🏔️ Chapter Sixteen: The Freefall and the Final Claim.Â
​The descent was an act of sheer, desperate madness, the cliff face above me still scarred and smoking from the magical detonation of the Null-Anchor. I had bought time, but the Iron Peaks fortress, built deep into the heart of the inhibiting rock, loomed below, a black, brutal cage in the paling light of dawn.
​I looked at the hundred foot drop sheer granite streaked with iron ore. The iron was the enemy, neutralizing my magic, but it also offered a brutal pathway. My only way to catch the Shadow Cultists was to bypass the winding, guarded road, but I needed to leverage the very thing meant to neutralize me.
​I gripped the edge of the cliff, closed my eyes, and focused on the only thing left: the shattered, unstable magic of the Anchor. The Thorn was suppressed, but the physical rune on my spine was still a point of command, an antenna capable of channeling energy, even if that energy was residual.
