The voice lingered long after the words faded, like an echo caught in the marrow.Kaelis clutched her weapon tighter, feeling the tremor in her fingers. She hated that the Hunter could hear her fear without a single spoken word.
Elyon was the first to answer."No deal," he said, his voice low but steady. "We don't trade lives for passage."
The Hunter did not move. But the fissure's light bent around it, as if the air itself curved in deference."Then you trade your blood for your defiance."
Aloysius laughed short, sharp, dangerous. "You think it's me, don't you?" His shadow twisted unnaturally against the stone, stretching toward the Hunter as though drawn to it. "The false dawn you spoke of tell me what it means."
The Hunter's gaze shifted slightly, the grooves in its face deepening."A soul reborn where it should not exist. A thread stolen from the Loom of Endings. You wear that theft like a shroud."
Kaelis stepped between Aloysius and the Hunter. "If you want him, you'll have to go through all of us."
Silence. Then the Hunter's voice again, colder now."I will not hunt you, child. But the path you walk will lead you to my hands regardless."
The fissure flared suddenly, and Kaelis felt something sharp twist inside her chest like a hook in the ribs then release. The glow dimmed, and the Hunter was gone.
For a moment, no one moved.
Elyon let out a long breath. "It wasn't letting us go. It was… marking us."
Aloysius's smile was thin. "Good. Now I know it fears what I carry."
Kaelis didn't answer. She only looked at the fissure, where the afterimage of the Hunter's hollow eyes seemed burned into the light.
Somewhere ahead, the ruins continued. But they no longer felt like dead stone.They felt… aware.