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The ground hits me before I see it.
One second I'm flat on the tarmac outside Kandahar, hand pressed to a kid's femoral bleed, radio screaming coordinates in my ear. Next second the air rips open like someone tore through canvas and I'm falling.
I slam into dirt. Hard.
Smoke everywhere. Not the clean burn of an IED—this stuff's thick, oily, tastes like copper and burnt hair. I roll onto my side, coughing, and my hand lands in something wet.
Blood. Still warm.
I freeze.
Wrong blood. Wrong ground. The kid I was working on had type-O on his dog tags. This is darker, thicker. And the dirt under me isn't Afghan dust—it's black, volcanic, sharp enough to cut through my gloves.
"Where the hell—"
Something screams overhead. Not a jet. Not a drone.
I look up and my brain stalls out.
A wolf the size of a Humvee, covered in plates of black metal, crashes through the smoke twenty feet away. Its eyes glow red. Actual glowing red, like someone shoved brake lights into its skull. It slams into a line of soldiers—wrong uniforms, wrong gear, swords and axes and one guy swinging a hammer that crackles with blue lightning.
I'm not in Kandahar anymore.
I'm not anywhere I know.
"Move!"
Hands grab my shoulder and yank me sideways. I hit the ground again, and a chunk of stone the size of a tire explodes where I was just kneeling. Shrapnel peppers my back. My vest catches most of it.
I roll, grab my med pack, and look up.
The guy who pulled me is maybe twenty-five, dark skin, short-cropped hair, wearing leather armor that's scorched along one side. He's gripping a short blade in one hand and his other arm is just—gone. Not blown off. Cauterized. The stump ends clean, blackened, still smoking.
"Stay down," he rasps. "They'll see you."
"Who—"
"Riftspawn. You deaf?"
I don't know what a Riftspawn is. I don't care.
I grab his good arm and drag him behind a chunk of broken wall. He tries to shove me off but he's too weak. Blood's leaking through the burn, slow but steady. Infection's gonna kill him before blood loss does if I don't move.
"Let go—"
"Shut up."
I yank my tourniquet out, wrap it high on his stump, and crank it tight. He hisses through his teeth but doesn't scream. Good. Screaming draws attention.
The wolf-thing roars again, closer now. I risk a glance over the wall.
Bad idea.
There's dozens of them. Wolves, bears, something that looks like a centipede made of swords. They're tearing through the soldiers like paper. The guy with the lightning hammer goes down hard, throat ripped open. The hammer hits the ground and the lightning dies.
And then I see him.
Tall. Maybe six-three. Black armor, no helmet, dark hair tied back. He's holding a sword that's taller than I am and he's moving through the Riftspawn like he's dancing. Every swing drops one. Clean. Fast. No wasted movement.
He turns, and for half a second his eyes lock on mine.
Gold. Bright, burning gold.
Then he's gone, cutting through the smoke toward the far side of the field.
"That's the Warlord," the soldier next to me mutters. "Kael Varden. If he's here, we might actually survive this."
I finish the tourniquet and check his pulse. Thready but stable.
"You're gonna be fine," I tell him. "Just stay still."
"You're new," he says. His eyes are unfocused, shock setting in. "Where'd you drop from?"
"I don't know."
"You one of the Riftborn?"
I don't know what that means either.
Footsteps. Heavy. Close.
I look up.
The Warlord—Kael—is standing ten feet away, sword still dripping black blood. His eyes are on me. Not the soldier. Me.
"Who are you," he says. Not a question.
I stand up slow, hands visible. "Sergeant Nora Chen, U.S. Army. I'm a medic."
His expression doesn't change. "You're no soldier."
"I just told you—"
"You appeared in the middle of a Rift surge wearing foreign armor, carrying unknown equipment, and you speak the common tongue with no accent." He takes a step closer. "That makes you a spy or a catalyst. Either way, you don't leave this field alive."
My stomach drops.
"I'm not a spy. I don't even know where I am."
"Convenient."
He raises the sword.
I don't think. I just move.
I grab the soldier's blade off the ground and bring it up. It's heavier than I expect, balanced wrong, but I manage to catch Kael's swing before it takes my head off.
The impact almost breaks my wrist.
Kael's eyes narrow. "You don't fight like a medic."
"I don't fight like anything," I snap. "I save people. That's my job."
"Then you picked the wrong world."
He kicks my knee out from under me and I go down hard. The blade skitters out of my hand. He steps on my wrist, pins it to the ground, and levels the sword at my throat.
"Last chance. Who sent you."
"No one sent me. I fell through—something. A rip. I was on a base in Afghanistan and then I was here."
His eyes flicker. Just for a second.
"Afghanistan," he repeats.
"Yeah. Earth. You know, the place where swords aren't standard issue and wolves don't glow."
He doesn't move the sword.
"You're lying."
"I'm really not."
The soldier I patched up coughs, tries to sit up. Kael's eyes flick toward him, just for a second, and I see the calculation.
He's deciding if I'm worth the risk.
"Commander," someone shouts from the smoke. A woman, dark hair, blood on her face. She's carrying a bow taller than she is. "The second wave's coming. We need to pull back."
Kael doesn't look away from me.
"Take the wounded," he says. "Leave her."
"She saved Taren," the woman says, jerking her chin at the soldier. "That counts for something."
"It counts for leverage," Kael says. He leans down, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his armor. "If you run, I'll hunt you. If you fight, I'll kill you. If you're lucky, you'll bleed out before the Riftspawn find you."
Then he's gone.
The woman grabs my arm and hauls me up.
"Move," she says. "If you want to live, you move."
I move.
We run through the smoke, past bodies and broken weapons and chunks of stone that look like they were part of a wall once. The ground's shaking. The air smells like sulfur and burnt meat.
The woman shoves me toward a low building, half-collapsed, walls scorched black. Inside there's maybe fifteen soldiers, all of them bleeding, most of them missing something. An eye. A hand. One guy's got a hole in his chest the size of my fist and he's still breathing.
"Triage," the woman snaps. "You're a medic, right? Prove it."
I drop my pack and get to work.
Ten minutes later I've got three soldiers stable, two more who might make it if they get real care, and one who's too far gone. I hold his hand while he dies. He doesn't say anything. Just looks at me like he's confused.
When it's over, the woman's standing behind me.
"You're fast," she says.
"I've had practice."
"I'm Mira. Intel officer, Shattered Keep garrison." She crouches down next to me. "You really don't know where you are, do you."
"Not a clue."
"Then let me catch you up. You're in Aechelon. You dropped into the middle of the Riftwar. And Kael Varden thinks you're either a spy for the Iron Concord or a Riftborn sleeper agent. Either way, he's going to interrogate you as soon as the fighting stops."
"Great."
"He's also the only reason any of us are still alive. So if you want to survive the next twelve hours, you're going to need to convince him you're not a threat."
I wipe blood off my hands. It doesn't come off.
"How do I do that."
Mira's about to answer when the ground shakes. Hard.
The building groans. Dust rains down from the ceiling.
"Second wave," Mira says. She stands up, nocks an arrow. "Stay here. Don't go outside."
She's gone before I can argue.
I should stay. I should keep working on the wounded.
But I hear it.
A scream. High, desperate, cut off halfway.
I grab the soldier's blade and run outside.
The smoke's thicker now. I can barely see ten feet ahead. Something massive moves through it, low to the ground, growling.
I freeze.
It turns.
Not a wolf this time. Something worse. Humanoid, maybe eight feet tall, covered in black scales. Its eyes are the same glowing red. It's holding a spear, dripping with fresh blood.
It sees me.
I run.
It's faster.
I make it maybe twenty feet before it slams into me from behind. I hit the ground face-first, taste blood, and roll. The spear punches into the dirt where my head was a second ago.
I swing the blade. It catches the creature's arm, barely scratches it.
It backhands me.
I go flying, hit a wall, and everything goes white for a second.
When I can see again, it's standing over me. Spear raised.
I'm about to die.
And then Kael's there.
He moves so fast I almost don't see it. One second the creature's above me, next second Kael's sword is through its chest. It shrieks, thrashes, and Kael rips the blade sideways. The creature collapses.
Kael looks down at me.
"I told you to stay inside," he says.
"I heard someone—"
"You heard bait." He grabs my arm and pulls me up. Hard. "They mimic voices. You just got yourself killed."
"I'm still breathing."
"Not for long."
He turns, scanning the smoke. His hand's still on my arm. Tight. Too tight.
"Let go," I say.
He doesn't.
"You're staying with me until I figure out what you are."
"I told you what I am."
"And I don't believe you."
Something whistles through the air.
Kael shoves me sideways and brings his sword up. The black spear hits his blade, deflects, and punches through my shoulder instead.
I don't feel it at first.
Then I do.
I scream.
Kael's saying something but I can't hear it. My vision's going dark at the edges. The spear's still in me, burning, and I can feel something crawling up my veins, cold and wrong.
Kael rips the spear out.
I scream again.
He's holding me up now, one arm around my back, and he's shouting something. A name.
Not Nora.
Something else.
Something I've never heard before.
And then everything goes black.