“Are you alright?” Pippa’s voice pulled Mirae from her spiralling thoughts.

  Mirae turned to the girl and nodded, even as the trailing puppet moved forward to join the leading ones, forming a small wall of safety. “I’m alright.”

  Magic crackled across the puppet’s surface, light radiating from its form.

  “What are we going to do now?” Pippa asked, though her eyes lingered on the tower even as she clutched Kar’s journal closer to her chest.

  Mrs Strongmail moved to her daughter’s side, resting a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes turned to Mirae as if waiting for an order.

  “We should wait.” Harry glanced from Mirae to the battlefield. Stepping forward, he slipped a hand in his pocket, eyes assessing the chaos before them. When he spoke again, his tone carried forced reasonableness. “We should let the people down there wear it out. That thing would absolutely tear us apart, but if they can soften it up, we can go in and help once it’s looking weak.”

  Mirae considered the idea and found it wrong almost immediately. How could they stand idle while others fought and died? Yet another part of her acknowledged she was the only Gravity Forging-One here.

  Yes, Nyx was stronger, but by how much? Mirae didn’t know. After all, Nyx had never told them her realm. Even then, could a low-level Gravity Forging cultivator really make any difference against a target like that?

  “We can’t wait.” Wind blew gently through Pippa’s brown hair as the cries of dying men sounded in the distance. “The tower is the next part of the trial Kar left for me. I have to go there.”

  “You have to?” Mirae raised an eyebrow, combing a strand of white hair behind her ear.

  “Yes, it’s part of the inheritance. I can feel it.”

  “You mean the same way you could feel the room? The same way you felt that journal calling to you?” Mirae pressed.

  Pippa nodded. “The exact way. Besides, we’ve come too far to just leave it up to chance. What if someone else gets in there before us? What if they claim Kar’s inheritance before I do?”

  Mirae raised a brow. Pippa was sounding selfish, though Mirae couldn’t entirely disagree with her friend. They had indeed struggled to get here, through puzzle doors and various other challenges. A miracle, really, that they hadn’t actually fought anything except that one stone monkey.

  Nyx stepped away from the group, moving toward the battle. She glanced over her shoulder. “I can’t leave Emela down there. If she’s fighting, she could be in trouble. And knowing her brother, he’d probably sacrifice her just on a whim.”

  Mirae blinked. Nyx rarely said much, but the distress threading through her words now spoke volumes. It made sense, though. Her friend and master faced danger below, and both duty and emotion compelled her to intervene.

  Could Mirae simply stand by and watch someone she cared about die because fear kept her rooted in place? No, that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.

  Mirae shifted, her gaze sweeping across the group before settling on her two puppets monitoring the area. They’d provide more than enough help. She reached a decision, and the third puppet stepped forward. They would help, but she wouldn’t rush in blindly.

  “How close do you think we can get to a battle like that without someone noticing us?” she asked.

  Pippa brought a finger to her lip and frowned, though Harry spoke up first.

  “I’d say a good hundred feet or so. Any further, and someone in Gravity Forging-Four and above could pick us out.”

  Mirae shot him a glance. Since when had he become so knowledgeable about perception ranges in the Gravity Forging world?

  Harry shrugged. “I mean, I told you when I first met you guys in the dojo. My mom taught me most of it when she wasn’t working.” A note of disgust crept into his voice. “She’s quite knowledgeable. Just a shame she fell into such a life. Anyway, that’s what I think.”

  Tilting her head, Mirea’s gaze drifted to the dirt underfoot. That didn’t explain how his mother knew any of that. An escort from the papyrus quarter wouldn’t just stumble onto that information, would she?

  Nyx’s jaw tightened as the conversation continued. Mirae caught the tension rippling through her stance.

  “Okay, so we’ll move forward carefully, staying at least a hundred feet away.” Not that Mirae knew exactly what a hundred feet looked like. Playing it by ear would have to suffice.

  Mrs Strongmail stepped closer to her daughter and rested a hand on Pippa’s shoulder, pulling her close. Pippa grumbled and tried to shrug her mother off, though her resistance crumbled quickly.

  “Thank you,” Pippa said to Mirae. “As long as we make it to the tower, I can assure you this will be more than worth it.”

  Her eyes held an intense gleam as she spoke, eager to prove to Mirae that this investment extended beyond Pippa—toward some greater good. The influence of Kar had clearly taken root. Pippa was becoming quite the fangirl.

  They descended from the tunnel exit, staying low as they moved through the bushes and slapped away tree branches. Mirae led them through clusters of trees, her puppet scouting ahead the entire time. Every nerve stood alert, ready to send her vines of purple leaves flying at anything that emerged from hiding.

  Moments later, they crouched behind a large tree. Her puppets positioned themselves behind several others nearby, all facing toward the battlefield. The rest of the group pressed closer, using various bushes for cover.

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  From this distance—just over a hundred feet, Mirae hoped—they watched as twenty, maybe thirty cultivators fought against the tower guardian. The attackers coordinated their assaults, though their strikes bounced harmlessly off the creature’s stone frame. A massive fist countered a moment later, sending cultivators flying.

  One man charged forward with the group, but as soon as combat began, he slipped several steps back.

  The Goliath moved with terrible purpose. Each action carried deliberation, almost calculation, as if behind those glowing white eyes lay not stone and wood, but. Could something like that even think?

  A sword cracked into stone. Mirae’s head snapped to the sound, and she found who they’d been searching for. Emela. The creature pushed against Emela’s blade, sending her flying. She skidded across the dirt and came to a stop.

  Two women rushed past her, attacking the beast with furious slashes that accomplished nothing. The beast sidestepped one of their slashes, and its knee, nearly equal to their size, lashed toward them a second later. The women dove clear, rolling through dirt and kicking up mud before scrambling to their feet.

  How could they enter this battlefield? Was Harry right? Did they have to wait? Mirae couldn’t risk charging in to help, only to be attacked by Drion and his followers the moment she interfered. The question paralysed her. What was she supposed to do in a situation like this?

  Mirae looked toward Pippa. The girl stared back with confusion, then mouthed, “What are we going to do?”

  What was she going to do? Mirae brought a finger to her lip and bit her nail, anxiety bubbling within her chest. This wasn’t a simple game of hide and seek. Any mistake here could have fatal consequences.

  Resting her hand against the tree bark, she watched.

  The mercenaries clambered to their feet even as the Goliath flung them across the battlefield. Veterans. All of them—they understood spacing and coordination. They began circling the creature in pairs, one drawing its attention while another struck from behind.

  The strategy worked, though barely, teams diving in and diving out, avoiding the creature’s devastating blows.

  Emela and the two other women fighting alongside her employed the same tactics, though their coordinated attacks carried an added edge. Mirae frowned. Something about Emela’s strikes seemed lacklustre, as if a vital piece was missing. Probably because she assumed Nyx was dead. Mirae, sure as the Great Lake, would have after watching her fly off a cliff.

  A moment later, the Goliath threw back one of the two women at Emela’s side—the brown-haired girl. She hit the ground hard; a grunt tore from her lips as she rolled and clutched her side. When she stopped, her sword had clattered across the ground several feet away. She reached for it.

  The Guardian sensed weakness and closed in on her like a predator.

  A scream rang out from the side. A flash of white caught Mirae’s attention—Emela wove between two mercenaries, circling to the front of the Guardian, positioning herself just behind her fallen companion. Frost crystallised in the air around her right hand as she thrust it forward. Ice spikes materialised a moment later, shooting forward and slamming into the Guardian’s torso. Each spike carried enough force to punch clean through a low-level cultivator.

  But the creature barely registered the impact. Ice shattered off its stone body, scattering like broken glass.

  Mirae’s chest tightened. Emela was the strongest fighter in their group after Hector—at least in Mirae’s opinion—and even she struggled against this thing. What hope would Mirae have against something so impervious? Watching Emela’s desperate assault only frayed Mirae’s already taut nerves.

  Mirae’s attention shifted to the figure on the hill and the cluster of people surrounding him. Drion. Perched on a slightly raised cliff that offered a clear view of the battlefield, he watched with apparent disinterest, as if the fight below merely wasted his time. As if his own sister wasn’t down there fighting for her life. Were nobles naturally this cold, or did this particular man have a screw loose?

  A gasp came from beside her. Mirae looked over to find Nyx’s back pressed against the tree, huddled tight with her face buried against her knees.

  “What is it?” Mirae asked.

  “I can’t let him see me,” Nyx said, peeking over her shoulder as if that would somehow prevent recognition. The fear threading through her voice was genuine. After all, the man had kicked her off a cliff, and if not for Mirae and her vines, Nyx would have plummeted into the abyss. Dead, with perhaps no one knowing what happened to her.

  Mirae’s gaze snapped back to Drion, standing with arms crossed. Then, as she studied him more closely, the figure beside him sent a wave of unease through her. Long sleeves covered the man’s hands, and his casual stance struck a dissonant chord. Brom. What was he doing here?

  Sure, they’d left him in the forest, and his two guards could have led him this way, but it had only been an hour or two at most. How had he found his brother so quickly? His presence unsettled her. He’d seemed so kind—no, not kind exactly. Approachable.

  He’d even offered to take them along to complete the rest of the quest. Mirae had doubted his intentions at the time, and now, watching him observe Emela’s desperate fight without offering aid, maybe her assumption had been correct. Maybe Brom was exactly the type of noble she’d thought he was. Similar to Drion.

  “That’s Noelle next to him,” Nyx spoke up, her voice shaking. “Next to Drion.”

  Mirae’s gaze moved to the person Nyx spoke of. “That’s Noelle, Emela’s sister. They... Let’s just say they don’t like each other.”

  Nyx’s blue eyes narrowed on Noelle as Mirae studied the woman further. Her features echoed Emela’s in certain ways, though a haughtiness sharpened them, as if everyone before her existed as nothing but a plaything. The woman moved a hand to her side where a glowing sword bristled with a cold blue aura. Definitely not a normal weapon.

  “They hate each other,” Nyx continued, her words tumbling out. “She’s always despised Emela, though the reason isn’t exactly clear. Not that it matters in this situation. She’s also the reason Drion kicked me off the cliff.”

  “She was?” Pippa whispered from the side. “What did she do?”

  “Not what she did, but what she said. She’s the one who overheard and promptly reported it to Drion. She even exaggerated a few points, and the next thing I knew, the air was whistling past me.”

  Mrs Strongmail leaned closer, her face etched with grim disgust. “So they’re all just as bad as each other. Watching people fight and die without even offering a hand.”

  Pippa’s fingers dug into Kar’s journal, her knuckles whitening. “How can such sick people exist? Can’t they see the suffering they’re causing?”

  “Nyx, you said Drion’s strong, right?”

  “Gravity Forging Eight.”

  Pippa shook her head in disbelief. “Yet he stands there and watches? Why?”

  Nyx shrugged, burying her face back in her knees, before peeking over them towards the battlefield.

  Mirae had never seen Nyx so scared—though that word didn’t quite capture what she witnessed. For as long as Mirae had known her, Nyx had been quiet, dependable, and composed. Fear seemed incapable of conquering someone like her. Yet now, as Nyx threw desperate glances toward Drion, the woman Mirae knew had vanished entirely.

  Thunder cracked across the clearing—not from the sky, but from the tower Guardian itself. The massive creature batted a man aside and released another artificial roar, its body crackling with energy. Runes pulsed along its arms as it stepped forward. Its fists whipped out and struck the ground.

  The earth jumped. Tremors rippled outward from the impact point. Several small bolts of electricity snaked through the ground and arced upward, slamming into a man’s shoulder. He dropped, convulsing as the current tore through him. A sharp scent of ozone lingered in the air.

  “By the Great Lake,” Harry said from the side.