Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

Raizen's fingers closed on empty air.

Alan was gone.

One second he had been falling - coat flaring, mouth open, eyes sharp - and the next the dark cloud had folded around him like water.

No ripple.

No flare.

No sound.

Just… Swallowed whole.

"Alan!" Raizen shouted again, like another scream would do something.

The dragon hovered at the edge of the darkness, four wings beating hard to hold them in place. Wind ripped at Raizen's hair as he leaned forward.

Instinct screamed one command.

"Jump."

His arm twitched away from Elin's waist.

He shifted his weight-

Suddenly, a hand clamped around his wrist.

Not gentle.

Not playful.

Elin's grip was strong enough to make his bones hurt.

"Don't." Her voice was low, sharp.

"I have to-"

"No, Raizen. You don't have to be the hero for everyone."

Raizen jerked his head toward her back. "He's going to die!"

"You don't know that."

"He fell into a wall of condensed Eon darkness, we don't know if he'll live either!"

"And you think throwing yourself into it fixes that?" Elin snapped, still holding his wrist like a leash. "You want to help him? Stay alive long enough to help."

Raizen's jaw tightened.

He hated how reasonable she sounded.

He hated how calm she was.

He hated that he still didn't trust her.

"Let me go" he said.

Elin didn't.

"Raizen." Her tone softened by a fraction. "You barely know me. You barely know what that cloud is. You aren't jumping blind into something you know nothing about."

"A human life is worth more than a scar. More than a fracture. More than me getting bruised." he shot back. "If I can do something, I will."

Elin's eyes flicked to him over her shoulder. The lantern light caught the red ring in her iris.

"That's not bravery" she said. "That's addiction."

His chest tightened at the word.

"Call it whatever you want, I don't care." he answered. "He's still down there."

Elin stared at him for a long second.

Then she exhaled, slow, like she was trying not to strangle him.

"Fine." Her voice went light again in that dangerous way. "Then go already."

Raizen blinked. "What?"

Elin suddenly pushed Raizen's chest with her palm. Hard.

His balance tilted completely.

The dragon's back vanished under his legs.

The dark cloud swallowed him.

For half a second, his brain didn't accept it.

Then his vision turned sideways and his stomach tried to climb into his throat.

"Elin!" he shouted, pure outrage-

Wind slammed into his mouth and stole the rest.

Ukai spun above him.

The dragon's wings boomed bursts of air.

Raizen flailed once, instinct searching for anything solid.

Nothing.

He dropped fast.

Too fast.

A weird, cold thought slipped in under the panic.

"She might actually let me fall."

He didn't know her. Not really. He knew her jokes, her cave, her threats, her power crushing every muscle in his body like a reminder.

He didn't know her control.

He didn't know if she even had mercy.

He sucked in a breath and forced his body to stabilize midair, trying to anchor himself with anything - an Eon dash, reinforcement, a burst, something.

But there was nowhere to push off of.

No ground.

No wall.

Just falling into the darkness.

His ribs tightened, and his throat went dry from wind.

And then-

Warmth wrapped around his torso.

The same red thread from a while ago snapped into place across his chest and under his arms like a seatbelt made of Eon.

Raizen's whole mind sighed with relief.

She did it.

Of course she did.

Except… He kept falling.

The thread held him, but it didn't yank.

It stayed loose for a second, then tightened, then loosened again, like the hand on the other end didn't know if it really wanted to pull.

Cold brushed Raizen's skin heavily, from the dark mist.

It felt layered. Dense.

Raizen twisted, trying to look for Alan.

Trying to find any sign that he hadn't just vanished into that dark cloud. In his mind, he knew. He knew that Alan could use his wind blades or Eon to save himself. But that thought came a bit too late.

And then he saw him.

Alan lay on a wooden platform.

Not inside the cloud.

Not swallowed.

Just… there.

A broad Ukai platform jutted from the edge of the city's outer ring, half-hidden by vines and branches. Alan was sprawled on his back like he needed a break from falling.

One arm was over his face.

Alan was laughing. He managed to fall onto a... More forgiving platform, a more forgiving distance.

He was alive.

Not bleeding.

Just... Deeply offended by gravity. And the dragon.

Raizen's brain short-circuited.

All that panic. All that urgency.

And Alan was just lying there like a man who had tripped on some stairs.

Alan moved his arm off his face and looked up.

For a split second, as Raizen was falling, their eyes met.

Alan's expression shifted.

Not annoyance.

Not gratitude.

Amusement.

He shouted something up at Raizen.

Raizen couldn't hear the words through the wind, but he could read the message on his face.

"Are you kidding me!?"

Raizen's mouth opened.

Something tried to come out.

It turned into a choked sound.

Because he was still falling.

Because the thread still wasn't pulling.

Because now his heroic leap now looked even worse.

He looked up again, eyes wide, following the red line back to the dragon. Elin was there, and she hadn't pulled yet.

Raizen's stomach twisted. "What is she doing!?" he thought.

"Okay.

Okay, fine.

I can survive this.

I survived worse.

Probably.

Maybe..."

His thoughts started racing again.

"If she doesn't pull in time, I hit the platform.

If I hit the platform with this momentum, I snap something.

If I snap something, Elin starts laughing.

If she starts laughing, I'll die of humiliation. Or die for real."

The dark cloud surrounded Raizen's vision. He didn't have much until his impact with the ground. Only a few seconds passed since he fell from the dragon, but his mind was running wild.

His breath hitched.

The thread tightened again.

Still no pull.

He started panicking for real now, because the waiting was worse than the fall.

He couldn't control it. Couldn't calculate it. Couldn't do anything except trust someone he barely knew from a few hours before.

His fingers clenched into fists.

He tried to angle his body, to aim for Alan's platform as a backup.

Wind spun him slightly.

The thread tugged his chest, dragging him off-line, then loosened again.

"Elin!" he screamed, and this time his throat actually burned from it.

Raizen kept falling.

Like an idiot.