They entered the eastern wood at first light.
Not as an army.
As a controlled unit.
Eren.
Kael.
Lysa.
Arden.
Twelve Stonefall veterans.
No torches.
No banners.
Mana dampeners woven into their cloaks to avoid drawing attention.
The forest felt wrong.
Not hostile.
Not alive.
Muted.
Birdsong absent.
Insects silent.
Even the wind moved carefully.
The First Sign
They found it twenty minutes in.
A patch of grass.
Gray.
Not dead—just drained of color.
Lysa knelt.
"Residual mana trace," she murmured.
She extended a probe thread.
It fizzled instantly.
"Consumption pattern," she confirmed.
"Not burn."
"Not decay."
"Extraction."
Kael scanned the trees.
"From what direction?"
Lysa stood slowly.
"Below."
Silence.
"Below?" Arden repeated.
"Yes."
They exchanged a look.
This wasn't something moving through the forest.
It was something embedded within it.
The Sinkpoint
An hour later—
They found the hollow.
A shallow depression ringed by old trees whose bark had dulled to ashen brown.
At the center—
The ground sagged inward.
Not collapsed.
Siphoned.
Eren stepped forward carefully.
The air grew colder.
Not temperature.
Pressure.
Mana pressure.
The System pulsed faintly.
Anomaly Core Detected
Classification: Proto-Consumption Node
Growth Stage: 2 (Emerging)
Source: Unknown
"Proto?" Kael muttered.
"Meaning not fully formed," Lysa said.
"Yet."
The soil trembled faintly.
Not violently.
Rhythmically.
Like breathing.
Contact
Arden signaled sharply.
Movement.
Between the trees.
Shapes flickered again.
Smoke-like.
Semi-translucent.
But closer now.
One drifted too near the treeline.
For half a second—
It solidified.
Humanoid.
Distorted.
Face stretched like wax.
Empty eye sockets.
Then it flickered back into haze.
One of the veterans flinched.
"Hold," Eren ordered quietly.
The thing didn't attack.
It hovered.
Watching.
Then it drifted toward the hollow's center.
Like a moth to flame.
No.
Like a feeder to source.
The Test
Eren drew his blade.
Not to strike the entity.
To strike the ground.
He drove the tip into the soil at the edge of the sinkpoint.
Mana surged into the blade.
A controlled release.
The ground convulsed.
The hollow spasmed.
The shapes around the clearing snapped toward him.
In unison.
The temperature plummeted.
One of the smoke-forms lunged—
Not at his body—
At the blade.
It passed through him.
Through steel.
Through matter.
And struck the mana surge.
Absorbed it.
The glow died instantly.
Eren staggered.
Not wounded.
Drained.
Lysa caught his shoulder.
"It feeds on active release," she breathed.
Kael slashed at the entity.
His blade passed through haze.
No resistance.
No damage.
The shape shimmered—
Then snapped back toward the hollow.
As if pulled.
The veterans held formation.
No one panicked.
But fear crawled into their bones.
The Truth Beneath
The ground split.
Just slightly.
Enough for them to see it.
Not a creature.
Not a beast.
A node.
A dark, crystalline mass embedded beneath the soil.
Veined outward into root systems.
Pulsing faintly.
Every flicker of mana in the clearing bent toward it.
"Leyline parasite," Lysa whispered.
"No," Eren said quietly.
"It's deeper."
The System pulsed again.
Stronger.
Proto-Consumption Node Analysis Updated
Behavior:
Feeds on ambient mana
Accelerates growth via external mana injection
Projects Semi-Corporeal Collectors
Projected Outcome if Unchecked:
Regional Leyline Collapse
Structural Failure of Mana-Based Infrastructure
Estimated Time to Stage 3: 18–24 days
Kael's jaw tightened.
"That includes our defensive weave."
"Yes."
"And Westreach trade hubs."
"Yes."
"And Riverhold's crops."
"Yes."
This wasn't a localized predator.
It was systemic erosion.
The Unsettling Realization
"Why now?" Arden asked.
"Why here?"
Eren's eyes narrowed.
The node wasn't random.
It was positioned along a minor ley convergence.
Not the strongest.
But not weak.
Close to Stonefall.
Close to Riverhold.
Close enough to destabilize the new Accord.
The System flickered one more time.
Potential Catalyst: Prolonged High-Conflict Mana Saturation
Recent Large-Scale Battle Detected
Probability of Environmental Reaction: Moderate
Silence.
Kael's voice lowered.
"You're saying…"
Eren nodded slowly.
"The war fed it."
The massive mana discharge during the Coalition collapse—
The Command Pulses.
The defensive nodes.
The surge of emotional energy amplified through structured channels—
It had created conditions.
Not intentionally.
But predictably.
The System hadn't warned them.
It had only categorized after the fact.
Cruelty through omission.
The Escalation
One of the smoke-forms drifted too near a veteran.
He inhaled sharply.
The shape latched onto him—
Not violently.
But intimately.
His eyes went unfocused.
Mana drained visibly from his aura.
Eren acted instantly.
He didn't release mana.
He stepped forward—
And physically tackled the veteran away from the entity.
The smoke tore loose reluctantly.
Retreated.
The soldier collapsed.
Alive.
But weakened.
The hollow pulsed faster.
Responding.
Growing.
The Choice
Kael looked at Eren.
"We destroy it."
"With what?" Lysa demanded.
"Every time we inject mana, it feeds."
Silence.
Eren studied the crystal mass beneath the soil.
It wasn't intelligent.
Not yet.
It was reactive.
Adaptive.
Hungry.
"We don't burn it," he said quietly.
"We starve it."
"How?" Arden asked.
Eren's eyes hardened.
"We shut down external mana usage in this region."
Lysa went pale.
"That cripples infrastructure."
"Yes."
"Defenses."
"Yes."
"Trade."
"Yes."
Kael understood first.
"If it doesn't receive active feed, it stagnates."
"Correct."
"But that means we voluntarily weaken ourselves."
"Yes."
Silence thickened.
The Accord had just formed.
Unity fragile.
Trust unstable.
And now Eren would have to tell them:
We must dim the very power we rely on.
Because something in the dark feeds on it.
The hollow pulsed again.
Stronger.
The smoke-forms circled like patient vultures.
They didn't rush.
They didn't need to.
Time was their ally.
Unless—
Eren made it his.