The cave didn’t care that we’d figured it out.
Didn’t care about truth, betrayal, or names written in prophecy ink that never washes off. It just wanted blood—and it was getting impatient.
That’s when MODMOS spoke up. Calm as rain on steel. “Feather fall,” he said. Like he was offering a light.
Lori didn’t argue. She never does when the math’s bad. She raised her voice instead—wrapped it in warmth, faith, and that quiet authority only grandmothers and gods have. Motivation, she called it. I call it permission to live.
“Run,” she said.
So we did.
The kind of running you don’t train for. The kind where you’re already dead in three different futures and you pick the one where your legs still move.
The edge came fast. Stone giving way to nothing. Death with no bottom. MODMOS dropped the fog like a curtain call. Thick. White. Mercy in vapor form.
I didn’t hesitate.
I bolted through it, out of the cave, and off the world.
No prayer. No scream. Just trust.
Trust that the metal man who’d followed us from the shadows would keep his word. Trust that Lori would never let the ground take one of hers without a fight. Trust that if I was going to fall, it wouldn’t be alone.
The air caught me like a sigh. Feather fall. Slow. Gentle. Almost kind.
I saw the mop before I felt the landing—Lori’s mop, floating down after me like a judgmental angel, just to make sure I didn’t screw it up at the last second.
We lived.
That still feels strange to say.
We made camp later. The kind you don’t light fires for. Just breathing, counting heads, checking hands for blood that isn’t yours. Long rest. Level up. Like the universe giving us a coupon for surviving its bad attitude.
Around the fire, the truth finally spilled out. The double cross. The lies. The name behind the knife. Omu wasn’t just a city—it was a destination with teeth. A place the world forgot on purpose.
I told them what I want.
End the prophecy. Not by hiding from it. Not by starving it. By breaking its spine.
Get stronger. Find Omu. End the Overlord.
Cask and Dreams. Whispers and Silence. Our guides didn’t smile when they talked about it. They never do when something matters. Emballa first—four days. An old woman there. Knows things. Dangerous things. Three days the other way gets us to Mephyr and his monastery. Choices like that don’t look like forks. They look like regrets waiting to happen.
Mergrim left us then. Went home to rebuild. Some people survive the end of the world by refusing to chase it. I don’t blame him.
We headed for Emballa.
Lori sent word to Guruk—the orc kid. Told him about the betrayal. Told him not to trust Corvus. The reply came back thin and scared. Guruk’s in hiding. Smart kid. Hiding’s underrated.
The climb started the next day. Three miles of switchbacks carved into a cliff that hated us personally. We cleared boulders. Bled a little. Earned the view at the top.
And hell of a view it was.
Stone stairs carved by hands that didn’t worry about erosion. Symbols worn thin by time and secrets. Then the gate. Old. Broken. Decorated with bleached skulls like a warning nobody bothered to update.
No traps. No magic. Just silence.
One hut stood there—animal skins, well-kept. Lived in.
The door opened before we knocked.
She was impossibly old. Bent. Cataracts clouding eyes that still somehow saw everything. Arthritis twisted her frame like a bad memory that wouldn’t let go.
“Nani Pupu,” she said. Like it was a favor.
Day sixteen. Emballa.
She wanted to know what was in it for her. Lori offered muffins. Rejected. Balgus tried diplomacy and accidentally wandered into innuendo territory. Happens to the best of us.
Nani Pupu didn’t laugh.
She had a job instead. Terra Folk. Pterafolk. Cliff-dwelling nightmares giving her grief. An hour away. Vertical. Messy.
Do that, she said, and she’d tell us how to find Omu.
We agreed.
MODMOF skittered ahead—MODMOS’s tiny spider. Mostly designed for friendship, which somehow made it braver than all of us.
Balgus layered thorns over my skin. Armor made of pain for anyone who touched me.
And then I ran.
Right into the fray. Surprised a Pterafolk mid-screech. Axe up. Rage humming. The prophecy watching from wherever it hides, probably smiling.
If I’m going to fall—
It won’t be quiet.
