We went through the window.
Verath went first, dropping three stories like it was nothing, landing in a crouch that didn't even crack the cobblestones. He looked up at us and held out his arms.
"Jump. I'll catch you."
"That's insane," Aden said, but he was already climbing onto the ledge.
"Trust me," Verath called.
Aden jumped. For one horrible heartbeat he was falling, and then Verath caught him like he weighed nothing, setting him down gently before looking back up at me.
"Your turn."
Behind me, the door shuddered. Someone was ramming it.
I climbed out the window, balanced on the narrow ledge, and looked down. Three stories. Enough to break every bone in my body if this went wrong.
The door opened and I jumped.
The fall lasted forever and no time at all. Wind whipped my hair back, my stomach lurched into my throat, and then strong arms caught me, absorbing the impact with impossible ease.
Verath set me down. "Run. Stay close."
The Lower City blurred past—narrow streets, market stalls being set up, confused faces as we sprinted by. Behind us, more shouts. More bells. The sound of pursuit growing louder.
"This way!" Verath yanked us down an alley, over a fence, through someone's washing line.
"Where are we going?" Aden gasped. He was keeping up better than he should. Whatever Verath had done, it hadn't just healed him. It had strengthened him.
"The old merchant road," Verath said. "It runs east toward the Wastes. If we can steal horses—"
"Nullborn can't own horses," I said. "We can't even rent them. They'll know we stole"
"Then we steal fast."
We burst out of the alley onto a wider street.
And there, tied to a post outside a tea house, three horses.
"You're kidding," I said.
Verath was already moving. He cut the reins with a swipe of his hand.
"Mount up. Now."
I grabbed Aden and shoved him toward the second horse. He climbed on clumsily, still recovering, and I took the third.
"THIEVES!" Someone shouted from the tea house. "STOP THEM!"
Verath kicked his horse into a gallop, and we followed. The city guards tried to stop us at the East Gate.
Four of them formed a line, pikes raised, blocking the massive iron gateway that separated Ashfall from the countryside beyond. Behind them, a C-Class officer was shouting orders, his hand glowing with the telltale blue light of Pillar-drawn magic.
"Dismount!" he barked.
Verath didn't slow down. The officer threw his hand forward, and a bolt of blue lightning erupted from his palm.
It should have hit Verath square in the chest.
Instead, silver light flared around him like a shield, and the lightning shattered against it.
The officer's eyes went wide. "What—"
Verath's horse crashed through the line. Guards dove aside, and the officer barely managed to roll out of the way before being trampled.
Aden and I followed Verath our horses panicked now. The gate was still closed, reinforced with defensive wards that glowed blue.
"Hold on!" Verath shouted.
He raised one hand, and silver light gathered in his palm—so much of it that I could feel the pressure from fifteen feet away. He threw the magic forward and the gate exploded.
Metal shrieked and tore, wards shattering in showers of sparks, and suddenly there was a hole large enough to ride through.
We burst out of Ashfall into the gray morning light beyond.
Behind us, alarm bells rang across the entire city. Hundreds of them, overlapping, deafening.
We didn't look back.
We rode hard for two hours before Verath finally let us stop.
By then, Ashfall was just a smudge on the horizon, its smoke pillars barely visible.
My legs were numb. My hands blistered from the reins. Aden looked better than I'd seen in months, but he was still trembling from exhaustion. Verath, of course, looked like he'd been out for a pleasant morning ride.
We stopped by a stream, and the horses immediately dropped their heads to drink. I slid off mine and nearly collapsed.
"We need to keep moving," Verath said, scanning the horizon. "They'll send tracking units. Bloodhounds, probably. We have maybe four hours before—"
"Wait." I held up a hand. "Just wait. Let me think."
"There's nothing to think about. We run or we die."
"Rina," Aden said quietly. He was sitting on a rock, staring at the mark on his palm. "What is this? What happened to us?"
I looked at my own mark, the silver dragon coiled around my forearm, and tried to find words.
"I made a deal," I said finally. "With him." I gestured at Verath. "To save you."
"A deal with a dragon." Aden's voice was strange…not scared, but wondering. "Like in the old stories. Before the Pillars."
"The old stories are propaganda," I said, echoing what I'd been taught my whole life. "Dragons destroyed cities. Killed thousands. The Council stopped them and built the Pillars to protect—"
"That's a lie," Verath said flatly.
We both turned to look at him.
He stood with his arms crossed, silver eyes hard. "Everything they taught you about the Dragon Wars is a lie. My kind never attacked humanity. We partnered with you. Taught you magic that came from within, not from stolen sources."
"Stolen?" I shook my head. "The Pillars aren't stolen. They distribute magic fairly based on—"
"Based on a hierarchy that ensures the powerful stay powerful and everyone else suffers." He moved closer. "Tell me, Serina. Where do you think the Pillars get their magic? What powers them?"
"I—" I realized I didn't know. "They just… exist. They've always been there."
"No. They've been there for four hundred years. Before that, magic was different. It was natural" He held up his hand, and silver light danced across his fingers. "This is soul-weaving. Magic drawn from life force, emotion, will. Everyone has it. Nullborn, Common, Refined—makes no difference. The potential is there."
"That's impossible. If everyone had magic, the system would-"
"Collapse. Exactly." His smile was bitter.
"Can't have equality in an empire built on hierarchy. So the Council created the Pillars, locked away everyone who knew the old ways, and convinced the world that magic was a limited resource that had to be earned."
Aden was staring at Verath like he'd just confirmed every forbidden book the kid had ever read. "The histories were right. The partnerships. The soul bonds. It was all real."
"Still is," Verath said. "You're both marked now. Your souls are tied to mine. Which means you have access to magic the Council spent four centuries trying to erase."
He crouched down, balancing on the balls of his feet, and looked between us.
"Here's how this works. The Luminous Pillars, the nine massive towers that power the empire, they're amplifiers. They take magic and redistribute it based on rank. You register at a Pillar, it measures your natural capacity, assigns you a number, and boom you're sorted."
"Rank 0 to Rank 10," I said. "Nullborn to Luminal."
"Right. But here's what they don't tell you: those ranks aren't measuring your magic. They're measuring your access to the Pillar network. Your parents were probably C-Class, maybe D-Class. They had some access. You—" He pointed at me. "You had none. Not because you're broken, but because the system decided you were worthless."
The words hit harder than they should have. I'd known, on some level, that the rankings were arbitrary. But hearing it stated so plainly sounded cruel.
"So what's the difference?" Aden asked. "Between Pillar magic and… what you do?"
"Pillar magic is borrowed. It's kind of External. Like wearing someone else's clothes it never quite fits right, and you're always aware it's not yours." Verath straightened. "Soul-weaving is internal. It's yours. It grows with you, responds to emotion, adapts. But it's also harder to control. Really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing."
He looked at me pointedly.
"Which is why," he continued, "I need to teach you before you accidentally incinerate yourself. The mark connects you to my power, but without training, you're like a child holding a sword. You're as likely to cut yourself as the enemy."
I looked down at my glowing arm. "How long will training take?"
"Depends. Months, usually. But we don't have months." He glanced back toward Ashfall. "We have days, maybe. The Council will send Luminals after us. We need to reach the Wastes before they catch up."
"And then what?" I demanded. "We hide in the desert forever?"
"No. Then we figure out what comes next." Something shifted in his expression. "You woke me for a reason. Not just to save your brother…the bond would have been more straightforward if that was all. There's something else. Something the contract recognized even if you didn't."
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. Yet." He turned toward the horses. "But we'll figure it out. Together. Because like it or not, Serina Ashveil, you and I are bound until one of us dies."
Aden stood up, wobbling slightly. "What about me? I'm marked too."
Verath studied him. "You're a secondary bond. Weaker, but still real. It'll give you strength, enhanced healing, maybe some minor magical ability if we train you. But you're not the anchor." He nodded at me. "She is."
I stood up, ignoring the protest from my legs, and faced Verath. "Fine. We run. We hide. We figure this out. But I want answers. About the Pillars, the Council, what they did to your kind. All of it."
"You'll get them. In time."
As I climbed back onto my horse, every muscle screaming, Aden leaned close and whispered, "Rina? Are we in trouble?"
I looked at the mark on my arm, glowing softly in the morning light. Looked at Verath, who stood silhouetted against the rising sun like something out of legend. Looked back at Ashfall, where guards were probably already organizing pursuit.
"Yeah," I said. "Pretty sure we're in the worst trouble of our lives."
But for the first time in years, I felt something other than hopeless.