Jace dove for the opening in the floor, holding his arms out in front of him and aiming for first step.

  Before he could arrive, a weight impacted him from the side, flinging him off-course. The new Wielder—whatever it was—struck him in the ribs and flung him. He tumbled along the ground and skidded to a halt in the open center of the atrium.

  “Jace!” Lessa shouted in warning, and he had just enough time to roll to the side. The Wielder-kyborg creature slammed its fists down into the ground where Jace had been, crushing stone and shattering it. Where its broken whistling glass knuckles touched the rock, it melted it, turning runes and marble alike to glowing slag.

  Jace jumped back to his feet. He had a hyperdash ready, just in case, but without the reset card available, he had to be cautious about when he used his cards. Only if he absolutely had to.

  The kyborg poised to charge again. It looked up and locked eyes with Jace. As much as its mechanical lenses could lock eyes.

  “Worldjumper,” it said in an awfully human, non-mechanical voice. There was a deep rasp, though, and an underlying rattle that made Jace wince. “Here for the spear?”

  Jace opened his mouth and raised his Whistling Blade, but the creature sprang forward with a hiss and a chug of black smoke, and threw a punch at Jace’s face.

  Before it collided, a pulse of turquoise Aes gripped it and pulled it off-balance. It slid a few feet toward Nomad before shrugging off the effect of the mythic card.

  Kinfild raised his staff and switched his cards, activating his Flame Cage card, and a wall of burning Aes rose up on all sides of the kyborg, but it punched through the technique with ease, shattering the barrier.

  It was only a few levels higher than Ash. They should have…been able to defeat it, right?

  But the higher levels were exponentially more powerful, and this kyborg-Wielder thing, whatever it was, was an entire advancement rank above Ash.

  The jump from Soul-Circle Opening to…Nascent Heart was that big?

  If Ash’s techniques could barely make it stumble, they had no chance. “Run!” Jace yelled. “Get down the stairs! I’ll be right behind you!”

  If the kyborg could’ve looked amused, it would’ve. Its lips didn’t move, and its eyes were unreadable, but there was something about its demeanor. “You think you can plan without me knowing, worldjumper? You take me for an unintelligent ‘bot?”

  “I don’t care if you hear,” Jace said.

  “Then listen well,” said the kyborg. “I know everything about you: I have seen your techniques, analyzed your class, your attributes. I have my target, but your death would be unfortunate, given my master’s plan for you. But not an unrecoverable loss. If you step between me and my objectives, I will destroy you. If you pursue the Halcyon Spear further, I will rip your heart out of your chest.”

  Jace narrowed his eyes. “It’s that important?”

  The longer he could keep the creature talking, the more time his friends had to escape. Already, Kinfild was backing away down the stairwell.

  Jace shot them a pleading look. They needed to go faster. They needed to run. He could catch up, but not if they took their time.

  At that, the others seemed to understand. Ash bowed his head, then turned and sprinted down the spiral. Kinfild snagged Lessa by the back of her shirt and dragged her down the stairwell.

  “So you have chosen destruction?” asked the Kyborg. “I know your plan, worldjumper. I know your arsenal. You cannot stand against me. You think a pathetic band of…a Crimson Table mediocre-master, a mortal woman, and a disgraced heir will stand against me?”

  Jace’s eyes widened. Disgraced heir?

  “Oh, you didn’t know?” The kyborg snorted. “That one General Rallemnon knows more about your party than you do should be a wakeup call. Though indeed, I might know more about you and your kind than you do yourself. You are not the first worldjumper, and you won’t be the last.”

  Rallemnon.

  Had the Split seen this coming?

  The kyborg held his arm out to the side, and a technique card manifested above his hand. It was dark, and its runes dripped with black, oily tar. He crushed it in his hand before Jace could glimpse its title or description.

  On command, the cloud of black smoke behind him condensed. Particles of soot formed into arms and spears, then reached out, racing toward Jace. He slashed through one with his Whistling Blade, but whatever manipulation of Aes was holding it together resisted his slash almost entirely, and he only blasted the tip off.

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  His fortification card was ready again, and he triggered it, which made slashing apart the tendrils much easier, but it wouldn’t last forever, and he couldn’t hit them all.

  A tendril of smoke slashed at his leg, and it blasted right through his pants and grazed his thigh. He protected his core, guarding his stomach and chest and head, but his shoulders were vulnerable. Another tendril of condensed smoke particles slashed through his bicep, and one more raced toward his opposite shoulder.

  The others had gotten far enough away. Jace could escape. He had no choice.

  Slashing through three tendrils of smoke as he turned, he triggered his hyperdash, aiming directly through the stone on a diagonal route to the stairway. He’d pass directly through a couple tendrils of smoke on the way.

  As soon as he triggered the card, his vision lit up with bright white and gold light, and he flashed through the air, stone, and the rest of the fabric of the world.

  But where the tendrils of smoke flew in the real world, there were dark impressions in hyperspace as well. Claws of pure black Aes, reaching in and trying to strike him.

  It all happened too fast to process, much less react to. As he collided with a claw, a searing pain ran across the right side of his body, from the side of his face down to his hand, where the claws of darkness raked him. Unpleasant, awkward pressures erupted wherever the claws connected.

  He wasn’t interacting with physical objects, but he sure as hell was interacting with whatever was going on with this Aes. Like a dark anti-hyperspace torpedo net.

  In a blink, he appeared back in the real world. He tumbled into the stairwell from the side, emerging from the bare stone, before finding his physical form again and bouncing down a couple steps. He came to a rest against the central column of the spiral stairway.

  And then the full brunt of the pain hit him. He imagined someone had splashed acid across the entire right half of his body, though he didn’t actually know what that felt like. The skin wasn’t melting away, but it sure felt like it. His right eye wasn’t working, and blood streaked down from gashes where the claws had hit.

  But worst of all was his wrist. There should have been something there, but there was a cold sensation of…nothingness atop the scorching pain. Rubbing alcohol taken to the utmost extreme.

  He shouted and gasped, but adrenaline, his Vitality, and the fortification technique allowed him to push himself up. Lessa, Kinfild, and Ash stood a few steps up, gaping at him.

  It was probably bad. He was probably going to go into shock. The expressions on their faces weren’t helping, and it had all happened so fast.

  But if he didn’t get out of here, he was going to die.

  “He’s faster than us on foot!” Jace shouted. The effort it took and the strain on his torn face made him not want to exist anymore. “We need to slow him down.”

  “Go!” Ash yelled. “I’ll block the way!”

  Jace didn’t need to be told twice. He kept running, and Lessa and Kinfild sprinted past Ash, following him. They wound down the spiral staircase.

  “As soon as we hit the crust-lift, we can put distance between us and the kyborg!” Kinfild called. “We just need enough time to get to the lift before he does too!”

  They spiralled down the steps. Each footfall was agony. There was probably a ripped tendon. Jace’s right leg wasn’t working properly, and it wasn’t lifting as far. He took to just dragging it, relying on the strength of the Lightvein card to make him move. Tears streamed from his eyes, and he couldn’t control it. He’d never felt this much discomfort in his life.

  Ash took a wide stance, and turquoise light filled his form, then burst out in a flaming aura around him.

  “By the weight of my forebears, I call on the Draws of the universe!” he shouted. “The Split is my ally!” With a great effort, he crushed a new technique card in his grip, another Mythic card, by the looks of it, and slammed his arms down toward the floor.

  A great crack resounded above them, and with a rain of dust, the ceiling fell. Rocks and stone plummeted from the top of the atrium, and an enormous boulder plugged the opening of the staircase.

  Ash turned and ran, too. He sprinted down the stairs, moving as fast as he could, and caught up with them immediately. “That won’t hold the kyborg for long!”

  Jace limped down the rest of the stairway, his foot dragging and flopping on each step, until they arrived at another broad chamber overlooking a crust-lift.

  It was like all the other crust-lift chambers Jace had seen over the past few days, but it seemed infinitely larger taking into account his injuries. He gritted his teeth. He had to make it, or he was gone. Gone for good.

  Clenching his teeth together, he descended the slopes toward the walkway to the main machinery of the crust-lift. Above, a set of crashes and cracks rang out through the cavern. Then, finally, a hollow thud. The boulder Ash had used to plug the hole in the stairway cracked. In combination, a few flights of stairs cracked too, and a plume of dust chased them out into the main hall of the lift.

  They weren’t going to make it.

  “Jace!” Lessa called. “Jace, he’s coming!” She hauled her rifle off her shoulder. “Can you hear me? We need to go faster!”

  He nodded, probably only half registering her words. Maybe she said more, but his ears were pounding.

  They descended the walkways, wrapping a quarter of the length around the crust-lift, until they arrived at the walkway. Jace pushed himself as fast as he could, but the moment he set a foot on the metal spar, his fortification technique sputtered out. He stumbled, and Kinfild caught his hand and hauled him back upright.

  Shouting to keep himself moving, Jace forced himself to keep moving.

  But the raspy breaths came faster. Metal clicked on stone, and a green glow shone from the corner of his eyes. A piston chugged, and the shattered whistling glass in Rallemnon’s knuckles screeched discordantly with every step.

  “Jace!” Lessa screamed. “Jace, duck!”

  Her comparatively light weight collided with his back, tackling him, and his body falling forward on the walkway, legs giving out. His hands scraped on the perforated metal of the walkway, scraping the skin down to the bone. His ribs smacked against hard metal.

  And he smelled burned, charred beeswax. His stomach plummeted.

  Lessa shouted and yelled incoherently. Everything was a mess, and it’d all gone wrong so quickly.

  One last push. One last effort. He had to…