The searchlight was a hunter's eye, cold and methodical. It swept across the churning grey sea, then raked across the black, jagged cliffs, painting everything in a stark, momentary glare. We flattened ourselves behind a cluster of rocks as the beam passed over us, its light so bright it felt like a physical touch.
"They're faster than I thought," Kael hissed, his voice tight with strain. "The storm-warden must be calming the seas directly in front of their vessel."
The beam swung back, closer this time. We couldn't stay put. We were forced into a deadly rhythm: scrambling across the treacherous, wave-battered rocks during the brief moments of darkness, then freezing behind whatever scant cover we could find as the light swept past. Each dash was a gamble against the raging sea and the watchful eye of our pursuers.
My exhaustion was a constant, screaming presence. Every muscle ached, and the cold had seeped deep into my bones. My connection to the Sandsong felt frayed and distant, like a song heard from miles away.
The skiff was closer now, a dark shape cutting through the storm-tossed waves, its searchlight pinning down sections of the coast with growing accuracy. We were running out of time and coastline. Ahead, a wide, impassable channel of churning water separated us from the next section of cliffs where the caves were supposed to be. It was too wide to jump, the current too violent to swim. We were trapped.
"There!" Kael shouted over the roar, pointing.
A short distance out in the channel, a series of tall, slender sea stacks stood like stone sentinels, pounded by the waves. If we could somehow cross to them, we might be able to leapfrog our way to the other side. But the gap from our ledge to the first stack was a twenty-foot expanse of furious, surging water.
The searchlight began to sweep back towards us. In a few seconds, we would be exposed, with nowhere to hide.
"Iris!" Kael's voice was sharp with urgency. "The sand! Beneath the water!"
I looked at the channel. Beneath the churning chaos, there was a seabed of sand and stone. It felt miles away, buried under the crushing weight and fury of the ocean. I didn't have the strength to command it, not like before.
But I wasn't the same girl who had stumbled out of the Library.
I closed my eyes, ignoring the approaching light, ignoring the cold and the exhaustion. I didn't try to command. I didn't even try to harmonize with the storm's grand, violent song. I focused all of my remaining will on a single, desperate task. I reached down with my senses, found the song of the sand at the bottom of the channel, and I didn't ask it to become a solid bridge.
I asked it to leap.
In the brief moment before the next wave crashed through, the seabed directly beneath the channel erupted upwards. A thick, heavy pillar of sand and water surged into the air, connecting our ledge to the first sea stack. It wasn't solid. It was a messy, chaotic, temporary bridge of slurry that began to collapse the moment it was formed.
"Now!" I screamed.
We didn't hesitate. We plunged onto the collapsing bridge of sand. It was like running through thick, sinking mud. The searchlight hit us, pinning us in its glare. The wave crashed into the side of our makeshift bridge, tearing it apart. But it had bought us the seconds we needed. We scrambled onto the solid rock of the first sea stack just as the last of our bridge was washed away into the sea.
From the skiff, a new light flared—a bolt of angry purple energy that struck the ledge where we had been standing, blasting chips of black rock into the air. They were firing at us.
We were exposed, but we were moving. We leaped from the first stack to the second, then made a final, desperate jump to the cliffs on the other side, plunging into the dark, narrow opening of a cave just as another bolt of Magi energy seared the air where we had been.
We scrambled deeper into the darkness, the sounds of the storm and our pursuers fading behind us, replaced by the dripping of water and the echo of our own ragged breaths. We had escaped the light, but we had just entered a new, unknown darkness.