"Let's go. We'll be traversing through the Void from now on." Hykee's voice was a jagged command.He pointed toward his shoulder for Lokee to hop on. Standing in the dim woods, Hykee was a titan. He was a physical anomaly born larger than any of his siblings.
He wasn't soft. He was vast. He was a mountain of muscle whose presence created a gravity that pulled the air from the room. Lokee climbed onto his broad back. Hykee reached out to grip the air.
The space around the twins began to ripple and fold like ink in water. Within seconds, they vanished into the shimmering vacuum of the sub dimension. They left Kaola alone at the edge of the forest.
Kaola stood still for a moment. The sudden silence of the physical world rang in her ears. She reached back and detached the long curved bow from her shoulder. She felt the familiar grain of the wood beneath her fingers.
Her father had made the bow for her specifically. It was a gift of precision in a family that usually favored blunt force. It felt like a heavy anchor to her past.
This wasn't just a weapon. It was a conduit. She pulled a single shaft from her quiver. These weren't actually arrows. They were Void enhanced focal points.
They were crafted to withstand the immense pressure of her power. Instead of nocking a projectile, she closed her eyes. She began to hum a low, steady frequency. It resonated with the Yan in her own blood.
She focused on the leading edge of the focal point. The air began to shimmer with a faint, pale light. Void energy began to coat the surface. She opened her eyes and scanned the treeline. She began to filter the world through the lens of energy signatures. The vibrant green pulses of healthy trees were easy to spot but she was looking for the absence of light.
Far to the southeast, the terrain sloped into a misty valley. She spotted a jagged grey tear in the sensory field. As she focused her vision, the signal began to waver. The grey tear started blinking away. It flickered in and out of existence like a dying flame.
He's finally attempting to suppress his Yen.
The effort was causing her tracking to falter from this distance. The path was no longer a solid line of decay. It was a series of disjointed pulses.
Her head throbbed with the effort of maintaining the lock. "I'm losing him," Kaola thought. She projected her voice through the telepathic link she shared with the twins.
"The signal is blinking. He's fighting to keep it inside. The trail is vanishing into the natural background. I need more focus. Stay close to the veil. If he succeeds in masking it completely, we'll be hunting in total darkness."
She felt a cold prickle at the back of her mind. It was a confirmation from Lokee that they were moving alongside her in the dark. Kaola began to move. Her boots barely touched the ground as she slipped into the shadows. The further she went, the more the environment decayed despite his attempts at suppression.
She saw a squirrel frozen mid leap. Its body was brittle and grey as if it had been turned to stone by a sudden frost. Kaola felt a shiver run down her spine.
Even when he tries to hide, the world around him still breaks.
Kota was a walking Void. The world was struggling to fill the hole he was leaving behind. The static in the air began to grow louder. It was a low frequency hum that made the bow in her hand vibrate.
Kaola slowed her pace and knelt by a cluster of blackened mushrooms. The decay was fresh. The air was unnaturally cold. "He's not just leaking anymore," she projected toward the Void.
"He's starting to draw energy in. The inversion is beginning."
If the Yen finally overtook his Yan, the boy would lose all access to the light. He would become a full Void Bearer like them but he had a raw potential that put him on par with Koma and Kova.
It was the nightmare scenario. It was the reason he was supposed to die alongside his father. An inverted Kota wouldn't just be a fugitive. He would be a catastrophe they couldn't contain.If that happened, he would become a beacon that Koma could see from the Haven.
The response from Hykee was a sharp pulse of aggression. "Then move faster, scout. If he inverts before we find him, the mission will be a failure." Hykee's silhouette was jagged and heavy in the pressurized dark.
Lokee chimed in immediately after him. Her voice cut through with a cold, impatient edge. "We're not here to observe the scenery. Move." Kaola pushed forward. She entered a small clearing and came to a sudden, jarring halt. In the center of the grove stood a massive ancient cedar tree.
It was split perfectly down the middle as if a giant blade had fallen from the sky. The wood was charred black, but not by fire. The edges were smooth.
They were cauterized by a precision that didn't match Kota's erratic Yen. "Wait," Kaola projected. Her voice was sharp with caution. "Look at the cedar tree. It's split clean in half." The air rippled as Hykee and Lokee paused within the Void.
Lokee examined the signature through the veil. "This wasn't the boy," she whispered.
Her tone shifted from impatience to genuine calculation.
"This is a controlled strike. The energy is old, but the impact is absolute. Kota doesn't have the focus for this."
Hykee growled.The sound vibrated in Kaola's skull.
"If it wasn't the brat, then who else is in these woods? Who has the power to cleave an ancient like that without making a sound?"
The three of them fell into a heavy silence. The realization that they weren't the only ones hunting hung over them like a shroud.
If someone else was here, the mission had just become infinitely more dangerous. Kaola broke the silence by looking at the base of the ruined tree. She noticed a set of footprints moving past the wreckage.
"There," she thought, pointing her bow toward the slope.
"Kota and Leiya's footprints. They walked right past this. Perhaps they were too exhausted to care." "They're descending into the basin," Kaola whispered into the link." Kota is stumbling.
His power is pulling the life out of the ground with every step. He's reaching for her. Trying to keep her close.
The weight of the inversion is slowing them both down.""I see the distortion in the mist," Lokee's voice echoed.
"They're deep in the valley now. Looking for a place to ground themselves. Hykee wants to break the veil now and jump the distance. I'm telling him to wait."
"No," Kaola thought back.
Her heart raced as she watched the misty basin below.
"Do not break the veil. We have to maintain the distance. If you jump them now, the boy might panic. He might trigger a full collapse before we are in position. We need to track them through the valley floor. Once they are isolated, I'll use a suppression shot to pin the girl, and then you take the boy."
She felt Hykee's jagged laughter resonate in her skull.
"You talk as if you still have authority here, Kaola. If the girl dies to bring the boy in, then that is the price of success. We are moving to the flank. Do your job with that bow, and dont let that signal blink out for good."
Kaola watched the air ripple to her right as the huge figure of Hykee, carrying Lokee, moved through the Void toward the edge of the valley.
She felt the isolation of her position more than ever. She was the scout and the leader, but she was surrounded by wolves who were only waiting for a reason to tear her apart. She took a deep breath and focused on the fog.
The Yen was thicker even from here, and the air felt like it was being squeezed out of her lungs. Dawn began to grey the sky.
Ahead lay the valley.
Somewhere in that mist, Kota led Leiya away from the world. Kaola followed the grey tear down. "I have eyes on him," she signaled. "We maintain the chase."