The screaming cut through the rain.

  Isaac moved before he decided to.

  His leg protested.

  The hook graze on his thigh burned with every step, a thin hot line under wet cloth.

  His back hurt worse.

  Every raindrop that found the bare patch near his wing root landed like a needle.

  Mud he’d packed there was already thinning, washing away.

  He kept his wings folded tight anyway.

  Plates clicked as he shifted his shoulders, and he winced at the sound.

  Quiet.

  Quiet.

  Quiet.

  The scream came again.

  Higher this time.

  A child.

  Isaac angled toward it, using the terrace base and broken stone as cover, keeping trees and root snarls between himself and open ground.

  The Verge tried to pull his feet inward.

  Toward the centre.

  Toward the Core.

  He ignored it.

  He crossed an invisible line and his ears popped hard.

  The clean metal taste snapped across his tongue, sharp enough to make his teeth ache.

  He stepped back half a pace.

  Relief.

  Breathmark.

  A rule.

  He skirted the edge of it and kept moving.

  The scream warped as he ran, like the sound arrived through water.

  For a moment it was closer than it should be.

  Then it slid away again.

  Sound timing.

  Wrong order.

  Isaac used it anyway.

  He followed the loudest version of the scream.

  Not the one his brain wanted, the one his body believed.

  Boots hit mud somewhere ahead.

  Not one pair.

  Many.

  Disciplined.

  Even through rain, the rhythm was too steady to be panic.

  Isaac slowed and dropped lower behind a thornwood clump.

  He tasted mud and rot and that clean seam edge.

  Lightning flickered behind cloud.

  The world stuttered into a frame.

  A girl ran through the badlands break ahead, small and fast and already slipping.

  A woman ran behind her, one arm outstretched, the other clutching a pack tight to her ribs like it was part of her body.

  Behind them came people.

  Capes.

  Hoods.

  Lantern glow shielded in metal cages.

  Spear points and hooked poles angled forward.

  Storm-sweepers.

  Isaac didn’t have the word.

  He had the shape of them in his gut.

  The way they held distance.

  The way their feet landed where they meant to.

  The way they used the landscape like they’d learned it with blood.

  The lightning died.

  Rain swallowed everything again.

  Voices carried through the storm, chopped by wind.

  “Stop.”

  “Drop it.”

  “Don’t cross the seam.”

  The woman shouted back, words lost.

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  The tone wasn’t begging.

  It was teeth.

  The girl stumbled.

  Isaac heard the splash and the small grunt of effort.

  Then another scream, closer, and the kind of panic that didn’t belong in a voice that young.

  Isaac pushed forward, keeping low.

  The air changed.

  A pale-blue haze threaded between two scar-lines in the ground ahead, thin as a curtain.

  It wasn’t fog.

  It held its shape too well.

  The girl was running straight toward it.

  Isaac’s ears popped again as he approached the seam edge.

  Pressure tightened behind his eyes.

  He skirted the Breathmark line and hissed through his teeth.

  The girl didn’t slow.

  The woman lunged, fingers stretching for a sleeve that kept slipping away.

  A storm-sweeper voice snapped, closer now.

  “Get the bracer.”

  Another voice, sharper.

  “Don’t touch it. Don’t let it charge.”

  Bracer.

  Isaac’s eyes flicked to the girl’s arm.

  Lightning snapped again, thin and hard.

  For half a heartbeat, the girl’s wrist flashed.

  A band of metal too clean for this place.

  Not a scrap cuff.

  Not rope.

  Not bone.

  A bracer.

  It hugged her forearm like it had grown there, dark metal veined with faint lines that caught the flash and held it a fraction longer than the rain should allow.

  The lightning died and the bracer’s glow went away with it, but Isaac couldn’t unsee the shape.

  The girl hit the seam haze.

  Nothing exploded.

  No dramatic wall.

  The air just thickened around her like she’d run into a colder room.

  Her scream hitched.

  Her feet slipped.

  The woman reached her.

  A hooked pole line whipped through the rain and snapped toward the pack on the woman’s ribs.

  The woman twisted, taking it on her shoulder instead.

  She grunted.

  Kept moving.

  Isaac’s throat tightened.

  He didn’t know their names.

  He didn’t know why they were running.

  He knew the kid was about to go down.

  He was already moving again when the Verge changed its mind.

  Something came from the side.

  Fast.

  Low.

  It didn’t announce itself with a roar.

  It hit the ground like a thrown rock, then unfolded into motion.

  A seam-born thing, smaller than the Jawglass, but quick enough to make the rain look slow around it.

  Black tissue with crystal grit along the spine.

  A mouth that opened too wide.

  It angled for the easiest prey.

  The girl.

  Isaac flared his wing.

  The crystal plates snapped outward with a clack, and he threw the wing wall between the creature and the child.

  Impact.

  The Breathling struck the plates and the contact skittered, sparks scratching across black crystal.

  A plate chipped.

  A shard snapped loose and vanished into mud.

  Isaac didn’t stop to watch it fall.

  He folded the other wing forward, shield posture, and stepped into the space, making himself bigger than the lane could handle.

  The girl collided with his leg.

  Small hands grabbed his wet cloth.

  Isaac hooked an arm and yanked her behind the shield fold.

  “Behind me,” he said.

  It came out rough.

  Like he hadn’t used his voice in years.

  The woman stumbled.

  Her foot hit the seam line at a bad angle and she went down hard in mud, pack still clutched to her ribs.

  A storm-sweeper shouted.

  “Hold.”

  Another one yelled.

  “Don’t let it get the girl.”

  The Breathling sprang again.

  It tried to go around Isaac’s wall wing, angling for the gap at his left.

  Smart.

  Isaac turned his shoulders a fraction, refused to rotate fully, and slammed the shield wing down, plates overlapping tighter.

  The creature hit crystal again.

  Skitter.

  Spark.

  Isaac felt the force run into his arm and shoulder.

  His back screamed where the exposed wing skin stretched.

  He tasted copper.

  Sharp.

  Like biting a coin.

  His vision fuzzed at the edges for a blink.

  Pressure tightened around him.

  Not seam-mist pressure.

  Not a Breathmark pop.

  This was the world holding him.

  His ears didn’t pop.

  They rang.

  Something in the ground clicked.

  Not sound, not sight, just a wrong certainty in his teeth.

  Isaac stumbled one step.

  His mind slid.

  For a blink he didn’t know what he was doing, or why he was here, or if there even was a here.

  Then the child’s fingers tightened on his leg and the present snapped back into place.

  Marked.

  He shoved forward again and forced breath into his lungs.

  One breath.

  Then another.

  The Breathling bounced off the shield and landed in mud, crouched, deciding angles.

  Behind Isaac, the woman dragged herself up on one elbow, pack still held like a shield.

  Her eyes locked on Isaac’s wings with fear and something else, a desperate kind of gratitude that didn’t have time to become trust.

  The storm-sweepers were close enough now that Isaac could see them between rain streaks.

  Five.

  Six.

  More behind.

  Their spacing was clean.

  Their weapons didn’t wobble.

  They didn’t flinch at the Breathling.

  They flinched at Isaac.

  One of them lifted a crossbow and then hesitated, the sight line blocked by wings and child.

  Good.

  Keep hesitating.

  The Breathling committed.

  It sprang for Isaac’s left, using the seam haze as cover, trying to disappear into that pale-blue curtain and reappear at his blind side.

  Isaac stepped sideways and slammed his wall wing into the haze, occupying it.

  The mist didn’t move like fog.

  It resisted.

  Pressure hit him in the chest.

  His ears rang harder.

  He shoved anyway.

  The Breathling clipped crystal plates and spun.

  For a second, it was off-balance.

  The girl’s bracer flashed.

  Not from lightning.

  From contact.

  A storm-sweeper’s hooked pole had tried to snag her wrist, maybe to pull her, maybe to take the bracer.

  The pole hit metal.

  And died.

  Not snapped.

  Not bounced.

  Died, like the impact was swallowed.

  Frost crawled up the hookhead, then the metal went dull, like it forgot how to be sharp.

  A ripple ran up the girl’s arm.

  A warmth pulse.

  The girl gasped, surprised, and then the bracer let go of what it had taken.

  A Breath burst snapped out of it, short and violent, like a shove of compressed air.

  It hit the Breathling mid-turn.

  The creature tumbled through mud and slammed into a root.

  It screeched once and tried to stand.

  Isaac didn’t wait.

  He advanced behind his shield wing, closed the distance, and drove a boot into its chest.

  It went down again.

  He brought his nails down hard into the seam where crystal grit met tissue and ripped.

  Ugly.

  Fast.

  The Breathling convulsed and went still.

  Isaac stood over it, breathing hard, rain streaming off crystal plates.

  Pain from his exposed wing skin made his hands shake.

  He forced them still.

  Behind him, the girl’s fingers were still clamped to his leg like he was the only solid thing in the world.

  The woman rose fully now, mud to her knees, pack still hugged tight.

  Her eyes flicked to the bracer, then to the storm-sweepers, then back to Isaac.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  Not to Isaac.

  To them.

  The storm-sweepers stopped.

  Not because they were afraid of a dead Breathling.

  Because Isaac’s wings had made the lane impossible.

  And because the bracer existed.

  And because there was a child behind a shield.

  Their captain stepped forward.

  Isaac knew it was the captain because the others moved around him without being told.

  His cloak was darker.

  His lantern was steadier.

  His voice carried through rain like it had been trained.

  He looked at the bracer first.

  Then the pack.

  Then Isaac’s wings.

  His gaze paused at the bare patch near Isaac’s wing root where mud had washed away, raw skin visible between jagged crystal edges.

  His eyes narrowed.

  He understood injury.

  He understood leverage.

  The captain raised his hand slightly.

  The storm-sweepers adjusted their spacing.

  Containment ring.

  Not tight enough to be a fight.

  Tight enough to remove choices.

  The woman’s knuckles went white around her pack.

  The girl pressed closer behind Isaac’s wing fold.

  Isaac tasted that clean metal edge in the air again, sharp enough to bite.

  His feet angled inward toward the Core despite himself.

  He clenched his jaw and forced them still.

  He didn’t know what any of this meant.

  He knew what it looked like.

  A hunt that had found something bigger than it expected.

  The captain spoke, calm, as if he’d already decided the ending.

  “Easy,” he said.

  Not to Isaac.

  To everyone else.

  Then, to someone behind him, like a confirmation of a sighting.

  “There he is.”