They rode out within the hour, forty strong, the garrison's fastest company assembled with the particular brisk efficiency of soldiers who had done this too many times to need more than a handful of shouted orders. Vane led from the front, as he always did, Eric's presence settled steady behind his ribs like a second spine, and neither of them spoke much in the first hour of hard riding — there was little to say that the map hadn't already said for them, and less time to say it in.

*Two rifts in a month,* Eric said, finally, once the pace had eased into the long, ground-eating canter that would carry them to the border by nightfall. *I keep turning that number over. It doesn't sit right.*

"Nothing about the Abyss sits right. That's the point of it."

*I don't mean the danger. I mean the pattern. Rifts don't simply double their frequency without a cause — not in any world I've studied, magical or otherwise. Something is either weakening the barrier faster than natural decay would explain, or something is actively pulling it apart.*

Vane's jaw tightened, eyes fixed on the darkening tree line ahead. "You think it's connected to us."

*I think it's too convenient a coincidence to ignore. A second rift, larger than the first, opening barely a month after a doctor from another world woke up half-crystallized in a dying man's chest. I'd rather consider the possibility openly than have it ambush us later because I was too cautious to say it aloud.*

"Noted," Vane said, and said nothing further, though Eric could feel, faint but unmistakable through the bond, the particular tightening of worry that Vane never let show on his face where his soldiers might see it.

---

They reached the rift a little past dusk, and Vane knew, the instant the company crested the final ridge and the wound in the world came into view, that this one was different from anything he'd faced in eight years on the Frontier.

The first rift had been a tear — jagged, violent, bleeding raw magic into the air in visible, shuddering pulses. This one was worse in a way he couldn't immediately name: wider, yes, and darker at its center, but also *quiet*, in the particular unnatural way that made every soldier in the company go still and watchful without needing to be told why. The air around it didn't merely distort. It seemed, faintly, to listen.

*That's not normal rift behavior,* Eric said, quiet and clinical despite the alarm threading beneath it. *Vane — I'm reading something in the resonance pattern I don't have a framework for. It's not simply reacting to ambient magic. It's reacting to me. Specifically.*

Vane's hand rose, unconsciously, to press against his own chest. "Reacting how?"

*I don't know yet. But the moment we crested that ridge, something in my own crystal structure shifted — like a held breath finally being noticed by whatever's watching. I'd like that noted for the record before anything happens, in case it matters later.*

"Consider it noted," Vane said, low, and raised a hand to signal the company into a defensive perimeter rather than the direct approach he'd originally planned. "Marek. Scouts forward, wide interval. I don't like the quiet."

Marek, at his side since the ridge, nodded once and peeled off to relay the order, and the company settled into the particular tense stillness of soldiers who trusted their commander's instincts more than their own eyes, weapons loosened in their sheaths, eyes fixed on the unnatural, listening quiet of the rift ahead.

---

The ambush came from beneath them.

Not the rift itself — the ground around it, where three Rift-Spawn had lain buried and dormant in the disturbed earth long enough to escape even the scouts' careful sweep, erupting upward in a spray of soil and claws the instant the company's forward line came within striking range. A soldier screamed. Another went down beneath a black-taloned limb before Vane's blade had even cleared its sheath, and the disciplined perimeter dissolved, in the space of three heartbeats, into chaos.

*Vane—*

"I see them," Vane snarled, already moving, crystal blade blooming from his gauntlet in a red flare as he cut into the nearest Spawn's flank, driving it back from the fallen soldier with brutal, economical strikes.

The second Spawn came at him from the side, faster than the first, and Vane felt it a half-second before the alarm reached his conscious mind — Eric's alarm, sharp and immediate, flooding the bond with a warning his own eyes hadn't yet caught up to.

*Left! Now!*

He pivoted, barely, the Spawn's claws raking a line of fire across his forearm instead of his throat, and in the same instant felt something in his own chest lurch sideways, cold and strange, as Eric poured raw crystalline strength into the wound before it could even properly bleed — sealing, numbing, buying him the half-second he needed to bring his blade around and finish the creature with a single, vicious stroke.

*That's one,* Eric said, breathless in a way that had nothing to do with lungs he didn't possess. *Two more. The third's circling behind Corven — he's not going to see it in time.*

Vane didn't wait to think. He was already moving, already screaming Corven's name across the churned ground, and the third Spawn — larger than the others, its hide already thickened with the particular density that marked an older, more dangerous specimen — turned from its intended prey toward the sound, exactly as he'd hoped and dreaded in the same breath.

It came at him with a speed that shouldn't have belonged to something that size, and Vane felt, for one long, suspended moment, the particular clarity of a man who understood, plainly, that he was not going to get his blade up in time.

*I've got it. Don't move.*

"Eric—"

*Don't move, Vane. Trust me.*

He froze — every instinct screaming against it, eight years of battlefield reflex fighting the stillness with everything it had — and felt the crystal along his forearm surge, sudden and violent, well past anything Eric had ever drawn before, a shield blooming outward in a burst of red light that met the Spawn's full-weight charge and held, barely, the impact driving Vane back three full steps and down onto one knee.

The creature reeled, stunned, and Vane's blade found its throat before it could recover, and then it was over — the third Spawn collapsing into the churned, bloody earth alongside its companions, and the company's scattered soldiers regrouping around him in the sudden, ringing silence that follows violence.

Vane straightened, breathing hard, and became aware, in the same instant, that something was wrong.

*Eric?*

Silence answered him. Not the comfortable, companionable quiet of Eric simply resting after exertion — an absence, sharp and frightening, where a voice had lived every waking moment for the past two weeks.

"Eric!"

*—here. I'm here.* The voice returned, faint and strained, threaded through with something that sounded, unmistakably, like pain. *That shield took more than I budgeted for. More than I've ever pushed through at once. Give me a moment.*

Vane's hand flew to his own chest, pressing hard against the place where he could usually feel Eric's steady presence like a second heartbeat, and found, instead, something faint and flickering, a candle guttering in a wind it shouldn't have been exposed to.

"What's happening. Tell me what's happening right now."

*I pushed past a threshold I didn't know existed until I'd already crossed it.* Eric's voice steadied, fractionally, though the strain beneath it hadn't eased. *Think of it as — a hairline crack. In the structure holding my consciousness together. Nothing catastrophic. But nothing I want to test again without understanding it first.*

"You almost—" Vane couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't make his mouth shape the word that wanted to come, and around him he became distantly aware of soldiers going still, watching, the company's Marshal standing frozen in the middle of a battlefield with one hand pressed white-knuckled to his own chest.

*I'm still here,* Eric said again, gentler now, clearly feeling the shape of Vane's fear as clearly as Vane felt his own. *Vane. Look at me — I know you can't, that's not how this works, but listen to me instead. I'm here. I didn't leave. I'm not going to.*

"Stay," Vane said, and the word came out cracked, raw, entirely unguarded, loud enough that the nearest soldiers heard it plainly, loud enough that Marek, approaching at a careful jog with concern written openly across his usually impassive face, heard it too. "Just — stay. Please."

*I'm not going anywhere,* Eric said, quiet and certain despite the fading tremor still audible beneath the words. *I promise you that. Whatever just happened, whatever it cost, I am not leaving you out here.*

Vane's knees nearly gave, the adrenaline of the fight draining out of him all at once and leaving nothing behind but the raw, unguarded terror of the last thirty seconds, and it was Marek's hand on his shoulder, steady and grounding, that finally brought him back to himself.

"Marshal." Marek's voice was low, urgent, pitched for Vane alone. "Are you hurt?"

"Not me," Vane managed. "Eric. Something happened. He pushed too far protecting me."

Marek's eyes flicked, briefly, to the three fallen Spawn, then back to Vane's face, understanding arriving without needing further explanation. "Can he hear me?"

*I can hear him fine,* Eric said, and Vane relayed it, voice steadier now with something to do besides simply feel the fear. "He says yes."

"Then tell him," Marek said, gruff, "that was the single most reckless, effective piece of battlefield magic I've witnessed in eight years on this Frontier, and I'd like him alive to explain how he did it."

Despite everything, Vane felt something in his chest ease at that — Eric's answering warmth, faint but genuine, threading through the exhaustion. *Tell him I appreciate the professional assessment. And that I intend to be considerably more careful before I do that again.*

Corven found him a few minutes later, the young soldier whose life the third Spawn's diversion had ultimately spared, hesitating at the edge of Vane's attention with the particular awkwardness of a man who didn't know how to properly thank someone for a decision made in half a heartbeat.

"Marshal, I—" He stopped, started again. "That thing was coming for me. I didn't even see it turn."

"You don't need to thank me," Vane said, quiet, though something in the exchange settled uneasily against the fear still lingering behind his ribs. "Thank the voice in my chest. He's the one who saw it in time."

Corven's eyes widened slightly, glancing toward Vane's chest as though he might catch some visible sign of the presence there, and then, apparently deciding better of it, simply nodded, solemn. "Then — thank you both. I mean it."

*Tell him he's welcome,* Eric said, warmth threading faint but genuine through the exhaustion still coloring his voice. *And tell him to get that arm looked at. I saw him favoring it during the fight, and adrenaline has a way of hiding damage until it's too late to treat easily.*

Vane relayed it, and Corven managed a startled, grateful laugh before allowing himself to be steered toward the company's field healer, some of the day's raw fear finally easing, by degrees, into the ordinary business of tending wounds and counting survivors.

---

It was Talwyn who found them a quarter hour later, having ridden hard from the garrison the moment the recall bird had reached him with word of trouble at the rift, arriving breathless and grey-haired and utterly unbothered by the blood still drying on half the company's armor, already moving toward the rift's edge with the particular single-minded focus of a scholar who had waited his whole career for exactly this kind of evidence.

"Don't touch anything," he called, dropping to his knees beside a patch of disturbed earth some ten yards from where the Spawn had lain buried, tracing careful fingers along a pattern in the soil that meant nothing to Vane's eyes but had clearly meant something significant to Talwyn's the instant he'd seen it. "Marshal — come look at this. Now, if you're able."

Vane crossed to him, Eric's presence steadying by degrees behind his ribs, and looked down at what Talwyn had found: a series of shallow grooves cut into the earth in a pattern too deliberate, too precise, to have been made by claws or chance.

"What is it?"

"A containment sigil," Talwyn said, grim. "Old. Older than anything currently taught at the Institute, which tells me either someone's been reading texts the Chancellery would rather stay buried, or someone's rediscovered a bonding rite the Empire officially declared lost two centuries ago." He traced the pattern once more, careful not to disturb it. "This wasn't natural instability, Marshal. Someone weakened this rift deliberately, and buried those Spawn here as a trap timed to whoever came to investigate."

*That confirms it, then,* Eric said, cold understanding settling through the bond. *This wasn't random. Someone wanted us here, specifically, and wanted to see exactly how far I could be pushed before something broke.*

"How long would something like this take to prepare," Vane asked, crouching beside Talwyn to examine the sigil more closely, careful to keep his own weight well clear of the pattern's edges.

"Weeks, at minimum. Possibly longer, if whoever did this needed to acquire the rite itself before they could even begin carving it into the earth." Talwyn's expression had gone grim in the fading light, the scholar's earlier excitement souring into something closer to dread. "Which means, Marshal, that someone knew about your physician's existence, and specifically about his capabilities, well before either of us had any reason to expect it. That's not a comforting timeline."

"No," Vane agreed, flat. "It isn't."

Talwyn straightened, gathering a careful sample of the disturbed earth into a small cloth pouch he produced from within his coat. "I'll cross-reference this against everything in the garrison archive the moment we're back. If someone's reviving lost bonding rites for a purpose this deliberate, I'd rather understand why before they have the chance to try something considerably less survivable." He tucked the sample pouch carefully into his coat and cast one last, thoughtful look toward the rift's quiet, listening center. "Get some rest tonight, Marshal. Both of you. Whatever answers I find waiting in those archives, they'll keep until morning."

Vane relayed it, jaw tight with a fury that had nowhere yet to aim itself. "Someone's testing him. Testing us."

"That would be my read as well," Talwyn said, rising slowly, brushing soil from his knees with the particular care of a man handling evidence rather than dirt. "I'll need to bring this back for proper study. But I'd wager, Marshal, that whoever laid this trap already has their answer — and I doubt they'll be satisfied to simply watch from a distance next time."

---

The ride back was quiet, the company's earlier discipline giving way, mile by mile, to the particular loose, relieved chatter of soldiers who had survived something they hadn't fully understood the danger of until it was over. Vane rode at the front as always, but felt, for the first time in longer than he could remember, every eye in the company occasionally drift toward him rather than the road ahead — not with the wary distance he was accustomed to, but with something that looked, uncomfortably, like concern.

*They saw,* Eric said, quiet, once the worst of the ride's demands had eased into open road. *The hand on your chest. The word you said. I'm sorry. I know that wasn't a moment you meant to have in front of thirty witnesses.*

"It happened," Vane said, low, eyes fixed on the darkening road ahead. "I can't unspend it now."

*No,* Eric agreed. *You can't. For what it's worth — I don't think what they saw was weakness. I think they saw a man who was afraid of losing something that mattered to him, in front of people who would very much like to know their Marshal is still capable of feeling that.*

Vane didn't answer, though something in his chest, still raw from the last hour's fear, eased fractionally at the words regardless. The garrison's lights came into view ahead, and beyond them, he knew without needing to be told, a story already outpacing the company's return — the hand on his chest, the broken half-sentence, the single word *stay* said like a man begging, carried home on thirty tongues before he'd even reached the gate.

*We should talk properly,* Eric said, quiet, feeling the shape of that dread through the bond as clearly as his own lingering exhaustion. *About what happened back there. About limits, and rules, and what I am and am not willing to risk again without your say-so first.*

"Later," Vane said. "Not tonight. Tonight I just want to get behind a closed tent flap before anyone else asks me what that word meant, or looks at me like they're waiting for me to break apart in front of them."

*Later, then,* Eric agreed, gentle. *I'll be here when you're ready. I always will be, whatever tonight's fear tried to convince you otherwise.*

Vane rode the last mile in silence, the weight of thirty witnesses' knowing looks settling over him like a second skin he hadn't asked for and couldn't yet shed, and beneath the exhaustion and the unspoken dread of tomorrow's reckoning, felt something else entirely — steady, faint, unmistakable, the particular relief of a heartbeat that had nearly gone silent and hadn't, beating on now behind his ribs exactly where it belonged.

The garrison gates loomed ahead, torchlight spilling warm and welcoming across the churned mud of the yard, and somewhere behind that light, Vane knew, thirty conversations were already turning his name over, already reshaping the story of their Marshal into something new and unfamiliar and, whether he was ready for it or not, considerably more human than the man they'd ridden out beside that morning.