Gilded Ashes-Chapter 300: Just Jump

Raizen waited until the guards’ voices faded back into the engine hum. Then he leaned toward Saffi, his lips close to her ear.

"We have what we need. We scouted the zone, and saw what this is about. Let’s go."

Saffi didn’t argue. She shifted her weight, tested her grip, and they started moving - retracing their path along the underside of the platform, back toward the trunk they came from. The bark hadn’t gotten any less slick, and his fingers hadn’t gotten any less numb, but the route was a bit more familiar now. He knew which roots held and which ones didn’t. He knew where the ridges narrowed and where the bark could peel away.

They were maybe a third of the way back when the light appeared.

It came from above - warm, bright. A guard’s flashlight. Then voices. Close. Not the distant murmur from the aircraft, but footsteps directly overhead, boots on stone, and the low, clipped exchange of men doing another security sweep.

Raizen stopped. Pressed himself flat against the trunk as much as he could

More light. Another flashlight, further along the platform’s edge. The glow caught in the fog below them, turning it from grey-white to pale gold. If anyone leaned over the edge and looked down-

Another set of footsteps. Coming from the direction they needed to go.

Saffi’s hand found his arm in the dark. She squeezed once, telling him not to move.

They waited. The footsteps passed overhead - one set, then another, then a third. The warm light swept the edge of the platform in a slow arc. Raizen could see the guard’s shadow stretching across the stone above him, distorted and huge.

The sweep moved on, but the voices didn’t fade. They settled - somewhere ahead, near the trunk they’d used to climb down. Raizen could hear the low back-and-forth of a conversation. Two guards, maybe three. Posted. Not passing through.

He looked back at Saffi.

She was already shaking her head. Her face was tight, jaw set. She didn’t need to say it.

"We can’t go back the way we came." She whispered the obvious.

Raizen turned his head. Looked down.

The fog was still there - thick and formless, swallowing everything below them into grey nothing. But through it, if he squinted, if he let his eyes adjust to the faint ambient light bleeding through from above - he thought he could see something. Dark shapes. Horizontal. Thick.

Branches, probably. Hopefully.

Not the thin, flexible kind that bent under weight. These were old-growth limbs - the kind that Ukai’s lower platforms were built on. Massive, gnarled, wide enough to stand on. They jutted out from the main trunks at irregular angles, forming a rough second layer below Raizen’s feet.

Maybe two meters. Maybe three.

He couldn’t be too sure. The thick fog warped distance. What looked close could be far, and what looked solid could be just a shadow. He blinked. Wiped rain from his eyes, and looked again.

The branches were still there. He thought.

He looked at Saffi. Then at the guards’ lantern light above. Then at the fog below.

Then he jumped.

The fall lasted longer than two meters.

That was the first thing he registered - the sickening stretch of time between his feet leaving the bark and then hitting something solid. A bit too long. His stomach dropped. His arms windmilled. The fog swallowed him whole, wet and cold, and for one horrible second he was certain he’d miscalculated, that there was nothing below him, that the branches were shadows and the fog went down forever -

His boots hit wood.

The impact jarred up through his ankles, his knees, his spine. His feet slid on the wet surface and his right knee buckled. He pitched forward, caught himself on both hands, and slid another half-meter before his palms found a ridge in the bark and stopped him.

He lay there for a second. Face down on a branch wide enough to fit an entire family table. Heart slamming against his ribs. His right knee throbbed where it had hit the bark, and something in his left ankle felt hot and tight - not broken, but not quite happy about what had just happened.

"Okay. I’m not dead." He thought.

The fog hung around him like a blanket on top of a chair fort. From up here - or down here, he supposed - the world was reduced to vague shapes. Dark pillars were supposed to be trunks. The horizontal lines were branches. The faint, filtered glow of hung lanterns and flashlights far above, barely reaching through the grey.

He pushed himself up slowly. The branch was solid - thick, anchored deep into the trunk, just as he imagined. It groaned under his weight but didn’t even nudge. Around him, more branches extended into the fog at different angles, forming something like a lattice that he could probably navigate back to a trunk and climb up to a section without guards.

Probably.

He looked up. The fog was thick enough that the platform above was just a dark smear. He could see the faint glow of lantern light bleeding through, but not much else.

"Saffi!" he shouted.

It came out as a strained whisper - the kind of voice that tried to be loud and quiet at the same time and failed at both.

Nothing.

"Saffi!"

A sound from above. A wheeze, really. Something that might have been his name. It sounded like someone trying to shout through clenched teeth while also trying not to be heard.

He could barely make out her silhouette - a dark shape pressed against the underside of the platform, half-hidden by the fog. She was leaning out slightly, trying to see him.

Raizen waved both arms. The motion felt absurd - standing on a branch in the fog, soaking wet, waving like he was flagging down a bus.

"It’s safe" he called up. "There’s a branch. It’s solid. I’m standing on it."

Silence.

"Jump. I’ll catch you."

The silence changed. It became a different kind of silence - the kind with weight behind it.

"...What?" Saffi’s voice was clear now.

"I said I’ll catch you. It’s not far. Just -"

"No."

The word came down through the fog with absolute certainty. Like it had been carved in stone somewhere and Saffi was merely reading it aloud.

"Saffi, the guards are right there -"

"I’ll find another way."

"There is no other way. The trunk is blocked. You can’t go back up. Just jump and I’ll -"

"I said no!"

Raizen squinted up through the fog. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he could see enough. The rigid posture. The way she’d turned her body sideways on the trunk, angling away from the edge. And even through the fog, even in the dark, he was fairly sure her face was a warmer color that had nothing to do with the cold.

"Saffi. We don’t have time for -"

"I will find a vine, or a root, or I will grow wings before I -"

"What are you even talking about? There’s nothing to grab! I already looked!"

"Then I’ll wait until the guards leave!"

"They’re not leaving! They’re literally posted!"

"Then I will wait longer-"

Raizen pressed both hands against his face. Rain ran through his fingers. He could feel the seconds bleeding away - each one heavier than the last, each one bringing a guard’s light a little closer to the edge.

"Saffi. Listen to me." He dropped his hands. Tried to sound calm. Tried to sound reasonable. "It’s a two-three meter drop. Alright, maybe four. I am standing directly below you on a branch that could hold a horse. All you have to do is let go, and I will make sure you don’t hit the ground wrong. That’s it. That’s all."

A pause.

"You’re not inspiring confidence."

"What do you even want me to say?" Raizen hissed.

"Nothing! I want you to say nothing and let me figure this out myself!" Saffi said before she went quiet. He could hear her heavy breathing - the kind of breathing that meant she was running calculations and not liking any of the answers.

A minute passed. Then another. Raizen heard the guards above shifting, their footsteps slow but persistent. Still not going anywhere.

Saffi tried reaching for a root to her left - he heard her fingers scrape against bark, testing, pulling. It came loose in her hand. She dropped it. Tried another one, further along. Same result - the wood was soft and wet, crumbling under any real pressure. She moved her foot, searching for a lower ridge that might lead to a different route down. There weren’t any. Just smooth bark, slick with rain, offering nothing.

One light above shifted. One of the guards was moving closer to the edge.

Raizen felt the window closing.

"Saffi" he hissed. "Just jump already!"

It came out louder than he meant it to. Not a whisper. Not even close. The words hit the fog and bounced - off the trunks, off the stone, off the underside of the platform - and carried in a way that made Raizen’s stomach drop the second they left his mouth.

Above, the footsteps stopped.

A pause. The worst kind of pause - the kind where someone is listening. Then a voice. Casual, but alert.

"Huh? Is someone there?"

The lantern light swung toward the edge of the platform.

Saffi looked down at Raizen through the fog.

Raizen looked up at Saffi through the fog.

The light crept closer.