The bottom of the Great Divide wasn't just low; it was forgotten.
By the time Hazel and I reached the floor of the canyon, the sickly yellow sun had been swallowed by the towering obsidian walls. Down here, the air didn't move. It sat heavy and stagnant, tasting of wet stone and the faint, ozone tang of raw magic. It was a graveyard of things the world had tried to bury twisted metal from the old wars, shattered statues of gods no one prayed to anymore, and the bones of travelers who hadn't been fast enough to outrun the shadows.
"Don't touch anything," Hazel warned, her voice echoing unnervingly against the narrow rock faces. "The stone here is porous. It absorbs the corruption from the ley lines above. If you get a scratch from these rocks, the infection will reach your heart before I can even reach for my canteen."
I looked at my hands. The black veins were still there, pulsing in time with the faint, crimson light radiating from the northern rim. I didn't tell her that the rocks didn't feel dangerous to me. They felt... familiar. Like I was walking through a room I'd visited in a dream.
"We need to find a place to hunkered down," I said, my voice sounding deeper than it had this morning. "The shadows down here... they aren't like the ones in the woods. They're older."
Hazel stopped, her eyes narrowing as she scanned a cluster of jagged pillars ahead of us. "You feel it too? The humming?"
It was a low-frequency vibration that rattled my teeth. It wasn't coming from the air; it was coming from the ground itself. I knelt, placing my palm against a smooth, black stone. The vibration wasn't random. It was a heartbeat. Slow, rhythmic, and incredibly powerful.
"The Divide isn't just a canyon, Hazel," I whispered, pulling my hand back as a spark of violet energy jumped from the stone to my fingertips. "It's a lung. The earth is breathing through this place."
"And it's inhaling the corruption," Hazel added, her face grim. She pointed toward a cavern entrance draped in what looked like silver cobwebs. But as we got closer, I realized they weren't webs. They were thin, shimmering strands of pure mana, stretched thin and vibrating in the wind.
"Mana-silk," I breathed. "I thought that was a myth."
"It is, in the civilized parts of the world. Here, it's a trap."
As if on cue, the strands began to glow a violent, angry red. From the darkness of the cavern, something emerged. It didn't have a face, or even a solid body. It was a mass of shifting, translucent glass, held together by glowing red ley-energy. It moved with a clicking sound, like a thousand breaking mirrors.
"A Mana-Wraith," Hazel hissed, drawing both her daggers. "They feed on the energy in your blood. Jake, if you surge now, you'll just be feeding it. You have to fight this one with your hands."
"With my hands?" I looked at the creature, which stood nearly seven feet tall. "It's made of glass!"
"Then find something harder than glass."
The Wraith lunged, moving with a speed that defied its size. I dived to the left, my shoulder slamming into the hard canyon floor. I scrambled for a weapon, my fingers closing around a heavy, rusted piece of scrap metal a fragment of an old bridge.
The creature turned, its 'head' tilting as it sensed the shadow-energy vibrating inside me. It let out a sound like grinding stones and struck again. I swung the metal fragment with everything I had. The impact sent a shockwave up my arm that nearly numbed my shoulder, but a massive crack appeared in the Wraith's translucent chest.
"Again!" Hazel shouted, sliding beneath the creature's reach and burying her silver dagger in its leg. The silver hissed as it made contact with the red energy, a plume of white smoke rising into the air.
I didn't wait. I stepped into the creature's guard, ignoring the way the red mana burned my skin. I didn't use the shadows to strike; I used them to reinforce my muscles. I felt the 'hunger' surge, providing a burst of raw physical strength that shouldn't have been possible for someone my size.
I brought the scrap metal down in a devastating overhead strike.
The Wraith shattered.
Thousands of glowing shards rained down on the canyon floor, fading into gray dust before they even hit the ground. I stood there, gasping for air, the heavy metal fragment slipping from my fingers. My knuckles were bleeding, the red blood mixing with the black ink of my veins.
Hazel walked over, her breathing labored. She didn't look at the dead creature. She looked at the scrap metal I had used.
"You didn't use magic," she noted, her voice cautious.
"I didn't have to," I replied. But we both knew I was lying. I had used the shadow to brace my bones so they wouldn't snap under the pressure. I was becoming stronger, but the price was being etched into my skin for everyone to see.
"The path narrows up ahead," Hazel said, turning away to hide the concern in her eyes. "If we make it through the Hollow Heart tonight, we'll be at the base of the Northern Rim by dawn."
"Then let's finish it," I said.
I looked up at the thin strip of sky far above us. The stars were cold and distant, but the red light of the altar was getting brighter. Jordan was close. I could feel him in the vibration of the stone. He was waiting for me to join him in the dark.
And for the first time, I wasn't sure if I was going there to save him, or to show him that I had finally caught up.