Chapter 163: A Pyrrhic Rescue (continued)
…the Unchained.
They had seen the transport. Seen the smoke trail. Seen the ragged hole in its side like a mouth screaming into the wastes.
Below, their lights weren't random. They pulsed in a pattern, three short, two long, three short, cutting through the ash-haze like a heartbeat. A landing guide. A promise. Nyra's throat tightened so hard it hurt.
"They're here," she rasped.
Torvin didn't look up. His focus stayed on Soren's pulse under his fingers, as if sheer stubbornness could keep it from slipping away. "If we don't get him down in the next few minutes, it won't matter who's here."
A shudder ran through the transport's frame, violent enough to rattle teeth. Somewhere deeper in the hull, metal screamed. The howl of the wind rose, found the gap in the side, and poured through like a living thing, clawing at anything loose.
Nyra braced herself against a twisted support beam and leaned out just enough to see the ground. The Bloom-Wastes were a flat, ruined ocean of grey, broken here and there by jagged ribs of black rock. The Unchained were clustered in the lee of one of those ribs, their lanterns hooded, their figures dark smudges against ash. She could make out the angular shape of two skiffs tucked tight behind the rock, engines cold, waiting.
A hand waved from below, frantic. Then another light flared, brighter, a signal arrow pointing toward a narrow stretch of hardpan cleared of debris.
A landing strip. In the wastes. Like they were daring the world to behave for once.
Nyra turned, eyes scanning the torn interior. There was no pilot. No steady hum of controlled descent. Whoever had been flying this thing was either dead, unconscious, or long gone. The transport was a wounded animal, dropping when it felt like it, dragged sideways by the wind.
Ruku Bez was wedged near the far bulkhead, one massive arm looped through a torn harness strap, his other hand gripping the frame. His eyes met hers, bright in the gloom. He'd been a silent presence through the escape, a force of muscle and will, but now there was something else in his expression: calculation. A beast of the wastes reading the sky.
Nyra pointed down. Then jabbed a finger toward Soren. Then held her palm flat and moved it downward in a slow, urgent push: We need to get him out. Now.
Ruku Bez's jaw flexed. He nodded once. No hesitation.
Torvin pulled his hand back from Soren's neck and wiped it on his sleeve like he could wipe away what he'd felt. "His tattoos," he muttered. "They're not just lit. They're… moving."
Nyra looked. In the dim light, the Cinder-Tattoos on Soren's arms and neck weren't just red anymore. They were a deep, molten crimson, veins of ember-light pulsing under his skin, crawling outward in branching cracks.
Like something inside him was trying to get out.
Soren's eyelids fluttered. For a second, his gaze found nothing, just a glassy, distant stare. Then his mouth parted and a sound came out, not a word, not even a groan. A low exhale that carried heat with it, dry and scorched, like air pushed from a kiln.
Nyra leaned closer. "Soren. Hey. Stay with me."
His eyes shifted, barely, to her face. Recognition sparked, then drowned. His lips moved again. This time there was a whisper, shredded by the wind.
"Too… much…"
Torvin's face tightened. "He's still burning through it. Even unconscious."
"Can you stop it?" Nyra snapped, because desperation makes people ask stupid questions like they expect miracles on demand.
Torvin didn't rise to the bait. He just shook his head, slow. "Not without tools. Not without a dampener. Not out here."
Another shudder hit the frame. A deep thunk reverberated through the hull, followed by a rising whine that made Nyra's teeth ache.
"What was that?" she shouted.
Torvin looked past her toward the forward section where wires hung like exposed nerves. "Something in the engine housing just let go."
Ruku Bez's head snapped toward the sound. He rumbled something under his breath. It wasn't language Nyra understood, but the meaning was obvious: This thing is about to die.
Nyra forced herself to think like she wasn't terrified.
The Unchained were down there, close enough to see. Close enough to help. But they couldn't catch a falling transport with lanterns and prayers. They needed them low. They needed them slow.
They needed… a jump.
Nyra's eyes flicked to the open wound of the hull, the gaping tear where the wind came through. The drop was brutal, but the ground below looked flatter near the rock rib. If they timed it right, if the Unchained could get under them, if…
If.
Nyra swallowed the taste of ash and fear. "We're going out."
Torvin stared at her like she'd suggested walking into a furnace for warmth. "Out? Through that?"
"It's either that or ride this thing into the ground when it decides to become scrap."
Torvin's gaze flicked to Soren, then back to Nyra. He looked like he wanted to argue. Then the transport lurched again, nose dipping hard enough to slam Nyra's shoulder into the frame.
He exhaled sharply. "Fine. Fine. But he can't take impact like that."
"He won't have to." Nyra crawled to a storage recess where straps and cargo ties were bundled, half-burnt, but usable. She yanked them free. "Help me. We make a sling. We drop him first."
Ruku Bez was already moving, surprisingly quiet for his size. He came to Soren's side and lifted him as if he weighed nothing. Soren's head lolled, his skin slick with sweat, his breath a thin rasp.
Nyra looped straps under Soren's shoulders and around his torso, cinching them tight. Her fingers shook, not from cold but from the constant vibration underfoot, the transport's death rattle.
Torvin grabbed another strap, anchoring it to a jagged support beam. "If this snaps, we're feeding him to the wastes."
"Then don't let it snap," Nyra said, voice flat because she didn't have room for panic and speech at the same time.
She crawled back to the torn hull edge, clipped the makeshift sling to the anchored line, and leaned out.
The wind hit her like a slap. Below, the Unchained saw the motion and their lights flared brighter, swinging in wide arcs. One of them raised a flare tube and fired.
A streak of hard orange cut up into the sky and burst into a star of light beneath the transport, briefly painting everything in harsh, warm color: the ash, the rock, the faces turned upward. The flare's glow caught on Nyra's skin and she realized her cheeks were wet.
No time.
Nyra shouted down, though she knew they couldn't hear. She pointed. Then sliced her hand downward. Ready.
A figure below answered with a single light held steady. Ready.
Nyra looked back at Torvin. "On my mark."
Torvin swallowed. "You're sure?"
"No," Nyra said. "Mark."
She heaved on the line, swinging Soren toward the opening. Ruku Bez guided the limp body with both hands, careful, almost reverent. Torvin braced the anchor point, muscles taut.
Nyra leaned out, eyes locked on the cleared strip of hardpan.
"Now!"
She cut the temporary hold and let the sling line run.
Soren dropped.
For a terrifying second he was just a falling shape, crimson tattoos pulsing in the flare-light, his heat haze distorting the air around him. Then the line snapped taut, swinging him outward and down in a long arc.
Below, Unchained scrambled. Two of them ran beneath the swing, arms raised. A third dashed forward with a hook pole, catching the sling line and guiding Soren's descent.
Nyra's breath locked in her chest. She watched Soren's body dip, swing, then finally settle low enough for hands to grab him.
They caught him.
Not gently. Not safely. But caught.
Relief hit Nyra like a wave and almost toppled her.
Torvin was already moving. He grabbed his own strap, looped it around his waist, and leaned toward the opening. "Go," he told Nyra. "You're hurt."
"I'm not leaving you."
"You're not leaving me. You're going so the Unchained can pull you out if I get—"
A sound tore through the air.
Not the wind.
A sharp crack that didn't belong to metal failing or storms roaring.
Nyra's head snapped up toward the sky beyond the transport's torn roof.
A streak of pale light burned through the haze, fast, precise.
Torvin's face went white. "No."
A second later, the transport's forward section exploded in a bloom of violent blue-white. Not fire, not smoke. Energy. The kind that made shadows jump and the air taste like pennies.
The shockwave hit like a fist.
Nyra was thrown backward, her body slamming into the reinforced frame. Pain detonated behind her eyes. The world pitched sideways. She heard Torvin shout her name, distant, warped, like it was traveling through water.
Ruku Bez roared, a deep animal sound of fury and warning, and lunged toward her.
The transport screamed. The hole in its side became a mouth swallowing everything.
Sparks became stars. The sky became a blur of bruised purple and grey and white-hot light.
Nyra tried to grab something, anything, but her fingers slipped on ash and blood. The straps ripped from her hands. The floor dropped out from under her.
For one impossible heartbeat, she saw the Unchained below, tiny and frantic, their lanterns wheeling like fireflies.
Then the world went silent.
And the silence swallowed her whole.