One month.

  Thirty-one days.

  Twenty campsites, ten canyons, five surprise attacks—and one hundred and eighty-six Luck Tokens.

  And Solenne is still trapped in her bloody red leather bomb.

  If anything, the suit’s gotten smug—shinier, tighter, radiating the kind of confidence that comes from being immortal and knowing it. We’ve hammered monsters, solved puzzles, chased starfalls, hunted anomalies, and even dangled Jenny off a cliff for a gravity-shrieker achievement. Still nothing. Not a single Snapcord thread has loosened.

  Short of divine intervention, we’ve tried everything.

  Scratch that—we tried divine intervention too.

  “You’re on the right track,” Inanna says, voice like molten honey poured over velvet. She lounges in midair as if gravity files paperwork for her. “A full month of grinding. Everyone contributing. Daily. I’m impressed.”

  Her eyes sparkle at me. “Lizzy, darling—how are your new toys?”

  My soul tries to leave my body. “They’re… different.”

  Rhea snorts. “Oh, she likes the—”

  I slap a hand over her mouth. “I’m trying them! It’s just… weird having something that new.”

  “And?” Inanna purrs.

  Heat creeps up my neck. I stare very hard at the dirt. “…Fine. I like the blue one.”

  “Not the red or the violet?” the goddess teases, her laughter chiming like perfume-drenched wind.

  Jenny leans in, wicked grin sparkling like glitter. “She named them.”

  Tess smothers a laugh behind her hand. “She won’t admit it, but she did.”

  I wince. “…they’re whales. Happy?”

  Jenny beams. “Yes, actually. Walrus, Right Whale, and Blue Whale.”

  “They are perfectly reasonable sizes,” Tess says gently, as if comforting a startled woodland creature.

  “Hey!” I croak—mortified, glowing hotter than a forge. “Could we not discuss my… accessories… with an actual goddess?”

  Inanna only smiles wider—fond, exasperating, and entirely too delighted.

  “And you, Solenne?” her voice purrs. “I see my Star glowing beneath your leather suit. Does that mean you’ve truly joined your new family?”

  “Family?” Solenne shifts, rubbing her arm. “Look, Ma’am, they’re me mates—friends, teammates, partners maybe—but I ain’t married to none of ’em. No one’s asked, and I dunno what I’d say if they did. I’m learnin’ loads, though, havin’ a right laugh, and I figured how to reload me rifle with bits o’ magic—Lizzy showed me. Mine still go boom more’n pop, but it works.”

  “Close enough for me.” Inanna chuckles, warm as wine. “In my mind—and it’s the only one that matters—you are a family. Husbands and wives, bound by will and wonder. Tata for now. Good luck today!”

  Her avatar dissolves into perfumed stardust.

  Lenora and Frankie exchange a long look. “Husbands?” they echo in unison.

  Jenny giggles and flicks a handful of glitter that blossoms into tiny bell-shaped blooms over our heads.

  I glance between Rhea, Tess, and Solenne. My stomach drops. “Wives?”

  Solenne whispers, “Can she do that?”

  “I think,” Tess says, eyes wide with awed amusement, “she just did.”

  Solenne stares at each of us in turn before her gaze settles on me. “Don’t I need ta sign a form or somethin’? A license maybe?”

  Frankie raises an eyebrow. “Remember all those forms you signed to get on the ship?”

  She nods slowly.

  “Didn’t read them, did you?”

  She scowls. “Did you? It was, what, fifty thousand pages?”

  “Two thousand six hundred and five,” Lenora says primly. “A4, single-spaced, twelve-point Arial.” She lifts a finger like a professor quoting prophecy. “Yes. Every word. Twice. With a legal dictionary.”

  Solenne’s eyes widen in horror.

  Lenora continues, flawless and flat: “Chapter forty-eight, paragraph sixteen: To ensure genetic diversity and the survival of the colony, I agree, without reservation, to mate at the colony’s direction and to assist in the conception and rearing of children. I agree to become a member of any family structure deemed necessary.”

  She finishes like dropping the final nail in a coffin. Silence settles—thick, stunned.

  The wind stirs ash.

  Solenne finally mutters, “Well… guess that’s one way ta get hitched.”

  Rhea snorts. Jenny giggles. Frankie exhales like steam venting from a pipe.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  I stare at the spot where Inanna vanished and whisper, “We’re so doomed.”

  The echo drifts into the gathering hush—the quiet before the storm.

  Then the world exhales.

  A low rumble trembles through the dust—

  not mechanical.

  Older.

  Deeper.

  A sound from bedrock, belonging to no language still spoken.

  “Tanks?” Solenne mutters, squinting toward the valley. “Sounds like a whole bloody convoy crawlin’ up from the deep.”

  Frankie’s already rising, dragging Jenny and Rhea closer. “No convoy I’ve ever heard. Maybe artillery—”

  Lenora straightens, nostrils flaring. “Does artillery smell like sulfur?”

  The air thickens—sour, metallic, sharp as a struck match. Pebbles quiver, skittering over stone like something beneath the ground is breathing.

  Rhea’s fur ripples from crown to tail, every stripe bristling. She grips Frankie’s arm and points up the slope. “This feels wrong. The bones of the mountain are breakin’.”

  A pulse of heat crawls across my skin.

  I drop to my knees and press my ear to the dirt. The vibration thrums like a heartbeat under stone—steady, rising, coming straight toward us.

  “This is deep,” I whisper. “Miles down, but climbing fast.”

  Static prickles through the air. Shrubs shudder. Birds burst from the trees in a frantic, spiraling cloud. Even the ghosts recoil, flickering like frightened moths.

  The ridge tilts in my mind—fault lines, vents, pressure seams—and everything clicks in one sickening snap.

  “She wouldn’t dare,” I breathe. Ash coats my tongue.

  The rumble becomes a growl. Scree rattles. Bushes convulse as if something claws beneath their roots.

  I look to the summit—and the air above it shimmers.

  “Oh, shite.” My voice cracks. “Run!”

  I seize Lenora and Solenne by the wrists just as the mountain groans like a dying god.

  “Tess!” I choke. “Volcano!”

  The world answers for her.

  A roar—deep, apocalyptic—tears through the ridge. The ground heaves. Heat punches the air, metallic and dry.

  “Move!” Tess shouts over the detonations rocking the valley.

  We run.

  Rhea shoves Jenny ahead, stripes flaring like fire. Frankie scoops up our crude map, then flings it aside and throws an arm around Lenora when she slips.

  “Go, go, go!”

  The slope transforms into chaos. Pebbles become scree. Scree becomes sliding, knee-deep grit. Every heartbeat brings another blast behind us—

  THOOM.

  Stronger.

  Closer.

  Shadows streak overhead—molten rock arcing through the sky like burning comets.

  Lenora trips again. “Leave me—”

  “Not a chance!” I hook an arm around her waist and drag her upright. “We’re not dying here!”

  A thunderclap splits the night. The summit blossoms—gold and blood-red—columns of fire twisting into the sky like a god’s fury.

  Lava bombs rain down—hundreds—each one a screaming furnace. One hits the ridge above us, spraying molten shards that sear through the brush.

  “Cave!” Tess shouts, pointing downslope to a cleft splitting the rock.

  “Run for it!” Frankie orders, shoving Jenny and Rhea forward and shielding them with her massive frame.

  We sprint, half falling and half clawing our way forward as the air turns to fire. My lungs feel blistered, my legs burn like wet rope, and another eruption lights the sky before the shockwave slams into us hard. We hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. Dust fills my mouth and sulfur scorches my tongue.

  Lenora groans, dazed. “Lizzy—”

  I reach for her, but Solenne moves first.

  “DOWN!” she roars.

  She throws herself into us with everything she has, shoving me and Lenora behind a fallen slab. Her eyes meet mine for a single heartbeat, filled with fear and fury and a strange, terrible peace, and then the world turns white.

  A lava bomb slams into the exact spot where she’d stood. The explosion doesn’t sound like sound at all; it’s pressure and heat and violence made pure. Stone vaporizes, air ignites, and the blast hits like a fist made of sunlight. I scream—maybe—but the noise is swallowed in the upheaval.

  When the world finally steadies, the ridge where Solenne stood is gone. Only molten fragments remain: bubbling rock and a crater glowing like the heart of an angry god.“Solenne!” I rasp, crawling forward—

  but Tess clamps a blistering-hot arm around my waist.

  “No!” she chokes. “Stay back!”

  The firestorm wanes. Lava bombs shrink to glowing embers. Smoke rolls through the canyon in bitter, electric waves. Sparks drift like dying stars.

  My whole body shakes. My throat is raw. My skin too hot for tears.

  I clutch Lenora’s hand. “She saved me,” I whisper. “Oh goddess… she’s gone.”

  My voice cracks. The mountain keeps burning.

  “No—no, no—” I choke out. “I’ll do anything. Anything.” And I do. I slam every Luck Token I own into fate’s waiting jaws—every token my family earned, every scrap of fortune—hurling it all into the furnace of possibility. Then I force every joule of charge in my body into the leprechaun charm.

  Something tears inside me. A hot, ripping pain blooms across my belly, sharp and bright and wrong. I grab my stomach, expecting blood, but instead my leprechaun is dancing—not bouncing or swinging, but dancing a full-bodied jig in my navel, knees pumping and hat spinning, glowing so fiercely that green light punches through the smoke like a tiny supernova.

  For an instant the world freezes. Smoke halts mid-swirl. Embers hang suspended in the air. A guitar drifts through the stillness—not real, only memory—low and gritty and warm as a campfire, the same tune my dad hummed while teaching me how to hold a bow. The volcano exhales a pillar of fire that lights the sky, and for the space of a heartbeat the falling stones rearrange themselves into a perfect royal straight flush.

  A warm baritone threads through the smoke: “If you’re gonna play the game, girl, you’d best learn when to hold your cards.” White-gold text floods my vision as if burning upward from the ground.

  [LUCKBURN]

  [400 Luck Tokens Consumed.]

  [Warning: You are in debt to the Leprechaun. Pay him quick before he calls it in.]

  A chuckle follows, fading like a coin sinking into a deep well. Consider this an ace worth keeping…

  The world snaps back just as another lava bomb detonates, swallowing everything in white, then orange, then soundless heat. For a moment there is only silence and the weight of the blast. Then—at last—a groan. Human.

  I whip toward the crater’s lip. Something moves there, a figure glowing red through the haze. Lenora clamps a hand on my shoulder and breathes, “She’s alive.”

  Steam curls from the silhouette as ash sloughs away. A woman straightens slowly, her skin molten crimson, her hair pale gold beneath the soot—a furnace made flesh. Solenne rises naked and newborn, impossibly bright against the black volcanic stone, her outline wavering in the heat as if she has been poured fresh from the core of the earth.I stumble forward, lungs clawing, the world bending around the heat. “Solenne!”

  “Lizzy!” Lenora screams. “Stop—you’ll burn!”

  I don’t care.

  The air feels like iron fresh from a forge. Every breath taste of blood and ash. I shove through it anyway, because Solenne is on her knees—shaking, blinking, reaching for me as though she isn’t made of fire.

  Flames lick her calves. Her palms glow. Her ribs rise and fall like bellows.

  I dive, arms outstretched.

  My skin sizzles on contact—but I hold her tight, dragging her against me. Heat and tears blur together; I can’t tell which burns more. I run my hand along her back—smooth, brand-new skin traced with faint ridges where seams once lived.

  She laughs—a broken, breathless thing that cracks into a sob.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” she croaks, voice raw, “that’s one way t’ take a girl’s clothes off…”

  My laugh catches on a sob. Relief crashes through me so hard it’s dizzying.

  Behind us, the mountain snarls and spits—another blast of heat rolling down the slope like a living wall.

  “Keep movin’, sweethearts!” Frankie bellows as she barrels past—Jenny slung over her shoulder like a sack of glitter, Rhea tucked under her arm like a furry football, Tess sprinting beside them, tattoos flickering like lightning trapped in skin.

  Behind them, a river of magma devours the trail—red and gold, hungry and alive—as the mountain keeps burning.

  I clutch Solenne tighter.

  She lives.

  But I am in debt to something old and mischievous.

  And he will come collecting.