The knocks came again, three measured blows from beyond the sealed door.
Aren pressed his left palm to the metal. The vibration ran up his arm. Dust sifted from the lintel and ticked against his sleeve.
“Still three,” Seraphine said. She had crouched beside the hinge, studying the dark seam where the door met the frame. “They know we’re here.”
“Or they’re running out of strength,” Vael said. He stood between the door and the wounded, one hand braced against the cracked wall. “We have little time to make the distinction.”
Aren looked back at the refuge. The survivors lay in close rows beneath the low ceiling. Some watched the door. Others watched the cracks spreading through the stone. A demon soldier held a human boy’s bandaged leg steady while Seraphine’s spare cloth was tied around it. Nobody there could move quickly if the room began to fall.
The door bowed inward at its middle. A heavy beam had dropped across its far side, pinning it shut. The frame itself had twisted, and the top edge pressed hard against the lintel.
“If we pull it open,” Seraphine said, “the beam may come with it.”
“And if we leave it,” Aren said, “they stay there.”
Vael followed the line of the frame to a rusted release wheel set into the wall. “The old doors opened from this side. The wheel should retract the lower bolts.”
“Should?”
“I have never used one.”
Another three knocks sounded. Weaker this time.
Aren reached toward the wheel. His right hand hung useless at his side, fingers slack beneath the dark mark that climbed his arm. The sword’s presence pressed at the edge of his thoughts, steady and inviting. It could give him back what the road had taken. He knew the price it wanted: his choice, handed over in exchange for strength.
He put his left hand on the wheel.
“Seraphine, keep everyone clear of the lintel. Vael, hold the frame if it shifts.”
Vael’s gaze settled on Aren’s numb hand for a brief moment. Then he moved to the door and set his shoulder against it. “Turn slowly.”
The wheel resisted. Aren leaned his weight into it, boots slipping on grit. A metal tooth clicked somewhere inside the wall. The door groaned and shifted a finger’s width.
The wounded began to stir. Seraphine moved down the row, telling them to keep low and pulling two stretchers farther from the door. She spoke plainly, without raising her voice. Her hands were quick, but she kept glancing toward the cracks above them.
Next
The wounded must reach the signal tower before the refuge gives way, and Vael will have to face whatever the human soldiers do when they see him carrying their people.
A slab of stone had dropped against his shoulder. He held it there with both hands, his teeth bared as the weight drove him down. The door’s lower edge had lifted, but the beam on the other side dragged across the floor with a grinding shudder.
Aren’s hand slipped. The wheel spun back half a turn and struck his knuckles.
He caught it with his left palm. The sword’s offer came again, stronger now, a clean certainty that his right hand could close around the wheel if he would only let it.
Aren stared at the hand he could not feel. Then he set his shoulder against the wheel and pushed.
The bolts withdrew with a heavy clank.
“Now,” Vael said through the strain.
Aren pulled the wheel down. The door opened a handspan before the fallen beam stopped it. From the gap came a breath of cold air and a scrape from the other side.
“Can you move the beam?” Seraphine called.
“Not from here,” came a hoarse voice beyond the door. “There are two of us under it.”
The answer was followed by a cough. Then a second voice, lower and rougher, said, “We can lift when you pull.”
Aren dropped to his knees and looked through the gap. He could make out a human face pressed close to the floor, cheek streaked with blood and dust. Behind him, a dark hand reached out from beneath the beam.
“Keep your fingers clear,” Aren said. “We’ll pull on three.”
“Your three or mine?” the human asked.
“Mine. One—”
A slab fell behind them. It struck the floor hard enough to make the refuge jump. Seraphine grabbed the shoulder of a nearby wounded soldier and dragged him away from the wall.
“Two,” Aren said.
Vael shifted his footing under the lintel. The stone above him crumbled, pieces sliding down his back.
“Three.”
Aren hooked his left arm beneath the man’s shoulders and pulled. The man shoved from the other side, but the beam barely moved. Aren’s numb right arm swung forward; he caught its wrist against his chest and pinned it there. The mark on his shoulder burned without heat.
The sword offered its strength again.
Aren dug his heels into the grit and pulled until his left shoulder screamed.
The beam scraped aside. A narrow gap opened. The dark hand pushed through, then a demon soldier’s face appeared, pale beneath the dust. He drove his shoulder against the metal and helped Vael lift from the far side.
The human slipped through first. Aren caught him beneath the arms and dragged him clear. The demon followed, one leg trapped beneath the beam until Vael and Seraphine raised its edge enough for him to wrench free.
When the demon fell onto the refuge floor, the lintel cracked again. Vael shoved the door outward and held it against the beam while Aren and Seraphine hauled the wounded pair beyond its reach.
The human lay on his back, gasping. His left sleeve was torn open, and a strip of metal had cut through the flesh above his elbow. He tried to sit up at once.
“Stay down,” Seraphine told him.
“There’s a stair.” He pointed toward the passage beyond the door. “Service stair. It rises behind the north wall. We found it when the route buckled.”
The demon soldier, breathing in short, controlled pulls, managed to sit with his back against the wall. “Odran found it. I kept him from crawling in alone.”
“You were both trying to reach the refuge?” Aren asked.
“Trying to find a way out,” Odran said. “The stair reaches an old signal tower. If the upper landing still holds, it gets us above the galleries.” He tried to push himself up again. Seraphine put a hand on his chest and made him wait. “There are soldiers near the tower. Human ones. I saw their lamps through a crack.”
Vael released the door only after the others had moved clear. The beam dropped back into place with a booming impact. A section of the lintel came down behind it, sealing the opening in a cloud of dust.
The refuge shuddered. One of the wounded cried out as a stone struck the floor beside his stretcher.
Aren looked toward the passage Odran had described. Its ceiling sloped upward into darkness, the lower steps partly buried under rubble. The stair was narrow—too narrow for two people to carry a stretcher side by side. The wounded could not be left here, and the room could not hold them much longer.
“Can you walk?” Aren asked Odran.
“With help.”
“Then you’ll lead us. Seraphine, take the light. Vael, help me move the first stretcher.”
The rescued demon soldier reached for the stretcher’s far handle. Aren took the near one with his left hand. His right remained useless against his side, and the sword’s patient offer stayed unanswered.
Seraphine lifted the lamp. Its small flame showed the first steps, then nothing beyond them.
They started upward. Behind them, the refuge’s ceiling split from wall to wall.
Vael turned back once, as if judging whether he could hold the room together long enough for everyone to pass. Then the floor buckled beneath the empty stretchers, and he took the stairs after them.
At the top, Odran said, human lamps were waiting. The wounded climbed toward them with Vael among their carriers.