The moon was a shard of bone in a sky salted with stars. The caravan camp was a field of embers and soft snores, the frantic energy of the previous night replaced by an exhausted stillness. But the silence was deceptive. Inquisitor An's presence had woven a new layer of tension through the camp. The guards on patrol were more alert, their footsteps slower, their eyes searching the shadows with a sharper focus. The net was here, and it was patient.
Li and Mei waited in the stifling darkness of the canvas wagon. The thirst was a raw ache in their throats, and the fear was a cold stone in their guts. They had eaten the last of their food. Tonight was the end of the line, one way or another.
"The ravine to the north," Mei whispered, her voice a ghost of sound. "Once we're in the brush, we can lose them."
Li nodded, his hand resting on the jade. It was cool, its usual hum subdued, as if conserving its strength. He knew he couldn't rely on a grand display of power. Here, surrounded by hundreds of enemies, subtlety was their only shield. He would have to be a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
They picked their moment with painstaking care. They waited for the change of the guard, for that brief window of confusion when the tired night watch relayed information to the fresh, bleary-eyed dawn patrol. As the two groups mingled and grumbled in low voices near the command tent, Li and Mei slipped from the back of their wagon.
They moved like water, flowing from the shadow of one wagon to the next, their bodies low to the ground. The fifty paces to the northern edge of the camp felt like a mile. Every crunch of gravel underfoot was a cannon shot in Li's ears. Every shift of a sleeping soldier in his bedroll made him freeze.
They were twenty paces from the treeline, from the lip of the dark ravine, when a voice cut through the silence, calm and sharp as a honed blade.
"Going somewhere?"
They froze. Inquisitor An stepped out from behind a water wagon, flanked by two of her personal guards. She hadn't been at the command tent. She had been waiting. Her flinty eyes held no surprise, only a cold, predatory satisfaction. The net had closed.
Li's mind went blank with panic. They were caught. Exposed.
Mei, however, did not freeze. Her survival instincts, honed in a hundred smaller crises, took over. In one fluid motion, she bent, snatched a handful of fine, powdery dust from the ground, and flung it directly into the faces of the two guards.
They coughed and sputtered, their hands flying to their eyes. It was a child's trick, but it bought them a single, precious second.
"Run!" Mei screamed, shoving Li towards the ravine.
They ran. Behind them, Inquisitor An's voice rose, not in a shout, but in a clear, piercing command. "Alarm! Apprehend them! The Inquisition wants them alive!"
The camp, so still moments before, erupted. Li and Mei crashed through the thin line of scrub at the plateau's edge and half-ran, half-fell down the steep, crumbling slope into the ravine. Thorns ripped at their clothes and skin. Loose rocks skittered away under their feet, clattering noisily into the darkness below.
Torchlight bloomed at the top of the ravine behind them. Shouts echoed as soldiers began to scramble down after them.
The ravine was a nightmare of shadows and jagged rock. They stumbled through a dry riverbed, their progress maddeningly slow. The soldiers, unburdened by terror and better equipped, were gaining.
Li felt a familiar desperation rising—the same feeling that had driven him to kill with a piece of shale. But this time, he had more than shale. He had the jade. And he had control.
He stopped, turning to face the pursuing torches. Mei skidded to a halt beside him, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "Li, what are you doing?!"
"Slowing them down," he said, his voice tight with focus.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the chaos. He found his center, the deep, still pool beneath the storm of his fear. He reached for the jade, and this time, he asked for precision, not power. He focused on the loose scree on the steep slope above the pursuing soldiers.
He didn't try to start an avalanche. He didn't have the strength or the focus for that here. Instead, he sent a gentle, targeted push.
A section of the slope, about ten feet wide, suddenly gave way. It wasn't a catastrophic slide, but a controlled spill of rock and dirt that cascaded down onto the path of the lead soldiers. They cried out, stumbling and falling, their torches extinguished in the dust cloud. It wasn't lethal, but it was a messy, frustrating obstacle that brought the pursuit to a temporary, cursing halt.
It was enough.
"Come on!" Li grabbed Mei's arm, and they fled deeper into the labyrinthine ravine.
They ran until their lungs burned and their legs gave way, collapsing behind a large, fallen basalt column. They could still hear the soldiers, but the sounds were fainter, more confused. The ravine was doing its work, splitting their pursuers into smaller, disoriented groups.
As they sat there, panting in the profound darkness, a new sound reached them from the plateau above. It was the clear, carrying voice of Inquisitor An. She wasn't shouting. She was speaking to her soldiers, but her words were meant for other ears.
"It is of no consequence," her voice floated down, cold and dismissive. "Let the rats flee into the wasteland. They have what we need. And we have what he needs. The Ascension will proceed on schedule. Their interference is irrelevant."
Li and Mei exchanged a look of dawning horror in the dark. They had been allowed to escape. Their flight had been anticipated, even manipulated. The theft of the quartz dragon's energy, their infiltration—it had all been part of a larger calculation. They were pawns who thought they were players.
Inquisitor An hadn't just been hunting them. She had been herding them.
And now, they were exactly where the Dragon Master wanted them: alone, hunted, and racing against a clock they didn't fully understand, driven towards a destination of his choosing. The hunt had become a guided tour to their own execution.