I always imagined that if I were ever to fall to my death—which, to be fair, was not on my bucket list and certainly not something I wanted to check off before lunch—it would be a moment filled with profound clarity, some stirring montage of my life flashing before my eyes, perhaps accompanied by swelling orchestral strings and one of those tragic, romantic close-ups where I look gorgeously wind-swept and noble.
Instead, I found myself plummeting down the side of a massive metal tower with all the grace of a kicked potato, my stomach slingshotting into my throat, my limbs flailing like loose laundry in a violent storm.
There was something strangely serene about the way the tower slipped by me, its intricate gears and slanted walkways blurring together in stretched streaks of bronze and gold, the vents exhaling clouds of steam that briefly wrapped around me like warm, ghostly arms before letting me fall onward into the abyss.
I thought about fate, destiny, the nature of mortality, and the profound fragility of the human body—because apparently my brain decided that now was the perfect time to get metaphysical.
I wondered if death hurt. I wondered if my hair looked good. I wondered if Quentin would laugh himself hoarse when he heard about this.
And then, of course, I wondered if perhaps I should start screaming properly, since that seemed like the most reasonable thing to do under the circumstances.
So I did.
I screamed so loudly my throat burned. The sound tore out of me with a wild, embarrassing vibrato.
The wind ripped it apart almost instantly, shredding it into tatters that scattered through the clouds of steam like frantic birds.
My eyes watered, the rushing air cold and sharp against my face, and each second stretched like drawn taffy—horrifying, endless, and vaguely insulting, as if gravity were taking its sweet time with my demise.
And then—movement.
A shadow flickered from above, sharp and fast as lightning. In the shredded corners of my vision, I saw something leap. Something bound.
The shadow ricocheted off a mesh of machinery several stories above me, the impact leaving a dent that bent the metal inward like tinfoil. My already-panicking heart attempted a second panic simultaneously, which I’m pretty sure should be clinically impossible.
The shadow blurred again, snapping across slanted walkways and pipes, moving with impossible speed. A second gear buckled under the force of its landing. Steam split open as something tore through it, the mist scattering into a glittering cloud.
And then she burst through.
Iskanda—glorious, terrifying, unbothered Iskanda—shot down the tower like a thrown spear, her dress snapping behind her like the wing of some ferocious bird.
The moment her eyes locked onto me, something gleamed there—focus, calculation, the sort of terrifying assurance that said she already knew exactly where I’d land and how stupid I’d look doing it.
The tower shuddered under the impact of her next landing—an explosive leap that launched her downward in a blur. She closed the enormous gap between us with inhuman speed. A final push. A final dash.
Then she reached me.
Her arm wrapped around my waist with the kind of swift, decisive force that stole the rest of my scream straight from my mouth.
Before I could even register the sensation, she twisted her body mid-air, performing a dizzying corkscrew that would have made any acrobat vomit immediately.
The world spun, the tower tilted, the steam vents blurred, and we landed—no, slammed—onto a narrow walkway with such precision that the metal barely even groaned beneath us.
I didn’t even get a chance to breathe before Iskanda’s feet pushed off again and launched us upward in a string of impossibly powerful bounds.
And there we went, ascending the tower like some deranged, nightmare version of a princess carry as I clung to her shoulder with all the dignity of a frightened squirrel.
The tower flashed past us in a glittering smear of lights and steam, each jump taking us higher, each impact echoing like thunder. Iskanda barely seemed winded, her expression calm—annoyingly calm—like saving plummeting idiots was nothing more than her mid-afternoon exercise routine.
It took several leaps before I found my voice again. "I—Iskanda—saints above—I—thank you!" I sputtered, my words tumbling out in between gasps as another violent jump sent my stomach tumbling into my ribs. "I mean it—thank you—thank you for—ah!—saving me from becoming a smear on the street!"
Iskanda gave a nonchalant little grunt, barely shifting her gaze. "You’re welcome," she said, as if she were accepting a bowl of soup instead of hauling my life back into existence. "Try not to make it a habit. Training accidents are one thing. Dramatic swan dives off the tower are another."
"I didn’t swan-dive!" I protested. "I tripped off destiny’s shoulder and fell like a rock with unresolved trauma!"
"That’s what a swan-dive is," she replied dryly as she landed on a precariously narrow beam and kicked off it in another explosive jump.
I blinked, catching my breath as we soared. "So," I wheezed, "be brutally honest—how did I do?"
"Not bad," she said.
My heart fluttered with pride. "Really? How much time did I have left?"
"You ran out of time before reaching even a fourth of the obstacle," she added.
My heart stopped fluttering and immediately plummeted back into the abyss I’d just escaped from. "I—what—how—what?!"
A smirk flickered across her lips. "Most people do, on their first attempt."
"That was a quarter?" I said, voice cracking with all the betrayal of a man learning he’d been eating decaf his entire life.
"Barely," she corrected.
The worst part was that she seemed pleased, like she’d been anticipating my failure. She made another bound, landing gracefully on the edge of the starting platform.
When she finally set me down, my legs trembled so violently that I wasn’t entirely convinced they still belonged to me. I turned to her, panting, limp, and immediately ready to plead for mercy. She stared back at me with that serene, merciless gaze.
"Again," she said.
I blinked. "I... I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. I thought you said again."
"I did," she said. "Again."
My soul briefly left my body.
"I—Iskanda, please, I—my everything hurts—my legs—my lungs—my dignity—please—have mercy on my mortal form—"
She said nothing. Just waited.
I sighed, long and dramatic, already envisioning my imminent demise. "Fine," I muttered, dragging myself back toward the plank with the shuffling steps of a man condemned. "But if I die this time, I swear I’m haunting you."
"You won’t die," she said in a tone that carried the faintest edge of amusement. "Probably."
"See, that ’probably’ is the problem here."
I got back into position anyway. Because I was an idiot. A determined idiot, but still an idiot.
And so began the longest, most humiliating sequence of trials I had ever endured. Run after run after run. Each attempt felt like the world was mocking me personally.
I used enhancements, misused enhancements, overused enhancements, and once—accidentally—enhanced my left eyebrow for a full thirty seconds.
I vaulted over pipes, ducked under spinning beams, swung from chains with all the grace of a wet ferret, and repeatedly met that cursed gap with the determined optimism of someone who’d not yet accepted they were destined to fail it.
And fail it I did.
Over and over and over. Iskanda saved me once more, then twice, then a third time with increasingly dramatic flourishes that made me suspect she was showing off.
At least twice, I began to hear them, Velvets watching from below muttering things like, "He’s still alive? Incredible." Or, "He’s too stubborn to die. I respect it." Or my personal favorite, "His screams echo rather nicely."
By the time midnight arrived, Iskanda finally raised her hand.
"That’s enough," she announced.
I nearly collapsed with relief. Actually, I did collapse. Onto my back. Onto the metal. Without shame.
Iskanda’s shadow fell over me, her silhouette grand and somehow judgmental even in repose. "You made progress," she said.
"I made noises," I croaked. "And bruises."
"You made both," she agreed. "That’s progress." I groaned. Loudly. She crossed her arms. "Go to bed. We’ll pick this up tomorrow."
I whimpered.
She ignored it.
It took me nearly an hour to drag myself back down the tower, through the winding marble passages, into the dim first-floor barracks that smelled faintly of musk, lavender oil, and exhaustion.
My limbs felt like half-congealed soup, wobbling with every step as I flopped onto my bunk like a corpse seeking union with the earth.
I tried—saints above, I tried—to sleep. But my mind wouldn’t settle, buzzing with the remnants of adrenaline, fear, frustration, and that maddeningly tantalizing sense of nearing something...something important.
With a groan, I rolled over and reached beneath my pillow. My fingers brushed parchment. I pulled out the tome on shadow magic—the same forbidden one I’d stuffed away earlier like a guilty snack.
I picked a lantern from off the wall before slipping under the sheets, casting the world into a cocoon of warm amber glow. My heart thudded softly. My muscles ached. But my mind was hungry.
Two days. Only two days left. Now was not nearly the time to rest. It was the time to rise.
And saints above...
I was going to make sure I did.