POV: Caelen
The mountain gave no warning.
One second the pass was solid. The next, the slope above us cracked — a deep, grinding sound that vibrated through the ground before the rocks started moving.
"MOVE!" I grabbed my horse's bridle and hauled it sideways. The guards scattered. Kael's horse bolted left.
Kael didn't.
He was on foot, checking a loose strap on the extraction case, when the first wave hit. Rocks the size of fists came first, then larger — jagged, fast, bouncing off each other and picking up speed. He dove for the overhang on the trail's inner edge.
He almost made it.
The second wave caught him. Not the full slide — the trailing edge, where a shelf of loose stone broke free and came down on his lower half. He went flat. Dust exploded around him. The sound was enormous, and then it was over.
Silence was ringing and empty.
"Kael!" I shouted, but no answer, so I ran.
He was face down, one arm free, the other trapped under his chest. His right leg was pinned from the knee down under a slab of fractured stone and packed debris. He was conscious — I could see his fingers clawing at the ground.
"I'm here," I said. "Don't move the leg. Don't try to pull."
"Wasn't planning on it." His voice was strained. Pain held tight behind his teeth.
I assessed the debris. The slab was heavy but not massive — I could move it, but the loose rock packed around it would shift when I did. If it shifted wrong, it would crush what was currently only pinned.
"Guards — perimeter. Watch the slope. If you hear cracking, you shout."
They moved into position. Scared, but functional.
I dropped to my knees and started digging.
No tools. The pack was buried under the first wave. My hands were all I had.
I dug around the edges of the slab first. Loose stone, gravel, packed dirt. The rock tore into my palms within the first minute. I kept going. Blood made the stones slick. I adjusted my grip and kept going.
"Caelen." Kael's voice, tight. "My foot has sensation. That's good. Nerve isn't severed."
"Stop diagnosing yourself and let me work." I pulled a wedge of stone free and tossed it aside. My fingers were slippery with blood and grit.
"I'm a healer. I can't stop diagnosing," he said, and despite everything — the rock on his leg, the dust in his lungs — there was something almost wry in it. "Then diagnose quietly," I told him, and he did.
I cleared the left side of the slab. The debris underneath was denser — compacted by the weight above it. I had to pry each stone out individually, fingers hooking into gaps barely wide enough to fit.
The mountain groaned above us. Both guards looked up.
"Just settling," I said. I didn't know if that was true. "Keep watching."
My hands were raw. The skin across both palms had split, and the cuts on my fingers bled freely. A hot, immediate burn that I pushed past because the alternative was stopping.
Stopping meant Kael stayed under the rock.
I cleared the right side. The slab shifted. Kael hissed through his teeth.
"Almost," I said. "I need to lift straight up. If it slides, tell me which direction."
"Understood." His voice was calmer now. Focused. Ready to move the second he had clearance.
I got my fingers under the edge.
The weight was enormous. My torn hands screamed louder. Every muscle from my lower back to my wrists burned with the kind of effort that doesn't allow thought — only continuation. I held it — one inch, two inches, enough for the packed debris underneath to loosen.
"Pulling now," Kael said. He dragged himself forward on his forearms. His pinned leg came free in a shower of gravel and dust.
I dropped the slab. It cracked against the ground like a gunshot.
Kael was out. Lying on his side, breathing hard, his right leg coated in dust and blood. He sat up slowly and ran his own hands down the shin.
"No fracture," he said. "Deep bruising. Possible hairline on the fibula, but I can walk." He looked at me. "Your hands."
"They're fine," I said, which was a lie and we both knew it. He gave me the same look he'd given the horse in the bog — patient, immovable, not interested in argument. "They're not fine. Sit down."
I sat. The adrenaline was draining fast — exhaustion flooding in behind it, a shaking in my arms I couldn't control. My hands looked worse than they felt.
Torn skin, embedded grit, blood drying in dark lines across both palms. The relief of having him free was physical — a loosening in my chest so sudden it almost hurt.
Kael pulled his kit from inside his coat. The extraction case was still strapped to his chest — he'd shielded it with his body when the rocks hit. That registered. He'd protected the case before he'd protected his own head.
He took my right hand and started cleaning.
"In the days on this road," I said, "you have become closer to me than most people across my whole life."
His hands didn't stop. But his eyes came up to mine.
"I'm not saying it for effect," I said. "I'm saying it because it's true and I've assessed it. The way I'd report a tactical finding. You are important to me. That is the finding."
He held my gaze. Then he nodded — once, precise, the way he acknowledged confirmed data.
"Received," he said quietly and steady. "Same finding. Same assessment."
He wrapped my left hand, tied it off and sat back.
The pass was quiet. Dust still hung in the air. The guards held their positions. The horses had come back on their own and stood at the trail's edge, nervous but present.
"There's something I haven't told you," Kael said. "About Vedran."
My chest tightened. The shift in his voice — from steady to careful — told me what was coming before the words did.
"The antidote will clear the compound," he said. "That's what we're riding for, and it will work. The poison will leave his system."
I watched his face. Saw the hesitation in it — the careful gathering of a man about to deliver a diagnosis he wished he didn't have. "But," I said.
He looked at the pass around us. At the dust still hanging in the air. At my wrapped hands.
"But the damage to his wolf from weeks of degradation —" He paused. Chose his words with the precision of a man who understood that language shapes what people are willing to hear. "It's irreversible. The compound will be gone. The damage it caused stays. Permanently."
I stared at him. The word landed like the rockfall — sudden, heavy, final.
"His wolf will survive," Kael said. "But it will not recover to what it was. The degradation has gone too long. Some of what was lost is lost."
"Does he know?" The anger wasn't at Kael — it was at the compound, at the weeks it had been eating through Vedran while we rode, at the distance between us and the palace that no amount of speed could close fast enough.
"He suspects," Kael said quietly. "He hasn't asked me directly because he already knows how I'd answer."
The mountain was still. The wind moved through the pass without sound.
I sat with my wrapped hands in my lap and felt the weight of what he'd said settle into a place I couldn't reach with action or speed or force — the place where the things you cannot fix go to live.