Edge of the Rootways

Sera Valkyn slammed her gauntlet against the flickering rune-stone, voice tight as she barked,

“Report!”

Static crackled in reply, the guttering blue light casting jagged shadows along the swaying bridge. A gust of wind whipped her cloak, carrying the distant sound of splintering wood. She scanned the dim arch of the fossilised root, eyes burning from lack of sleep, and spotted a fracture spidering along its underside. Two of her squad struggled with patching resin, hands shaking. Another figure, lantern swinging, sprinted from the watch-hut, breathless.

“Sera! Another bridge, Rootspan North, gone dark!”

The void below rumbled, and the fragment beneath her feet pitched slightly, as if mourning a lost limb. Sera drew her sword, the blade humming with root-light.

“Hold the line,”

she snapped. She moved toward the fracture, boots scraping bone-hard bark, every sense straining for the next sign of collapse. Somewhere ahead, in the blue-lit dark, something moved beyond the reach of her lantern.

Sera lunged over the edge, her boots leaving the safety of the root-bridge. Gravity seized her immediately. The biting wind roared in her ears, tearing at her cloak as the fragment slipped away into the swirling grey mists below. Above, the bridge groaned. Joric shouted something unintelligible, his hand clawing at the empty air where she had just stood.

Joric’s fingers clamped tightly around Sera’s forearm, his muscles straining against the pull of her fall. The root-bridge trembled beneath them, a deep, resonant groan echoing through the shadowed chasm as his boots slid on the slick moss. They dangled over the void, both gasping for breath while the ancient structure swayed beneath their weight.

The bridge trembles beneath them, a deep, tectonic hum vibrating through the soles of Sera’s boots. Dust and splinters of bark fall into the swirling void below as the fracture Joric spotted earlier stretches wider, the wood creaking in sharp protest. Joric’s eyes lock on the jagged darkness where the bridge is failing, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths.