Chapter 145

The city was enormous - larger than anything I’d ever seen. It stretched for miles in every direction. Not just miles - tens of miles. Even from my perch atop this tower of glass and steel, I could barely make out its edges, where the rigid grid of streets and multicolored buildings gave way to a hazy gray-green horizon.

It was chaos.

Towers - tall and squat - crowded against buildings that were fat, narrow, twisted, or plain. There was no pattern to it. No sense of design. A lone tower might rise a hundred feet above a cluster of low structures, while elsewhere, giants pressed shoulder to shoulder, separated only by a single, tiny brick structure. Height, shape, color - none of it followed any logic I could grasp.

Strangely enough, there were trees.

Not forests, but small groves and pastures every few blocks. Some were nothing more than a handful of trees scattered like afterthoughts. Others stretched wide, swallowing entire sections of the city.

I could even spot the grove we’d come through. From this height it looked insignificant - just a box of green - despite spanning more than a block.

The only thing that made sense were the roads. They carved through the city in straight, deliberate lines, dividing everything into neat squares - as if someone had taken a blade to the chaos and tried, desperately, to impose order.

That bothered me more than the chaos itself.

The tower rose high enough that the clouds drifted around me. Thin, pale things that didn’t block the city below so much as drain it of color. Even my own scales - normally bright, vibrant red - looked dull and lifeless under the washed-out sky.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see them. I could feel them.

My pack moved below, threading through the city as I followed them from above, flying rooftop to rooftop. Their Faith pulsed like heat beneath my skin, like pressure in my bones.

Vel was sharp. Focused. An arrow already loosed.

Moss was heavy - hungry - like something waiting to devour.

Clo flickered, fast and erratic, like a wasp ready to strike.

Nim wasn’t a pulse so much as a presence. A wall. His strength didn’t radiate - it contained.

Tansy… Tansy was no longer right. Weak. Fractured. Her Faith folded in on itself, pushing inward instead of flowing out, like something tearing itself apart from the inside.

They were my siblings. Gods, like me. But they weren’t the whole of my pack.

Mirri pulsed with warmth - soft and steady, like a blanket instead of a flame. Strong, but comforting.

Ashie felt like Vel - controlled and restrained - but coiled, waiting. Ready. It made sense, since she was Vel’s birth mother.

Serah was steady pressure, like a bad omen. Quiet, but promising devastation if ignored. She was my mother. So different from me, and yet… not.

He had changed. Once, He had been strong. Steady. A foundation of safety and untapped power. Now He felt… unstable. A faint, erratic vibration, like something on the verge of shattering.

I wondered if He would survive this. And if He didn’t - what would be left when his Faith flooded the world uncontrolled?

Belief in the absence of proof.

Would mortals believe everything? Or nothing at all? Either would break the world - just in different ways.

Lilae pulsed softly - steady, but light. Not like Mirri. Not anchored. Her Faith could be redirected. She trusted too easily. Too easily fooled.

She was a weak link in the pack. But we didn’t abandon weakness. We protected it. That was what it meant to be pack.

He had told me once that he had to reach for his Faith-scape. That it took effort. Thought. Intention.

It didn’t work that way for me. I felt it always. A constant pressure. A background rhythm. Another sense I couldn’t turn off.

Which was why I felt it the moment it changed.

Lilae - sharp, panicked - like prey that had just realized it was being hunted.

Below me, something shattered - stone crunching, brick tearing free from a building across the street. A crash. A scream.

Lilae’s Faith collapsed inward, like she was dying.

I leapt.

The ground rushed up as I dropped nearly a hundred feet before spreading my wings, catching the air just enough to redirect my fall toward the hole in the wall.

Inside to where two men held her.

One wasn’t a man at all. His arms were brambles, coiling and tearing through her flesh. The other looked human.

I opened my jaws and unleashed my fire. Silver flame filled the room.

Vines crackled, blackened, turned brittle. I tore them apart, grabbed Lilae, and launched back through the hole, wings beating hard as I climbed.

A sharp crack split the air - like the crack thunder without the following rumble.

Something punched through my wing. Small - but enough to sting.

Seven more cracks followed.

This time it hit my back. Again. And again. Like arrows from a bow with an impossibly heavy draw.

Blood burst from my chest as holes opened through me. I faltered.

I veered, crashing through a multileveled bridge of glass between two buildings - shattering through it in a spray of glittering shards. I twisted midair, rolling onto my back just before I hit the road, shielding Lilae with my body.

We slammed down.

I slid across the stone, momentum dragging us forward as the world blurred.

A massive brown vehicle barreled toward us - ten feet tall, nearly as wide, thirty feet long - like some mechanical beast charging headlong.

I braced.

There was a scream of metal, a crash, glass exploding outward-

Then silence. A hiss.

Nim stood there - embedded in the front of the vehicle. Feet planted. Legs bent. Shoulder driven forward.

The metal crumpled around him like it had tried to swallow him and failed. He shoved it back, pulling free as it peeled away from his body.

The others were already moving.

Mirri reached us first, pulling Lilae from my arms. Ashlara grabbed me, hauling me upright.

Mirri dropped to her knees near the building, green light spilling from her hands into Lilae.

“Come on,” she whispered, voice tight. “Lilae… wake up. Wake up.”

* * *

“You’re all damned, delusional fools!” Officer Jenkins snapped halfway through my explanation.

I hadn’t told him everything. Just enough to line up with what I assumed Lilae had already said - that I was from Earth, that I’d been pulled into a magical world of goblins and orcs and dragons, that we’d rescued her from trolls, that we lived in a castle… and that we’d come here through a tree.

A crash cut through the room. The building shuddered.

“Lilae,” I breathed.

I didn’t wait. I surged for the door. One of the officers tried to block me, but I slipped past him and slammed my shoulder into the door.

It exploded.

Wood splintered, the steel frame warped, glass shattered outward as I tore through it and into the corridor. Jenkins shouted behind me, boots pounding as the others gave chase.

I unfurled my cloak and wrapped it around my shoulders as I ran.

Left at the end of the hall - through double doors into the emergency room - then a hard right.

Gunshots cracked ahead of me, sharp and violent in the chaos. I reached for Unity-

Nothing.

I tried again. A faint tug answered - like it was just out of reach.

Ahead, two cops were kicking at a door - one reinforced with a writhing mass of vines and thorns jammed through the frame. Four more stood behind them, guns raised, waiting.

The rest of the hospital staff had already vanished.

They turned as Jenkins’ voice echoed down the hall.

The door opened and a man in a suit stepped out. “Get your men to the northeast side! The girl is escaping! Arrest anyone even remotely near her. Go!”

The officers hesitated - caught between his authority and me, the man charging towards them.

I locked eyes with the suited man and my blood went cold.

Average height. Lean build. Too clean, too precise - like every detail of him had been set with a purpose. Even the dust clinging to his suit looked intentional.

His eyes widened. “Arrest that man!” he barked, pointing straight at me.

A heavy beat thudded through the floor. “Whoa, Black Betty, bam a lam-” My mana surged outward. Chains erupted from the cinderblock walls, snapping around the six officers near him, dragging them back and pinning them hard against the walls.

Behind me, shoes screeched on linoleum as Jenkins and the others skidded to a halt.

Another suited man burst from the room and charged. His face peeled back - his body unraveling into a writhing mass of jagged brambles.

“Black Betty had a child-”

The temperature plummeted. Ice speared from the walls, lancing toward him, but he twisted through it, fluid, unnatural.

He hit me like a living snare. Vines coiled around my arms, my legs, tightening, constricting.

“The damn thing gone wild-”

The brambles hissed. Smoked. He shrieked - like wood splitting under a saw - and recoiled, reforming into something vaguely human.

The first man made a small gesture and the Gallowborn backed off instantly.

The music faded.

Behind me came clicks. Safeties off.

“Don’t move!” Jenkins shouted. I wasn’t even sure who he meant anymore.

My foot kept tapping to a rhythm only I could hear.

“I have to admit,” the suited man said smoothly, “I’m surprised to see you here. I took you for a man on a mission… one who would eventually break under the strain.”

His smile was predatory - satisfied. “And yet here you are. A lost little lamb in a strange new world.”

“Brother Fredrik,” I said, voice low and steady. “Though I doubt that’s your real name.”

His smile didn’t falter.

“I didn’t expect a little man like you to be running a transdimensional crime ring,” I continued. “Guess we were both wrong.”

“Oh?” he asked, amused, reaching casually into his pocket. “I’m fairly certain my assessment was perfect.”

“I said don’t move!” Jenkins barked again.

“I was ready to break,” I said, never taking my eyes off Fredrik. “I might still break.”

A dark grin pulled at my lips. “But you missed one very important detail.” I leaned forward, just a fraction. “I’m from Earth.”

The sprinklers exploded to life overhead. Water poured down.

“WHOA, BLACK BETTY-”

For a heartbeat, the music surged back in full. The temperature crashed. Water froze mid-fall - locking Fredrik and the Gallowborn in thick sheets of ice. Even the sprinklers seized, encased and silent.

I stepped forward.

“Get on your knees! Hands on your head!” Jenkins shouted. “Last chance!”

I glanced back at him. “Still don’t believe me?” Then I turned - and drove my fist into the frozen Gallowborn.

It shattered, ice and splintered wood burst outward in a violent spray.

“You’re out of chances!” Jenkins yelled.

“I’m going to deal with this asshole,” I said calmly, “then I’m going to get my daughter.” I met his eyes. “You can’t stop me. And I don’t want to hurt you.”

Behind me the ice exploded.

The **** knocked me off my feet. Heavy chunks slammed into my back. Shards punched into the walls. The officers in front of me went down hard.

I rolled, already turning.

Fredrik’s body unraveled into vines, surging upward into the drop ceiling and vanishing.

I pushed myself up.

Jenkins was rolling on the ground groaning. My body had shielded his. The others weren’t so lucky. And the ones pinned to the walls were bloody messes.

I staggered up and toward them. A song rose in my throat as my mana answered.

I started triage.