosion went off deeper inside the gorge. This one fired much faster and struck the pillar much harder.

The blow destroyed the pillar miles below the shelf and the whole granite tower imploded on itself.

Everyone screamed in terror as the floor dropped out from beneath their feet. Yann tried to grab those nearest her, especially Eliska.

Gravity ripped him away. All the Watchmen tumbled apart.

No amount of writhing and twisting in circles would bring Yann closer to the others. Was this the end? Would he ever see them again?

The rock tower evaporated underneath him. He expected to fall and crash again on some hard surface—or maybe just keep falling forever and ever without stopping.

At that moment, an explosion went off somewhere. The whole gorge, the mountains, and the night sky overhead burst apart and vanished to nothing.

At exactly the same instant, a powerful burst of some kind of magnetic force hit him. It sucked him sideways and he slammed into a body—actually, several bodies.

Some invisible effect brought all the Watchmen together and smashed their bodies into a clump so they couldn’t separate.

“Hold on!” Eliska yelled. “We’ll land in the Layers any second now!”

Yann didn’t understand her. Wasn’t the group already in the Layers?

The dark blue hues of the night sky above the rock shelf gave way. A strong wind blew red and deep purple vapors across where the sky used to be.

Those vapors surrounded the party until, just as fast, the whole knot of people dropped into another vast landscape.

It looked like some kind of continent full of mountains, rivers, cities, towns, farms, and herds of livestock.

“Is this the Ancestral Empire?!” Yvan yelled over the wind.

“It’s another Layer!” Wesh called back. “Hold on!”

The cluster of travelers hurtled downward on a collision course for the ground. Nothing checked their fall.

The party would splatter at this speed, but as the group got closer to the moment of impact, the landscape changed.

It heaved in one place and the mountains crumbled. The farmland quaked, fractured, and tilted up. The slabs that buckled out of place grew into new mountains that imploded and vanished a second later.

A brand-new forest erupted out of the farmland. A sweeping carpet of trees stabbed their crowns into the air, darkened that side of the continent, and then a devastating sheet of fire swept across the countryside and erased the forest just as fast.

The landscape shifted, morphed, and transformed in a thousand ways everywhere Yann turned.

“What’s happening?” Omer husked.

“This is just another Layer,” Eliska replied. “It looks like an Island, but it isn’t one. Here we go! Watch out!”

Yann didn’t understand what she meant, but he found out when the cluster kept plummeting straight down at terminal velocity.

The landscape looked solid enough until seconds before the moment of impact. Yann winced and braced himself to splat right here. At least he would be able to do it with his father and his friends. He wouldn’t have to live without them.

A few feet from the ground, he saw something like shadows moving over the surface. At first, he thought they might be the shadows of clouds cast from the sky.

Then he realized that what he first mistook for solid Earth actually rippled under the ground. Those shadows flowed back and forth through the soil.

The group slammed into the ground full force and punched through. What should have been solid ground turned to some kind of spongy cushion.

The group burst through into another Layer.

This time, the group didn’t fall at breakneck speed. The travelers’ combined weight slowed more and more as they descended to the surface of a completely different landscape.

Steep hills covered this one with deep river valleys carving between them. Trees, bushes, and clumps of dense woods lined the rivers.

The place looked inhabited, too, with plenty of roads winding in different directions.

“This isn’t the Ancestral Empire, either,” Wesh announced before anyone could ask. “This is another Layer, so be ready for anything. We need to run to get through this Layer as quickly as possible.”

“What happens after that?” Niyazi asked.

The party touched down at that moment and the magic holding them together broke apart. Everyone tumbled onto the ground.

Nothing stopped them from standing up. Yann didn’t know what mysterious force held them together. Eliska must have done it again because Wesh thanked her.

She didn’t respond. Her wild eyes darted around the countryside.

It couldn’t have looked more inviting. It certainly looked like an Island—what Wesh and Eliska called an Island.

Yann couldn’t imagine a more stable, peaceful place to settle down. Cows grazed in the fields. Flocks of birds swooped and soared between towns and woods.

Eliska gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on her staff with both hands. She snarled, “Let’s go,” and started walking down the nearest road toward a town in the distance.

Yann would have given anything for a weapon. He didn’t know what he would do when the shrapnel started flying again.

It would start flying any second now. He knew now to trust Eliska’s instincts—and Wesh’s instincts—but he trusted hers more. She had more experience in the Coil even than he did.

The Watchmen gathered around with her in the front leading the way. All the Watchmen kept a sharp eye on the surroundings, but none of them were armed, either.

Yann didn’t see anything threatening. None of them did. What if Eliska made a mistake? What if this wasn’t a dangerous place after all?

He should have known better than to doubt her. The group traveled over some rolling farmland, topped a rise in the road, and hiked down the other side toward the town.

They made it a dozen yards before the town submerged under the land. The whole group stopped—except for Eliska. She actually picked up her pace as the houses sank out of sight.

“Keep moving!” she ordered. “Don’t stop no matter what happens! We have to break through to the Ancestral Empire!”

“How far is it?” Yvan asked.

She turned her head to answer, but at that moment, a wild animal Yann didn’t recognize leapt out of the nearby hills.

It sprang straight out of the nearest slope, tossed its head, bared its teeth, and roared at the party.

Everyone spun around to confront the creature, but it turned into a flock of birds and shot into the sky to join the others.

Eliska started walking again right away. “Keep going!” she repeated. “Don’t stop!”

The Watchmen took longer to get moving again. Yann felt his nerves nearing the breaking point. He jumped at every sound.

Another monster of some kind erupted out of the road ahead. Eliska stalked the thing down, but it exploded before she got near it.

More ferocious apparitions kept appearing on all sides. They lunged, bellowed, and pawed the group, but none of those creatures attacked—or if they did, they evaporated or changed into something harmless before they got near the party.

All the men of the Watch jumped, spun around, and braced themselves for the worst every time this happened. They stayed so tense and watchful that they found it difficult to keep moving even when Eliska ordered them to.

This went on for over an hour. The sun crossed the sky much too fast here. The day passed in a few minutes and the sky started to darken.

“Pick up the pace!” Eliska called behind her. “We need to move faster!”

She started running. Yann copied her, but he was one of the very few who did. The others only remembered to do it when Yvan and Wesh started running after her.

Darkness fell way too fast. The sky roiled with clouds that weren’t there before. The birds changed into whizzing darts shrieking through the air.

They swooped low to the ground, zoomed over the travelers’ heads, and screeched off into the sky again.

The road kept rising, swelling, and sinking back in on itself. It twisted and whipped right and left faster than the travelers could run.

It forked up ahead into five different branches. They all snaked back and forth across the ground and changed course in an endless flow of movement.

The landscape transformed at the same rate of ceaseless change. All the stability from earlier disappeared in a sea of chaos.

Eliska darted left toward one of the forks leading that way. The Watchmen veered to keep up with her.

Right then, a different group of Watchmen in black uniforms rushed out of the shadows from the left.

“This way!” a tall man with shoulder-length brown hair called to the group. “That way is a death trap!”

Yann, Neils, and Barsali turned that way to follow him. Before they could go anywhere, Eliska spun around and bombarded the newcomers with a blast from the end of her staff.

The tall Watchman hurtled backward and slammed down hard on his back on the ground. Barsali bellowed at Eliska, “What are you doing?!”

Before she could reply, the strangers transformed into Darklings and pounced on the party.

Yann, Neils, and Barsali staggered backward to get away. Wesh darted in front of them and thrust out his hands to push them away.

“Follow me!” Eliska roared and swerved down the road she’d originally been planning to take.

The others stumbled after her leaving Wesh to fend off the Darklings.

The instant Eliska set foot on that road, the Darklings vanished.

Yvan grabbed Yann by the shirt to pull him into their group, but in a few seconds, Yann saw Eliska running toward a towering mountain blocking their path.

She ran straight up to it, fired a blast of her staff at it, and that eruption of light flared wider and wider.

She yelled one more time, “Follow me!” and plunged straight into the light.

Omer, Vidal, and Rien ran right behind her. None of them hesitated. They jumped through and vanished.

Yann would have hesitated, but his father pushed him forward and shoved Yann through after Neils and Niyazi.

End of Chapter 10.