To my surprise, the Worm arrived early.

  I caught up to Hizen again in just a few short hours, and watched him from afar. I was trying to plan out what I might say or do to stop him, when suddenly, he stopped himself. For a few moments, he stood eerily still in the middle of a rocky plain.

  Then a great rumbling shook the ground, growing wilder and more intense with every second. The cliffside I was perched on began to crumble, and I dropped down onto all fours.

  Hizen briefly turned around, and seemed to be looking directly at me, right before the ground collapsed beneath his feet.

  A massive dark wall exploded out from the earth. It rose high into the sky, a great tower of rotating blades, stained red from the dust flowing through its many-layered body. It was large enough to rival the spires of East Crown, louder than anything I had ever heard, and more terrifying than anything I had ever seen.

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  And as the body of the Worm lurched forward and began to arc back down towards the earth, I realized I only had only a small window of time left to dive in.

  I leapt from the cliffs and flew as fast as I could. Dust clouds obscured my vision, and the sound of the blades filled my ears so completely, I felt as if I could hear nothing at all. Still, I charged forward, tumbling through the rock and silt, until an enormous crushing weight suddenly fell upon me, pressing my body through the dirt and into the darkness.

  For a few chaotic moments, I was thrown every which way imaginable, battered with flying debris and lacerated by the surrounding blades. I only came to a stop when a sharp object impaled my leg, suspending me upside down to be pummeled by the rushing earth.

  I couldn’t even see myself, let alone where Hizen might be…not that I had any way of reaching him. As my joints twisted and my frame began to crack and splinter, it was quickly becoming apparent that I had not thought this through.

  But in that moment, I recalled a very distant memory...a tale of soulmates in a far-off land. One desperate to save the other...enough to call upon a gift from the genesis; a mystical power from the beginning of time.

  This time, I felt the warmth in the palms of my hands. Slowly, l raised them up and held them out against the elements, desperate...waiting...