Heartstring pulled under Elara's armor.
The thread did not have the clean authority Ravel wanted. It had not fully opened, and the locked skill fought him as much as it helped. Even so, the pull found the light beneath Elara's ribs and dragged at it hard enough to make Cubes stutter beside her.
Elara's knees bent.
Ravel pushed himself higher, one arm hanging useless, blood running from his mouth onto the frozen gravel. Necklace tried to tighten its orbit behind him, but half the vertebrae moved late. The cold had gotten into the joints of the skill.
"Got you before you could bury me in ice."
Elias felt his hands clamp around the rail.
The pull looked too close to Camber's death. A line in the body. A shard answering something outside its owner. The wrong person making the final decision.
Kikaru saw it too. "He is forcing the same pattern, but the skill is not ready for it."
