Marcus Blaze had carried men out of fire before, but never one pinned like this. His captain lay flat under a fallen roof beam, blood soaking the collar of his coat. The tower groaned above them. Smoke pressed down thick and low. Marcus grabbed the beam with both hands and heaved. His arms shook. The wood lifted an inch, then dropped. The captain screamed. "Leave me," the captain rasped. "Get out while the stairs hold." Marcus knelt close. He had served under this man for six years. The captain had pulled Marcus from a burning stairwell his first week on the job. "Not a chance," Marcus said. "You'd never leave me. So shut up and hold on." He looked around for anything to use as a lever. Nothing. The beam was too long, wedged under the crumbling wall. He needed strength he did not have. He needed something bigger than himself. A whistle hung on Marcus's belt. His captain had given it to him years ago. "For when the job's too big for muscle," the old man had said. Marcus had laughed then. He wasn't laughing now. He raised the whistle and blew hard. The sound cut through the smoke. For a moment, nothing. Then two shapes poured through the shattered window. The first was a lion made of soft yellow blooms, its mane trailing floating seeds. It padded to the captain and lay beside him, breathing slow. The captain's ragged gasps steadied. The lion was keeping him calm, keeping him alive. The second shape coiled through the air. A long serpent, blue-scaled, with fins like wet silk. Water dripped from its jaws. It fixed one gold eye on the beam. "There," Marcus said, pointing. "Lift it. Just enough." The serpent looped its body under the beam. Marcus wrapped his arms beneath the captain's shoulders and braced. The serpent flexed. Its coils tightened. The beam rose, one inch, two, a foot. Marcus hauled backward with everything he had. The captain slid free across the ash-slick floor. The serpent let go. The beam crashed down where the captain had lain. Marcus dragged him clear and pressed a hand to the wound. The captain was breathing, but pale as chalk. "Stay with me," Marcus said. Then the ceiling shifted. A crack split the plaster above the window. The way they had come in was buried now under fallen stone. The stairs the captain had spoken of were gone too, swallowed by a fresh collapse. The lion lifted its head and looked toward the far wall, where a doorway glowed faintly through the smoke. Marcus followed its gaze. He did not know what lay past that door. He only knew the tower would not stand much longer, and the captain could not wait. He hooked his arms under the wounded man and lifted. "New way out," Marcus said. "Let's move."

Marcus reached the far wall and stopped short. The floor ahead was gone. Fire had eaten a wide gap between him and the glowing doorway. He looked down. The drop fell into black smoke and broken beams. He could not jump it carrying the captain. He could not leave him either. The captain stirred against his chest. "Put me down," he rasped. "Throw me across if you have to." Marcus shook his head. A man this hurt would not survive the landing. He needed another way over. He scanned the room. Against one scorched wall stood a tall cabinet, its green paint blistered but its frame still whole. Rose gold handles gleamed on its doors. Marcus set the captain down and ran to it. He shoved. The cabinet slid, then tipped. He guided it forward until it fell flat across the gap. It bridged the drop, just barely. The wood held. Marcus lifted the captain again and stepped onto the cabinet. It creaked under their weight. He crossed slow, eyes on the doorway ahead. The bridge groaned but did not break. He reached the far side and set the captain down against the wall. The doorway was not a door at all. It was a ring of stone, taller than Marcus, carved with strange marks. Inside the ring, blue light spun and folded on itself, never still. Sparks crawled along its edge. Marcus had never seen anything like it. He did not know where it led. Behind them, the tower shifted. A section of ceiling crashed down onto the cabinet bridge, snapping it in half. The pieces fell into the smoke. There was no going back now. Marcus looked at the spinning ring, then at the captain. The old man's breath came shallow. His lips had gone gray. "Whatever's through there," Marcus said, "it beats burning." He hooked his arms under the captain and lifted one last time. He stepped into the light. Cold hit him like a wave. The floor vanished under his boots. For one long moment he fell through nothing, holding the captain tight. Then sand. Marcus landed hard on his side. Salt air filled his lungs. Waves crashed close by. He blinked and saw a battered wooden house on stilts, its paint peeling, its rails cracked from storms. The tower was gone. The fire was gone. He lay on a cold beach under an open sky. Marcus pushed up and turned to the captain. The old man lay still on the wet sand. His chest rose once, shallow, then barely at all. The wound had soaked through his coat. They had escaped the tower. But the captain was dying, and Marcus did not know this place, or where to find help.

Marcus tore his shirt into strips and pressed them to the captain's side. The blood soaked through fast. He pushed harder. It did no good. The wound was deep, and his hands could not close it. Every breath the old man took came slower than the last. Marcus looked up at the beach house on its stilts. It was the only shelter in sight. He lifted the captain and ran. The door hung loose. Inside, dust covered a broken table and a cold hearth. Marcus laid the captain down and searched the shelves. He found empty jars, rope, and a pair of strange gloves that hummed with faint light. None of it would stop bleeding. He slammed a cabinet shut. "Come on," he said. "There has to be something." "Move your hands off him or he's gone." Marcus spun. A woman stood in the doorway. Her hair was the color of live coals, and a small flame glowed in the pendant at her throat. She carried a satchel and smelled of woodsmoke, as if she had stepped straight out of a fire. She did not wait for permission. She crossed the room and knelt by the captain. "I saw the light on the beach," she said. "Nobody comes through that ring alive. You did." She pulled the soaked rags away and studied the wound. Her hands were steady. "I keep a tavern. I've patched worse than this." "Then patch it," Marcus said. "He's past patching." She reached into her satchel and drew out a small glass bottle. Inside, a clear liquid swirled and gave off a soft glow. A metal tag hung from its neck. "This is the last one I own. I traded three winters of ale for it." She looked up at Marcus. "You'll owe me." "Anything," Marcus said. "Do it." Evelyn pulled the cork with her teeth. She tipped the captain's head back and poured the glowing liquid past his gray lips. For a moment nothing changed. Marcus held his breath. Then the light spread under the captain's skin, tracing the wound like a thread pulling shut. The bleeding slowed. It stopped. The old man's chest rose, deeper now, and his color crept back. Marcus sat back on his heels. His hands shook. "He'll live?" "He'll live," Evelyn said. She corked the empty bottle and tucked it away. "But not here. That fever will burn hot by morning, and I've no more medicine to give him." She stood and looked toward the door, out at the dark water. "He needs a real bed and clean water. My tavern's a day's walk inland, through country you don't know." She met his eyes. "And the things that hunt these roads at night are worse than any fire." Marcus looked down at the captain, breathing at last. Then he looked at the long dark beyond the door. The bleeding was stopped. The journey had only begun.

Marcus carried the captain off the beach at first light. Evelyn walked beside him with her satchel, but she stopped at the tree line. "I have to get back before dark," she said. "The road forks past those rocks. Take the wrong branch and you'll wander until his fever takes him." She pressed a hand to the pendant at her throat. "I can't draw you a map of ground I've never walked myself." Then she pointed to the dark woods ahead. "Find someone who knows it." Marcus went in alone. The trees pressed close. He reached the fork Evelyn spoke of. Both paths looked the same. He set the captain down against a trunk and stared at the ground for tracks. There were none. One wrong turn and the old man died out here. Then the leaves moved without wind. A small figure stepped from the brush. She looked like a child made of the forest itself, vines in her dark hair, a dress of stitched leaves. Green eyes watched him. A sapling dryad, born of some great tree. She tilted her head at the captain's gray face. "He's dying," she said. Not a question. "I need the inland tavern," Marcus said. "A woman named Evelyn keeps it. I don't know the safe road." The dryad crouched by the captain and touched his brow with two small fingers. She frowned, as if she felt the fever herself. "The left branch drops into a bog," she said. "Men go in and don't climb out. The right one crosses the wolf ground." She looked up at Marcus. "Neither is safe." "Then which is less deadly?" She stood and brushed her hands on her leaf dress. "There's a third way. A deer track between them. It doesn't look like a road. That's why it's clear." She pointed where Marcus saw only ferns and shadow. "I'll walk it with you. The trees tell me where it bends." Marcus studied her. She was half his height and looked breakable as a twig. But she stood without fear beside a dying man, and she knew this ground the way he knew fire. He lifted the captain across his shoulders. "Lead," he said. The dryad pushed into the ferns. The hidden track opened under her bare feet. She named each turn before it came. Left where a fallen log blocked the way. Down along a stream so the bog stayed behind them. Marcus followed close, boots sinking, arms burning under the captain's weight. By midday she stopped on a rise. Below, smoke curled from a chimney. Not the tavern yet, but a rough cabin of weathered timber, tucked in the wind-tossed woods. "We rest there," the dryad said. "The tavern's still half a day on. Your captain won't last it without water." Marcus looked at the cabin, then at the pale man on his back. The safe road was found. But the fever had won the race to reach him.