Chapter 162: Broken Span

Their next choice crumbled even as they watched it.

The old bridge gave out along its full length. Large chunks of stone fell into the ravine and disappeared into the haze of smoke below, and they never seemed to hit the bottom. Vask stood at the far end of the bridge, holding a piece of the fragment in his hand. Between him and the cargo cart, three people clung to a warped railing on the span.

"Follow me or help them. You can’t do both," Vask yelled to Austin Veyron.

Austin Veyron started walking toward the bridge. The mark on his wrist pulled toward the fragment. DEVOUR wanted Vask. It wanted the small piece of the fragment that was creating all this hunger, and it wanted enough power to tear it right out of the lieutenant’s hand.

One of the people on the railing began to slide. His foot slipped off the edge of the span, and for a terrible moment he hung over the abyss before grabbing back on to the railing.

"Rin, get a rope to the left side of the bridge. Orena, secure it to something on this side," Veyra instructed.

Rin ran along the top of the warehouse and shot an arrow with a rope attached into the far end of the bridge. Orena stabbed her spear into the bridge on their end, wrapped the rope around it, and pulled it taut.

"Tessa, what path can we take?" Veyra asked.

"We can go under the bridge on the old maintenance shelf. It should be able to support at least two of us."

"At least?" Rin asked from her position on the upper railing.

"It’s a bridge in a war zone."

Veyra jumped over the edge before anyone could question her decision. There was no hesitation in it. She had made this kind of decision before, and she wasn’t going to wait for anyone’s approval. She landed on the old shelf beneath the bridge and brushed the ash off her boots. Rin followed along the rope she had attached to the top of the railing. The bridge shook as she moved across it, and small pebbles rained down onto the shelf below.

Austin Veyron watched Vask lift the fragment. Red veins spread through the stone beneath his feet.

THE FRAGMENT WILL GO TO THE STRONGEST HAND.

Austin Veyron felt the statement burrow into his mind like a hook. He could sense the fear Vask had wrapped around the fragment. Vask didn’t really believe in Kharvek. He just didn’t want to be the weakest person in the room, and the fragment had found that weakness and used it to its own advantage.

Nyra stood next to Austin Veyron, holding the heart shard. "This isn’t going to hold for long," she said. "The fragment is trying to take control of Vask and use the bridge to do it."

"If it collapses the bridge, it will kill those people on the other side," Sable said.

"You keep telling me to make choices, Devourer," Vask said, pulling the red shard closer to his body. "So choose. Save these people, or stop the one who will hurt more."

Austin Veyron clenched his fists. He hated the choice, but it was real. There would always be more danger out there. More cities to save, more samples to collect, more reasons to leave the people in front of him behind.

The woman closest to him on the railing looked at Austin Veyron. She was scared and trembling, her fingers white around the metal, but she spoke with conviction. "Don’t use us as your excuse."

Her words broke through his hunger like a blade cutting rope.

He looked down at Veyra beneath the bridge. She was already tying a rope around one of the people from the railing. Rin was moving toward the cargo cart, ready to pin any falling rocks with her arrows. Orena was holding the rope taut against her spear, and Tessa was calling out directions from the warehouse ledge.

They were all working to save the people on the other side of the bridge, and Austin Veyron hadn’t told any of them to.

"Target," he said. "The fragment’s claim that it goes to the strongest hand. Not Vask. Not the bridge. Not the fragment’s energy."

"Witnessed," Sable replied.

"Witnessed," Nyra added.

Austin Veyron stepped onto the near end of the bridge. It shook under his weight, and red cracks began to spread toward his feet. DEVOUR manifested before he even touched the fragment, and he could taste the claim, like a closed fist and a room full of people waiting to be ruled.

THE FRAGMENT WILL GO TO THE STRONGEST HAND.

Austin Veyron devoured the word strongest.

The fragment flickered in Vask’s hand like a candle in a sudden draft. He stared down at it, confused. "What did you do?"

"I took away the part that made it a crown," Austin Veyron answered.

The bridge caved in another foot, and Vask stumbled backward as red ash began to fall from the fragment. He tried to regain control of the red light, but the ash just drifted down to his feet.

Veyra tied the first person to Rin’s rope, and they pulled him to safety on the railing above the span. The second person crawled toward Veyra on the shelf below the bridge, her hands bloody from the stone. The third was trapped under the cargo cart.

"I can’t lift this!" Veyra yelled to Austin Veyron, straining against the frame of the cart. He could see her arms shaking.

He looked at the beam holding the cart up. It was about to break, and if it did, the person and the cart would both fall to their deaths.

His white chain of roots flew from his hand and wrapped around the cargo cart. He pushed his feet against the bridge and pulled with all his might. DEVOUR wanted to devour the strength of the beam, but he didn’t have to. He only needed a few seconds.

"Rin!"

She knew what to do. She shot two arrows through the cart’s wheels, pinning them to the railing above. Orena pulled on the rope, and Veyra got under the cart, lifted it with her shoulders, and dragged the person out from under it.

Austin Veyron released the chain, and the cargo cart fell into the ravine.

Veyra shoved the person toward the rope just as the shelf broke beneath her feet. The rope pulled taut, and she dangled over the edge of the ravine for one long second before they pulled her to safety.

Orena and Rin both hauled on the rope, slipping on the ash, but they managed to get Veyra to their side of the bridge. She hit the ground hard, but she was alive.

All three people were safe on their side of the bridge. One of them sat down and began to cry, while another stared at her bloody hands in shock.

Vask looked at the people Austin Veyron’s team had saved, and then down at the dead ash in his hand. His remaining ash guards stood behind him on the far side of the bridge. They had watched as people were saved without anyone ordering it, and one of them lowered his sword.

"Kharvek told us this would protect us," the guard said.

"It will protect whoever is strong enough to control it," Vask said angrily.

"No. It protected you," the guard said.

Vask’s guards began to back away from him, one after another, until he was standing alone on the far side of the bridge.

Vask walked toward them, pulling out his blade of ash. "You owe me your rations!"

The first guard lifted his weapon at Vask. "We have been carrying grain for you while our families starved outside the warehouse."

Vask attacked the guard, his rage taking over completely. The guard blocked the strike, and the bridge shook as Vask’s blade hit the railing. The end of the bridge broke away beneath him.

Austin Veyron’s chain wrapped around Vask’s arm on instinct.

Vask dangled over the edge of the ravine, ash falling from his hand like blood. The wind tugged at him, and the chain creaked under his weight.

"Save me. You always save people," Vask panted.

Austin Veyron stared at him. The hunger inside him whispered that letting go would be easier. Vask had hurt people. He had used food as a weapon, and he had tried to turn the people on the bridge into a choice Austin Veyron would regret for the rest of his life.

But he didn’t use his chain to execute people.

"Do you want to stop?" Austin Veyron asked.

"I want to live," Vask said with a weak chuckle.

"That is not the same thing," Austin Veyron said quietly. He knew Vask heard him.

The end of the bridge gave way and dragged Austin Veyron toward the edge. He couldn’t hold on to Vask, the bridge, and the people retreating behind him all at once. Vask tried to grab the red ash under his hand, but it wouldn’t listen to him anymore. He clawed at Austin Veyron’s chain, trying to pull himself up.

"Let me go. You want to," Vask snarled.

Austin Veyron looked at the guards who were now helping the people reach safety on their side of the bridge. He looked at Veyra, bruised but still standing, and at the bridge still collapsing around them.

"No," Austin Veyron replied.

His chain slipped through Vask’s hand as the bridge gave way, and Vask fell with the far side of the span into the ravine. No red light followed him down.

The rest of the bridge collapsed in a cloud of ash and rock. The dust rolled up from the ravine and covered the warehouse in a thick gray layer. For a few seconds, no one spoke. Austin Veyron stood at the edge of the broken bridge with the empty chain dangling from his hand. He had told the truth. He hadn’t wanted to let go of Vask. He just wasn’t sure yet whether that made him feel better or worse.

A child laughed somewhere behind them, and the sound broke the silence. Tessa picked up her map case and brushed the dust off with her hand, her fingers still trembling slightly from the collapse. A line had appeared on one of the maps, glowing up from the ravine and leading to a black fortress farther east.

"The Cinder Citadel. That’s where Kharvek actually leads from. All the routes lead there," Tessa said, tracing the fortress icon with her finger.

Nyra looked at the shard in her hand. "The fragment’s energy is gone, but the signal is stronger than it’s ever been. Kharvek must be using something bigger."

Austin Veyron’s relay token glowed in his hand with a message from Marcus.

COALWATER STABLE. EMBERLINE SECURED. PREPARE FOR NEXT TARGET.

Austin Veyron watched as the survivors of Ashbridge began carrying the remaining food into the shelter. They didn’t need him to tell them who was in charge. People were already tending to the damage from the bridge and assigning jobs to one another. The woman who had spoken to him from the railing was handing out bowls of water, and no one was stopping her.

The Cinder Refuge Chain hadn’t ended. It had become a map.

Austin Veyron looked east toward the fortress icon, the glow of the map still reflected in his eyes. It was starting to get dark, and the smoke from the collapsed bridge was drifting east as well.

"Cinder Citadel," he said. "That’s where Kharvek thinks hunger can control people."

"Then we’ll prove him wrong," Veyra said, rubbing the bruise on her shoulder.