I Only Summon Villainesses

The first handhold had been carved so deep into the chain link that my fingers disappeared up to the second knuckle.

I paused there, one foot still on solid ground, staring at the groove. It was smooth and polished, the groove itself was a sign that the chains had probably existed for thousands of years and thousands of years of gripping the same spot, had caused the iron down like water on river stone. The edges had been sharp once, I could tell — tool marks still visible in the deepest part of the groove — but now they were rounded, softened by the passage of countless hands.

’How many people climbed this exact spot before me?’

Millions, probably. The thought was strangely comforting.

“Don’t overthink it,” Nisha called from above. She was already three body-lengths up, scaling the chain with the ease of someone who’d done this before. “The path is marked. Just follow the holds.”

She was right. Now that I was looking, I could see them everywhere — handholds and footholds carved into the iron at regular intervals, forming a winding path up the curve of each massive link. Some were simple grooves like the one my fingers currently occupied. Others were proper steps, cut flat and deep enough to stand on. A few had iron rings hammered into them, with frayed rope threaded through for extra grip.

The infrastructure of millennia of necessity.

I pulled myself up.

The chain rose at a steep angle, maybe sixty degrees from horizontal, and each link was large enough that climbing one felt like scaling a small cliff face. The iron was cold under my palms, slick with morning moisture and something else — a thin film of algae or moss that had grown in the shadows where the links overlapped. My fingers found the next handhold, then the next. My feet followed the worn path.

Kassie climbed beside me, her breathing steady and controlled. Tristan had taken the lead with Nisha, while Levi brought up the rear, occasionally calling out warnings about loose holds or slippery patches.

“Left foot, the deep one,” he said as I reached a junction between links. “The shallow hold broke off last season. Someone died.”

I found the deep one.

The junction was the worst part — where one link fed into the next, and you had to swing around the curved edge to find purchase on the new surface. Here, the carved path split into multiple routes. Some went straight up. Others wound around the side. A few — marked with faded red paint that might have been bright a thousand years ago — led to flat platforms jutting from the chain’s surface.

Rest stops. I could see people on some of them, distant figures sitting or lying flat, recovering their strength before continuing the climb.

We didn’t stop.

The wind picked up as we climbed higher, pulling at my clothes and making my eyes water. Below, Prismhaven had shrunk to a cluster of amber lights against the dark water. Above, Oreshore grew larger—I could see its underside now, a mass of rock, roots and dangling chains that anchored it to the link we climbed.

The scale of it was absurd. Thirty-three islands, all connected by links forged by God knows who, God knows when. The chain I was climbing had to be older than most civilizations.

Older than recorded history in most places. And people had been using it as a road the entire time, wearing paths into iron with nothing but their hands and feet.

“Resting point ahead,” Tristan called down. “We’ll take five.”

The platform was barely wide enough for all of us to sit. It had been carved directly into the chain link — a flat shelf with low walls on three sides, open to the void on the fourth. Someone had scratched names into the back wall. Hundreds of them, layered over each other in different scripts, different languages, different eras. The oldest were so worn I could barely make out the shapes.

I sat with my back against the names of the dead and the living, my legs hanging over the edge, and caught my breath.

“You keep looking at the holds like they’re going to disappear.” Levi pulled a water skin from his pack and took a long drink then offered it to me. “They won’t. These chains have been here longer than any kingdom on the continent. They’ll be here long after we’re all gone.”

“Who built them?”

He shrugged. “Nobody knows. The chains were already old when the first settlers arrived. Some say the gods forged them. Others say they grew, like the islands themselves.” He paused, wincing as if disturbed by something. “Personally, I think someone built them and we just forgot.”

I looked down at the handhold nearest me — worn smooth, perfect for gripping, shaped exactly to human fingers.

’Someone carved that. Someone with hands like mine, doing the same work I just did.’

The thought made the climb feel different. Not easier but less alone.

“Break’s over,” Nisha announced, pushing to her feet. “Four more links to the top, then we’re on Oreshore soil. Or whatever passes for soil on a floating rock.”

I stood, shook out my hands, and found the first hold on the next link.

The final stretch was steeper than the rest. The chain curved sharply upward as it approached the anchor point, and the carved path narrowed to a single route. Handholds that had been generous below became shallow scrapes in the iron. The moss was thicker here, fed by the shadow of the island above, and twice my foot slipped before finding purchase.

My arms burned and my fingers ached. My shoulders screamed every time I pulled myself up another body-length.

But the holds never disappeared.

When I finally dragged myself over the edge onto solid ground, I lay there for a long moment, staring up at a sky that was finally starting to lighten. The stone beneath my back was warm — absorbing the first rays of dawn — and the air smelled different here. More like earth and green growing things.

Immediately we reached all of us collapsed on the soil, me, Tristan, Levi, Po and Nisha. Kassie of course merely leaped onto the surface like she had spring in her legs.

Levi stood up and was already scanning the terrain around us.

“Welcome to Oreshore,” he said. “Only eight more islands to go.”

’Eight more climbs like that one.’

I closed my eyes and seriously reconsidered my life choices.