They didn’t make it to Tanner’s Row.
They had reached the entrance of the Lower Salt-Docks—three miles south of the courthouse. There, the ancient stone warehouses of the Schismatics met the slow, greasy waters of the canal. When the cumulative living and spirit toll of the last five days finally struck Ren Vale like an iron hammer.
The morning had been sustained on pure fight-or-flight rush. But the crowd fell behind and the celebratory shouting faded into a distant murmur drowned by the drizzle. Then, the living deficit came due.
Ren stopped beneath the dripping stone archway of an abandoned notary office, his boots faltering in the mud.
A sudden, blinding burst of agony ripped through his chest. It felt as though someone had taken a handful of jagged glass shards and thrown them directly into his main heart artery.
His knees buckled beneath him without warning. He hit the cold, wet cobblestones with a heavy, sickening crash, his leather satchel spilling across the mud, the heavy lead metal tube containing the First Charter of Khorat rolling into the gutter.
“Ren!” Mira cried out, dropping to her knees in the slurry beside him.
Ren couldn’t answer. A strangling pressure gripped his windpipe, cutting off his breath before it could form a sound.
