35: A LIGHT BY WHICH TO SEE

During a catastrophic highstorm, the unconscious or deliberately abandoned bridgeleader faces certain death, suspended by rope and battered mercilessly by wind and debris. Yet when the storm passes and Bridge Four finds his ravaged body, he stirs alive—a miracle that reignites belief in the bridgemen and prompts desperate rescue efforts.

As the highstorm strikes with lethal force, a rope tethers him to a barrack roof. He endures the stormwall's crushing water and wind, panicking as he's blown upward then repeatedly slammed against stone, numbed by cold and battered by rocks and debris. In moments of darkness between lightning flashes, he glimpses a massive inhuman face before his sphere suddenly flares with sapphire light and the vision vanishes. The winds ease and he loses consciousness from shock and blood loss. After the storm subsides, Rock and the rest of Bridge Four emerge to search for their leader. They expect to find a corpse—and do: a body so lacerated and bloody it barely appears human, suspended by the ankles from the barrack wall. Yet as they gather in shock and silence, the body's eyes snap open. The sphere he clutched, though left exposed to the storm, registers as completely empty of light, an impossibility that alongside his survival suggests forces beyond normal understanding at work. The bridgemen scramble to cut him down and tend his grievous wounds.