The stone beneath Isolde crumbled. Eloy lunged.

His hand closed on fabric, not flesh. Rough-woven sleeve material, already straining at the shoulder seam where her arm had wrenched during the shove. Bridge segment tilting sharply, a fifteen-degree pitch that sent loose masonry skittering into the ravine. Two hundred feet of open air swallowed the sound.

Ankle reported the brace through numbness as a red-line feedback pulse. Not pain. Damage he’d pay for later. Isolde’s full weight hit the fabric and the threads audibly strained, a sound like pulling a drawstring past its limit.

[404ManaNotFound]: THAT’S FABRIC NOT A WRIST

[LMAO_cat]: PHYSICS ENGINE SAID YOINK

[speedGoblin_]: two second timer on that seam. max.

"Isolde!" The same tone he used for frame-perfect input calls. "Right hand. Fracture line. Three inches above your head!"

His free hand clung tightly to the tilting stone. His chest pressed against the fragile masonry, which wouldn’t hold out much longer. Terrible position. Lying face down on a collapsing beam, with one hand trapped in his sleeve, feeling the pain in his ankle every half-second.

Fabric held. Isolde’s full weight suspended from it. The bridge kept crumbling, but the cloth did not give.

Vertical stone against her back. Isolde hung there, face level with the ledge she’d been told to grab. Her hands stayed at her sides.

Eloy hauled upward against the ankle. Converted the fabric grip into upward momentum, muscles burning through the two-second window and past it, until she was close enough to reach the rock herself. Stone continued spalling from under his chest, each piece that broke loose making his hold smaller.

"Left hand. Fracture line. Grab it."

Ankle gave another half-inch. HUD reported it as a line of red text he didn’t have time to read.

She did not grab the rock.

"You screamed my name."

She is asking about the scream? He replayed it, his voice tearing on her name, uncalculated. Why it matters?

The question didn’t sound like a question. Flat. Stripped bare. But her fingers were trembling so hard the stone beneath them vibrated, not the tremor of fear, but of someone fighting their own body. She wasn’t reaching for the handhold. She was waiting for his answer. Like the answer mattered more than the fall.

After a few seconds, he finally understood. She isn’t asking about the scream. She is asking if it is real.

Below them, the ravine was absolute darkness. The isolation of the drop beneath her. Eloy caught a flicker behind her eyes. Something older than the bridge, older than the mission, a memory sealed behind warded doors and left to fester.

Smell of sealed stone. A warded door closing. He couldn’t name it, but he registered the way her body refused the grip command like her motor functions had been overridden.

"I caught you." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

He didn’t explain the scream. Didn’t address the question behind the question. His fingers threaded through the sleeve fabric, creating a lock that wouldn’t slip even if the seam went completely.

"That’s what matters."

Isolde’s eyes held on his face. Two seconds.

Chat screamed but he couldn’t read it. The blue window accelerated to a blur he couldn’t parse while keeping the grip stable.

Seam reported its first thread failure. She could grip the rock. Or she could keep asking questions that had no answer while the fabric tore.

On the far side of the ravine, Maya pulled wind around her hands.

The Hunter stood at the bridge remnant, featureless face locked on Eloy across the gap. It was motionless. Not attacking. Waiting with a stillness that turned absence of movement into an active choice.

She hurled the compressed-air Wind Gale directly at the Hunter’s face. Tight spiral, full force, aimed to force a brace or a dodge or any reaction that bought time. The air split against it. Parted. Reformed on the other side.

The Hunter absorbed the hit without acknowledging it, didn’t stagger, didn’t turn, didn’t even register the wind as a threat.

[SpeedrunGod]: wind gale does zero damage confirmed

[speedGoblin_]: he’s so OP whyyy

"Vance." Maya’s voice carried across the ravine, controlled, no panic in the delivery. "Attack failed. Still locked on you. Our window’s gone."

She pulled the satchel of blue ledgers tighter against her chest. Protective curl was automatic. Documents first, even now.

The Hunter spoke.

Same pre-kingdom language. Full sentence this time, cadence restructured from statement to question. Alien phonetics hit Eloy’s ears as pure sound. Nothing his brain could parse. But his HUD fought to.

[ TRANSLATION ATTEMPT: FAILED ]

[ PARTIAL RECOVERY — 1 WORD (CORRUPTED) ]

[ ░░░░░░ "CALDWELL" ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ]

[ TRANSLATION ENGINE: CRITICAL — RETURNING TO STANDBY ]

[ [PARTIAL TRANSLATION FAILED] ]

Caldwell.

Name sat in a red warning box at the edge of his vision. An entity outside the affinity matrix, immune to all known magic, standing on a broken bridge two hundred feet above a river, asking a question that contained the Director’s name like it was a variable it expected Eloy to resolve.

Caldwell. This thing knows Caldwell...?

Red warning box held one word. The Hunter’s featureless face stayed locked on him across the ravine.

The root system beneath the ledge was exposed now. Old growth, thick enough to brace against. Eloy had filed it as terrain data during the initial scan. Now it was the only variable that mattered.

He braced both feet against the roots. Ankle screamed but the root held, and he converted the leverage into a haul that pulled Isolde up and over the ledge edge. Her body cleared the lip. Both of them found stone underfoot. Ninety seconds since the bridge had started to fail.

Isolde landed against the cliff face, her back against his chest. Both breathing hard. The ledge was narrow. Enough for two bodies pressed close, no more. Stone stable beneath them. Fabric of her sleeve still tangled in his grip, threads pulled loose but the lock held.

[ Isolde Reichenbach — Affinity: 19.50 / 100 → 20.25 / 100 ]

[ +0.75: life-saving grab in freefall; sustained physical proximity after rescue ]

[ ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Reach 20 Affinity with your Love Interest! ]

[dudefromfloripa]: AFFINITY TICK DURING COMBAT LMAO

[IsoldeSimp47]: YESSSSSS

[__cutiepie]: even the game knows lol (ᗒᗜᗕ)՛̵̖

Before he could say anything, or just feel embarrassed, more messages popped up on the HUD.

[ TRAIL MARKER 7/22 — AQUEDUCT BRIDGE (NORTH SPAN) — STATUS: DESTROYED ]

[ CALDERA MAP UPDATE — ACCESSIBLE ROUTES REVISED ]

[ ROUTE COVERAGE: 34% → 31% ]

[ ⚠ ALTERNATE ROUTE TO CALDERA: NO DATA ON FILE ]

"We’re not clear."

Isolde’s hand found the cliff face, fingers testing the rock. Trembling had stopped. Her body was already shifting, survival instinct re-engaging the moment there was a threat to process instead of a childhood memory to drown in.

"I can feel vibration through the stone."

The Hunter appeared in an arc from the other side. He didn’t run, didn’t brace himself; he simply crossed fifty meters of open space as if gravity were a suggestion his engine had decided to ignore. No sign of inertia. No momentum. When he landed, there was no sound of impact, not even dust. The rock cracked under his weight, five meters from where they were leaning against the cliff.

The Hunter could have killed them on impact. It didn’t. That made it more dangerous than anything that simply attacked.

Isolde’s hand found his. Squeezed once. A single pulse of pressure, released immediately. Then she shifted her weight forward, shoulder aligned with his, facing the Hunter. The gesture wasn’t comfort.

"What do you want?"

Eloy’s voice carried no awe. No fear. The same tone he’d use to initiate a quest-giver interaction. Identify objective, get parameters, proceed. His weight stayed on the good ankle. One hand remained positioned to grab Isolde if the stone gave again.

The Hunter spoke. A full sentence. Pre-kingdom language, maybe even older than the pre-kingdom. The cadence was unmistakably interrogative, a question landing on something the HUD fought harder to parse. Translation engine made its final attempt.

[ TRANSLATION ATTEMPT: CRITICAL FAILURE ]

[ PARTIAL RECOVERY — 3 WORDS (CORRUPTED) ]

[ ░░░░ "BEARER" ░░░░ "CALDWELL" ░░░░ "WHERE" ░░░░ ]

[ TRANSLATION ENGINE: OFFLINE — HARD CRASH ]

[ [PARTIAL TRANSLATION FAILED — 3 WORDS RECOVERED] ]

[ ANOMALY INTEGRATION: 23% → 24% ]

[ +1%: sustained proximity to unclassified entity outside affinity matrix ]

[404ManaNotFound]: BEARER. CALDWELL. WHERE....?

[coldfront44]: it thinks he’s carrying something

[speedGoblin_]: or someone. bearer has multiple meanings in the game.

"Vance." Maya’s voice from the far side, carried on wind she was controlling, tight and precise. "What did it say? Do we have a response or an exit?"

She’d repositioned to the edge of the far cliff, wind gathered around her hands defensively. Ready and still useless against this thing. Satchel secure against her chest.

"I don’t have him. I don’t know where he is." Eloy addressed the Hunter directly, voice stripped to transaction. "Be clear about what you think I’m carrying. Right now all I’ve got is three people and a satchel of stolen documents."

Knuckles whitened on the cliff face. Ankle reported the brace as a continuous dull throb. Survival mode timer ticked in his peripheral vision. None of that mattered if the entity five meters away decided he was lying.

It tilted its featureless face. A head-cock. The gesture could have been endless patience or absolute threat. The question was asked. It would wait.

He could tell the Hunter the truth. He didn’t know where Caldwell is. Three corrupted words were all he had to work with.

Or he could claim to be exactly what the Hunter thought he was and see where the conversation led.

The Hunter’s head remained tilted. Waiting. On the HUD, the red warning box still blinked.

[PARTIAL TRANSLATION FAILED — 3 WORDS RECOVERED]