Moving Forward
Sabo sat beside Vitomir’s body long after the others drifted into uneasy sleep. The night pressed close, thick and heavy. The fire had burned low, its embers glowing like the last heartbeat of some dying thing, and no matter how close Sabo tried to stay to it, he couldn’t get warm. Beyond the wreckage of the airship, the world stretched on in endless shadow.
He should have said something. A prayer, maybe. Or words of comfort for a man too weak to speak them himself. But what comfort was there in that? What words could hold back the inevitable?
It’s too late now anyway.
The old man looked impossibly small. Shrunken, hollowed out by days of fever and pain. Sabo had known this was coming—of course he had—but knowing did nothing to blunt the raw ache spreading through his chest. The air felt too thin. Like if he breathed too hard, he might shatter completely.
He reached out, fingers brushing against the frail, withered hand that had once hauled him out of the dirt and given him something to live for. Once, Vitomir had seemed indestructible. A force of nature wrapped in frayed robes and a half-dozen grumbling curses. That man had saved his life. More than once. And now, all that was left was this brittle shell. A fading warmth in a world too cold to care.
Sabo clenched his jaw. He should have done more. Found medicine. Pushed harder. Hell, if he’d been faster—stronger—maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe they wouldn’t be stranded in the middle of nowhere, huddled around scraps of food.
But ‘maybe’ was a useless thing. A word for fools and dreamers. And Sabo had no use for either.
His gaze drifted to the stars overhead. They hung bright and distant, like shards of broken glass scattered across the sky. His mind drifted back down to the earth and out towards the black mass of the horizon and silhouetted treetops. Somewhere beyond them lay Valhadryan. Hecate’s Tower. And the promise of something he didn’t quite understand.
The Morduin want whatever lies at the top of the Tower. You can stop them.
The words gnawed at him. What had that old man seen in him—an orphan turned half-starved slave? What made him the one who could stop the Morduin priests and whatever it was they planned to do with the Tower? He didn’t know. But whatever the answer, it lay to the north. And he would find it. If he had to drag himself across every blood-soaked mile between here and that damned Tower, he would find it.
The wind shifted, cold against his skin. His limbs felt heavy. He hadn’t meant to sleep—but eventually, it found him anyway.
And he dreamed.
It began with a stair.
He stood at the base of it, stretching endless into the sky. A spiral of black stone, each step slick with something that gleamed wet and red. The air was thick here—thick like honey, thick like blood—and it pulled at him with every breath.
He started to climb.
The steps were narrow, treacherous beneath his feet. He felt the weight of something vast pressing against his spine, pushing him forward. Higher. Always higher. And behind him—darkness. It ate at the edges of the world, unraveling each step the moment his foot left it. There was no turning back. No pause to catch his breath. There was only the climb.
He didn’t know how long he walked. Time stretched thin, slippery, meaningless. His legs burned. His lungs scraped against his ribs with every gasp. But the top was always just out of reach, hidden behind a veil of shadow and shimmering light.
A sound stirred the air.
A breath. A whisper. Something old and endless and hungry.
The stairs crumbled faster. The void behind him yawned wide, swallowing the path in jagged, biting gulps. He tried to run—but his legs were too heavy. His strength poured out of him like water through cracked stone.
Faster, he thought. Just a little farther.
A laugh curled through the darkness. Low and guttural. It rolled over him like oil, thick and cloying, seeping into his skin.
The steps beneath him shattered.
He fell.
The air was cold. Colder than death. And the void wasn’t empty—not really. It had a shape. A mouth. A maw like the one that had swallowed the Maldrath whole. A maw that opened wide to greet him.
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, something stirred.
The word echoed through him, low and reverberating. Sabo reached for the thing inside him, the thing that now called itself Eater, the thing that had saved his life and devoured everything in its path.
But the maw below was larger. Deeper. And as he fell, the last thing he heard was that same, distant laughter—sweet and cold, like a knife sliding between his ribs.
The sun rose slow and sullen over the broken spine of the airship. Its light spilled across the wreckage in pale, gold ribbons—too warm, too gentle for a place that had seen so much death. The wind stirred through the clearing, carrying the faint, metallic scent of what Sabo now associated with burned aether.
Sabo stretched the stiffness from his limbs and rolled his shoulders, biting back a yawn. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep beside Vitomir’s body, but the weight of days without rest had dragged him under. Dreams still clung to him—fragments of falling, a maw opening wide, that sweet, distant laughter curling through his thoughts—but he shoved them aside.
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He had work to do.
The others stirred around the camp. Hiwot knelt near the remaining supplies, binding the last of their scavenged food into bundles for travel. Maro, quiet and efficient, worked to dismantle parts of the airship hull they could carry—scrap metal, strips of sailcloth. Things that might be useful if the wilderness decided to be crueler than it already was. Rajka stood farther off, face shadowed as he spoke to the few who remained. They all knew what needed doing.
But no one wanted to start.
Sabo stepped into the center of the clearing. The ground here was hard-packed and scarred from the crash. It would do. He held out his arm, feeling the pulse of something vast and heavy stir beneath his skin.
“Time to earn your keep,” he whispered.
A ripple passed through him. His skin prickled with cold as the maul uncoiled from his flesh, sliding free with the same bone-deep wrongness it always did. The blackened steel glinted dully in the morning light, its jagged teeth shifting along the edges. Eater. The thing in his arm, the thing in his head. It rumbled low—displeased.
“You can eat monsters and magic alike,” Sabo muttered. “Surely you can handle a little soil.”
A pause. Then the maul groaned, the weight of it vibrating through his bones.
Sabo swung the maul low, aiming at the earth. The moment the head touched the ground, a ripple spread outward—a void that stretched hungrily across the surface. Chunks of soil and stone simply ceased to exist. No dust. No debris. Just an absence, as if the ground had never been there to begin with.
The trench deepened with each strike. The air hummed with energy as Eater devoured the earth in vast, uneven bites. It worked fast—faster than any shovel—but the maul’s irritation buzzed beneath Sabo’s skin the entire time.
Sabo gritted his teeth and ignored it. He focused on the swing of his arms, the rhythm of the work. There was something soothing about the work—it was easy to get lost in, to ignore all of the pain. Each impact of the maul erased more of the world, leaving only a jagged emptiness behind. It wasn’t long before the trench stretched wide and deep enough to hold the dead.
When it was done, he let the maul rest against his shoulder. “Happy now?”
“No.” This time Eater spoke from the mouth in the hammer’s head, spitting out flecks of dirt as it did so.
“Of course not,” Sabo replied.
Maro and the others came forward in silence. The bodies—wrapped in torn sailcloth and whatever else they could find—were laid gently into the grave. One by one, they passed them down. Sabo took Vitomir’s body himself, his hands tightening around the rough edges of the cloth. The old man weighed less than nothing now. As if whatever had made him him had already slipped free of those weak, mortal coils and left only a brittle husk behind.
Sabo laid him to rest at the far end of the trench.
When it was done, the others stepped back, their faces pale and worn. Hiwot murmured something soft—words Sabo didn’t understand—and the wind carried them away. No one else spoke.
Sabo raised the maul again.
He tapped into the pool of power that sat at his core. He was met by a single word that flashed in the corner of his vision.
[Regurgitate.]
The maul shuddered in his hands. Then, from its jagged maw, the earth poured forth—thick, heavy, like wet clay. It fell in great clumps, filling the trench inch by inch. Each mouthful of earth spat back into the world was dense and strange, as though the process of being devoured and returned had made it other. He watched as Vitomir and the others vanished beneath the weight of it.
When the grave was filled, Sabo released the maul. It shrank and slithered back beneath his skin, the weight of it retreating to his mind like a satisfied beast.
It left behind silence. Heavy. Unyielding.
Sabo stood there a while longer after the others drifted away. The fresh earth settled beneath his boots, warm from the maul’s work. There was no marker. No names. Just a mound of dirt and the memory of the people who had fallen.
He reached up and pressed a hand to his chest, fingers curling tight. “I’ll finish it,” he said softly. “I’ll stop them. I swear it.”
The wind stirred again, colder now.
And he turned away.
By midday, the camp stirred with the restless energy of people ready to leave. The last of the makeshift shelters were torn down, bundles of salvaged supplies hoisted onto weary shoulders. Those who remained—fewer now, far fewer—moved with quiet determination. There was nothing left for them here but ash and graves.
Maro stood at the edge of the clearing, tying off a pack. His hands worked with swift precision, but his expression was distant. Always thinking. Always planning the next step. Sabo approached, his own gear slung loosely across his back, the weight of it nothing compared to what he carried inside.
“You’re heading south?” Sabo asked.
Maro nodded, tightening a final knot. “Southwest, toward Hykaera. There are border towns along the way. If we keep low and avoid the main trade roads, we should slip past any Imperial patrols.” His mouth twisted into a grim line. “If they’re looking for us.”
“They might be.” Sabo didn’t need to guess. He knew from personal experience that the Ravaelian Empire didn’t leave loose ends. And something told him they wouldn’t let a ship transporting prisoners and that much aether sap harvested from the Green Sea go missing without further investigation. Sabo thought of the handfuls of the sap he had wrapped and placed into his makeshift pack—a source of power richer than the ambient aether that was suspended throughout the atmosphere.
Maro exhaled sharply. “Yeah, figured as much.” He turned to face Sabo fully, a shadow flickering behind his usual calm. “Come with us. You’d be safer.”
Safer. The word tasted bitter. There was no safety for people like him. Not anymore. Not since the empire burned his home to the ground.
“I can’t,” Sabo said quietly. “I’m heading north.”
Maro’s hands stilled. “To Valhadryan? Really?”
Sabo nodded. “To Hecate’s Tower, if you’re familiar. I have business to attend to.”
For a long moment, Maro said nothing. The wind brushed between them, cool against the heat of the sun. Finally, Maro let out a breath, somewhere between frustration and acceptance.
“You saved my life,” he said. “More than once. I owe you for that.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Maybe not.” Maro held out a hand. “But if you ever need a Guide—if you ever need a friend—you know where to find me. Seek me out.”
Sabo clasped his hand, firm and steady. “You take care of them. Get them out of here.”
Maro’s lips curved into a faint, lopsided smile. “I will. You—try not to get eaten by anything, yeah?”
“No promises.” Sabo said, forcing a small smile.
They parted without another word. Sabo turned his steps toward the north, the weight of the maul thrumming faintly beneath his skin—the constant pull to summon it picking at the edges of his willpower.
He had barely crossed the edge of the clearing when a voice rang out behind him.
“You weren’t going to leave without me, were you?”
Sabo stopped, half-turning. Hiwot stood a few paces back, her pale hair catching the sun like threads of silver. She held a small pack slung over her shoulder, her expression calm, almost bored—as if she had decided on a whim to follow a boy marching toward death.
“You’re coming with me?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’ve got nothing left here. Nothing left anywhere, really. Might as well follow the most interesting thing I’ve seen in years.” She tilted her head, a spark of amusement in her dark eyes. “And right now? That’s you.”
Sabo let out a breath, shaking his head. “You know where I’m going.” It wasn’t a question.
“I do.” She stepped closer, her boots light against the earth. “And I’m not afraid of a tower, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about the Tower,” he muttered.
Hiwot smiled—sharp, like a blade slipping from its sheath. “Good. Wouldn’t want things to get dull. And you’ll need me, if you really intend on entering and climbing the Tower.”
Sabo shook his head again, but he didn’t argue. If she wanted to come, she would. And truth be told, he wasn’t sure he wanted to walk this road alone.
Without another word, he turned and started north. Hiwot fell into step beside him, a half-step behind. The wind shifted at their backs, carrying the scent of earth and smoke and something else—something older, deeper.
Ahead lay Valhadryan. Hecate’s Tower. And whatever waited for him at the heart of it.