The serene blue light surrounding Jis didn't fade; it froze.
Inside the meditation, the silence shifted. It ceased to be peaceful and became absolute, like the airless void between stars. Jis felt a sudden, sickening lurch, a sensation of being pulled upwards by the back of his neck.
His perspective snapped.
He was no longer sitting on the stone slab. He was floating ten feet above it.
He looked down and saw himself—a motionless figure in armor, hands resting on knees, the sword glowing faintly. He saw Mith leaning against the charred beam nearby, smiling softly at the wind.
I'm out, Jis realized, a cold spike of panic piercing his calm. I went too deep. I've severed the tether.
He tried to descend, to slip back into his own skin, but the air around his physical body felt solid, like impenetrable glass. He was a ghost haunting his own vessel.
"Mith!" he shouted, but he had no mouth, no lungs. The sound was just a thought that dissolved in the ether. Mith didn't flinch.
Jis focused his will. He had to wake up.
Attempt One: He visualized his right hand. Move, he commanded. Just a finger.
Nothing. His body remained a statue.
Attempt Two: He tried to force his eyelids open. He pushed against the darkness with all his mental strength, straining until his spectral form felt like it was tearing.
The eyes stayed shut.
Attempt Three: Panic began to thrash within him. He tried to lunge, to physically tackle his own body back into submission. He bounced off the invisible barrier, drifting higher.
Attempt Four, Five, Six: He was screaming now, a silent, formless shriek. He clawed at the barrier, thrashing in the void. The tie to his body was thinning. He could feel the cold of the spirit realm creeping in, the Whispering Moor trying to claim a soul that had wandered too far from its home.
He was going to drift away. He was going to become just another ghost in the fog.
Then, through the rising terror, a memory cut through. The smell of old parchment and sandalwood. The heavy hand of Master Akhand on his shoulder during his first year of training.
"The mind is a kite, Jis," the Master had said, his voice stern but kind. "It loves the sky. But if you cut the string, you do not fly. You are lost. When the sky takes you, do not fight the wind. Remember the earth that holds the spool."
The Mantra. The grounding verse Akhand had forced them to memorize until their tongues were numb.
Jis stopped thrashing. He stopped fighting the barrier. He floated in the void, gathered the scattered fragments of his terror, and focused them into a single point of absolute dedication.
Attempt Seven.
He didn't push. He didn't scream. He simply projected the words into the core of his silent chest, feeling every syllable like a weight dropping into the ocean.
"Flesh is the forge," Jis recited in the silence of his mind.
"Blood is the anchor."
"I am the steel that does not drift."
"I am here."
The effect was instantaneous.
The invisible glass shattered. The void collapsed inward. Jis was sucked downward with the force of a falling anvil.
GASPP!
Jis's physical eyes flew open.
He sucked in a lungful of cold air so violently he choked, his body jerking forward on the stone slab. The blue aura around him shattered into sparks. His sword clattered to the ground.
"Jis?" Mith was there in an instant, dropping to a crouch beside him. "What happened? Your energy... it just vanished for a second."
Jis was trembling, sweat beading on his forehead despite the morning chill. He gripped his knees, staring at the dirt, feeling the blessed heaviness of his own arms, the ache in his back, the grit in his boots. He had never been so happy to feel gravity.
"I... I went too far," Jis wheezed, his voice raspy. "I lost the tether. I couldn't get back in."
He looked up at Mith, his eyes wide and haunted.
"The Mantra," Jis whispered, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. "Akhand's grounding mantra. It's the only thing that pulled me back. Mith... the darkness out here... it's not just around us. It's trying to pull us out of our own bodies."
Mith looked at his friend, then at the misty horizon where the stone was pointing.
Mith said grimly, offering a hand to pull Jis up. "We stay safe now. We have to push harder ."
Jis grasped Mith's forearm, his grip bruisingly tight. The physical contact anchored him better than any spell. He hauled himself up, his legs feeling like jelly but holding. He reached down and retrieved his sword, sliding it into the scabbard with a sharp clack. The weight of the steel against his hip was a comfort; it was real, solid, here.
"I'm alright," Jis said, his voice steadying. "Let's not linger. The silence here... it's too loud."
Mith nodded, not calling him out on the lingering tremor in his hands. He pulled the Slate from his pocket. The violet beam cut through the morning mist like a lighthouse flare, unwavering in its direction: North-West, into the deepest, most jagged throat of the canyon lands.
They left the smoking ruins of Harrow's Creek behind, stepping back into the muck of the Whispering Moor. The atmosphere had shifted. It wasn't the empty quiet of a wasteland anymore; it was the held breath of a predator waiting to strike. Every shadow seemed to stretch toward them, and the wind carried faint, unintelligible whispers that sounded too much like old friends.
"Keep your mind shielded," Mith warned, his eyes scanning the ridgeline, his palm warming with ready magic. "If the darkness tries to pull you out again..."
"It won't," Jis cut in, his hand resting on his sword hilt. He touched the cool metal, reciting the mantra silently once more. Flesh is the forge. "I know where I belong now."
But the real mantra Jis told from his mind never came out . It was just vibrations.
Hymmmmmmm...