Riven's voice echoed down the corridor. He turned the corner at full speed, eyes wide with panic. Ashar was right behind him, faster but quieter, his expression a deep, cold fury barely held back. When Mae saw them, her knees buckled. The fear had finally caught her, swallowed her whole. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She just said:
"He's awake." Riven caught her just before she hit the floor. "Who?" he demanded, gently lowering her down. "Who's awake?" Ashar stopped beside them, but his gaze wasn't on Mae, it was down the hallway, past her room, toward the faintly flickering corridor where something had begun to, form. The walls were breathing. The stones pulsed, veins of black-light webbing through them.
The air warped as if the world around them were struggling to hold shape. "The Other. The Unbeing. The End that was promised." The words didn't come from Mae. They came from everywhere, echoing like thunder trapped behind glass. Ashar stepped forward, his jaw tight. "This isn't supposed to happen yet." Mae looked up at him, her voice small but certain. "He noticed me." Ashar turned, meeting her gaze. "Then he noticed too soon." Before any of them could react, a sound like glass breaking underwater cracked through the corridor behind them.
They all turned. Down the twisting hall, a void opened. A hole, not black, but colorless. Like existence was being unstitched, pixel by pixel. from within it, something tried to crawl through. A hand, made of shadow and fractured light. Fingers reaching not to touch, but to take. Riven backed up, cradling Mae protectively. "Ash,"
"I see it," Ashar said, and for the first time in days, he looked afraid. Just as the hand reached the threshold, Mae stood. Everyone turned toward her. She was glowing again, but not blue, not pink. This time, her glow was white. Blinding, pure, untamed.
"I won't let it take anything," she said, voice echoing unnaturally. "Not now." She raised her hand. The void screamed. Not aloud. Not in sound. But in pressure, every wall of the castle flexed as if reality was shrinking in pain. And then, Boom. The hand recoiled. The void closed.
Everything fell still. The only sound left was Mae's heavy breathing as the light around her faded. She collapsed again, but this time, caught by both Ashar and Riven. "She's getting stronger," Riven whispered, barely able to speak. Ashar didn't say a word. He just stared at the space where the void had been, his hand on Mae's back, gently pressing to check her heartbeat. It was still there. Fast. Alive. But changed. Forever changed. The castle shook again, this time from footsteps. Doors slammed open. Boots hit stone. Yells carried down the corridor. Lucien was first through the hall, blades already drawn. Sethis and Kaine followed, tense and ready for war.
But what they saw, wasn't war. It was aftermath. Mae slumped between Ashar and Riven, unconscious but glowing faintly, like embers after a wildfire. The air still tingled with leftover pressure, buzzing faintly like static. The walls shimmered from where the void had tried to tear through the corridor. Lucien froze. His weapons lowered, expression hardening as he scanned the cracked wall, the raw energy, Mae's limp body. "…What the hell just happened?"
"Something reached through," Ashar said, voice low. Riven nodded. "She stopped it."
"No," Ashar added, "she repelled it." Kaine, oddly quiet, moved to get a better look. "Repelled what?" Ashar turned, gaze sharp. "Something older than all of us. Something that knows her name. Something she's been holding back without knowing it." Mae stirred in their arms, her breath coming back, shallow but steady. Lucien stepped closer. "Was it the One from the Void, the being tied to her creation?" Riven nodded solemnly. "Yeah. And it came early. Way too early." Sethis cursed under his breath. "Why now?"
"Because it sensed her," Ashar muttered, brushing Mae's hair from her face with a surprisingly gentle motion. "Because she's growing too fast, getting too strong. And it knows it's losing." Kaine spoke softly now, something unreadable in his voice. "And it came to take her?"
"No," Riven replied, voice like stone. "It came to unmake her."
The corridor fell silent, heavy with a fear none of them dared name. The air still hummed, faintly distorted, as though the void's presence lingered just beyond the walls, listening. Mae's eyelids fluttered, her voice a broken whisper between them. "It knew me." Ashar's jaw tightened, his hand unconsciously curling into a fist. He didn't look at the others, didn't move his gaze from her pale, glowing face. Riven swallowed hard, his wings flickering once. "Ash, if that was only its hand-" Lucien cut in, his voice lower, darker. "Then what's the rest of it waiting for?" A cold draft swept the corridor, though no doors were open. The walls pulsed once, like a heartbeat, and then went still.
Ashar stood slowly, lifting Mae into his arms with a care that felt unnatural for someone like him. His voice was quiet, but it carried enough weight to make all four of the others straighten. "It noticed her," he said again, almost to himself. Then, sharper: "Seal the entire wing. Now. If it can reach through once, it can do it again."
Lucien's chains slithered into the walls before he even nodded. Sethis's fingers danced over invisible threads of code, sealing the corridors. Riven stayed close, his eyes on Mae's faintly glowing skin. Kaine didn't move. His voice broke the silence one last time, soft but cutting through the tension like a blade.
"What happens when it comes all the way through?" Ashar didn't answer. He just held Mae tighter, as if the answer was already written in the way her body still shimmered in his arms. And somewhere, deep in the stone beneath their feet, the castle exhaled. Not relief. Not safety. But warning.