The first strike did not come from ahead.
It came from where the world had failed to be.
The absence thickened not darkening, not moving, but deciding. Space did not tear. It yielded. From that yielding, a limb unfolded, wrong in ways anatomy had never prepared language for. It was not grown. Not summoned. Not created.
It was remembered.
It struck Rai mid-step.
The blow carried no momentum the body could read, no windup to flinch from. One instant Rai was moving; the next he was airborne, body folding sideways as if gravity had abruptly changed its mind about him. He slammed into stone hard enough to crack breath from his lungs, pain blooming white-hot across his ribs.
Training dragged him upright before agony could anchor him.
Another shape emerged.
Then another.
They did not arrive. They resolvedcoalescing out of negation, outlines forming where expectation failed. They were not creatures in any biological sense. They possessed no symmetry, no constant silhouette, no agreement with themselves. Their forms shifted like abandoned concepts edges blurring, mass redistributing, limbs reconfiguring as though reality itself were still negotiating whether they should be allowed to finish existing.
"Contact!" Darius barked.
Rai reacted on reflex, instinct screaming louder than reason.
Lightning didn't answer his call
Not resisted.
Not suppressed.
Simply… absent.
The space where power should have been offered nothing back.
The delay between instinct and understanding almost killed him.
A strike sheared through the air where his ribs had been a heartbeat earlier. Stone detonated outward in a violent spray, fragments slamming into him like shrapnel. Rai staggered back, eyes wide, breath hitching as comprehension finally caught up.
"…Right," he rasped. "No Aether."
The Path did not forgive the mistake.
Iria moved before panic could take root.
No phasing. No slipping between instants. No elegant theft of space.
Just motion.
Pure, brutal, unenhanced motion muscle and bone and discipline honed long before power had ever answered her call. She closed distance in a heartbeat, pivoted, and drove a kick into the nearest form.
The impact landed.
Pain screamed up her leg like a curse.
The creature recoiled not wounded, not damaged, but forced to acknowledge resistance. Its shape rippled violently, as though offended by the implication that it could be struck.
That was enough to make it notice her.
It retaliated.
Iria twisted aside by instinct alone, the blow tearing past her shoulder. Flesh split. Blood arced sharp and sudden, striking the stone in a line too vivid for the colorless world around it.
Veyla was already moving.
No knives.
Hands instead.
She slid low, sweeping a leg, striking joints that should not have existed but did. Her blows were precise, anatomical by habit if not by truth. The thing staggered half a step, its outline destabilizing, form shuddering as if briefly uncertain what shape it preferred.
Half a step was all Darius needed.
He brought his staff down with everything he had left.
The impact rang through the Path like a funerary bell, a sound too deep, too final, vibrating not just stone but context. The creature collapsed inward not destroyed, not slain, but undone, its outline unraveling as if its permission to remain had been revoked.
Then the second one struck.
It hit Veyla full-force.
She flew.
Her body slammed into stone hard enough to crack it, shock tearing the breath from her chest in a raw, broken gasp. Pain followed but worse was the sudden, naked finality of it.
No Aether to soften the blow.
No hidden margin of survival.
Just impact. Just consequence.
Lyria screamed.
Not sang.
Screamed.
There was no resonance to it, no harmonic authority, no shaping of reality just raw sound, ripped from her chest and hurled into the silence. It carried no power, yet it fractured attention.
The creature hesitated.
Its form stuttered like a thought interrupted mid-formation.
Rai lunged barehanded.
His fist connected with something dense and merciless. Pain detonated up his arm, bones protesting, tendons screaming but he grabbed hold anyway, teeth bared as he grappled mass that should not have been solid.
It twisted.
Rai flew.
Kael intercepted the next strike meant to finish him.
Shoulder met void-mass.
The collision rattled Kael's skull, tore muscle, and drove breath from his chest in a sharp, wet gasp. Something tore inside him. Warmth spread down his side, slick and undeniable.
This wasn't combat.
It was erosion.
They were not being tested for strength.
They were being measured for how long they would refuse to stop standing.
Another blow caught Darius square in the chest.
He fell.
The Path shuddered.
For a fraction of a second, absence thickened heavy, evaluative as if considering whether to complete an ancient design long left unfinished.
Then
The shadows bent.
Not moved.
Bent.
Time stuttered.
The creatures froze mid-motion, their unstable forms blurring as if trapped between frames of existence.
A figure stepped out from the distortion.
Not emerged.
Arrived late.
Cipher stood where shadow overlapped shadow, hood drawn low. His face was wrong not hidden, but inconsistent. Each glance offered a different configuration of features, none persisting long enough to be trusted or remembered. The eye slid off him, refusing to settle.
He did not raise a hand.
He did not shout.
"Enough," he said.
The word landed behind the moment rewriting it.
The creatures recoiled instantly, collapsing inward, dragged back into absence as though seized by an authority older than instinct, older than fear.
Silence returned.
Not peace.
Listening silence.
Rai coughed, blood dark on his lips. "Please tell me," he rasped, "that's one of us."
Cipher tilted his head.
Or perhaps the world tilted around him.
"Define us," he replied.
His voice layered strangely one tone speaking, another echoing a heartbeat too late, as though causality itself were struggling to keep up.
Darius forced himself upright, staff shaking in his grip. His gaze locked onto Cipher with the clarity of someone who had once judged gods and survived the judgment.
"They obeyed you," Darius said. "That makes you dangerous."
Cipher's hood shifted. For an instant, his face resembled something ancient. Then young. Then unfamiliar.
"They remember," Cipher said. "I remind."
Tessa stepped forward slowly, disbelief sharpening into recognition sharp enough to cut.
"No," she whispered. "That's not possible. The timestamps. The dead channels. The replies before I sent the queries"
Cipher turned toward her.
For just a moment, her breath caught.
"Yes," he said gently. "You spoke into obsolete frequencies. I answered from between seconds."
Rai grimaced. "So you've been watching us."
Cipher's presence rippled.
"Observing Kael," he corrected. "Sometimes."
Kael stiffened.
"That's stalking," Rai muttered.
Cipher's shadow folded then unfolded again a pace to the left. He was no longer standing where he had been.
"Intent defines trespass," he said. "Mine was calibration."
"That's worse," Veyla said flatly.
Cipher inclined his head, accepting the judgment without objection.
"The Path ahead rejects acceleration," he continued. "Rest is advised. Blood loss noted. Structural integrity… compromised."
Darius studied him carefully. "Why intervene?"
Cipher paused.
The silence stretched long enough to become uncomfortable.
Then
"Because gods mistake stillness for obedience," he said. "And I do not."
Kael exhaled slowly.
The Path relaxed just enough.
They moved only a short distance further before exhaustion decided for them. No argument. No strategy. Bodies demanded pause.
They rested on stone smoothed by passage older than memory.
Cipher did not sit.
He stood apart, half-present, gaze fixed on the deeper absence ahead.
Lyria finally asked the question none of them wanted answered.
"What are you?"
Cipher's form blurred.
"I am what history edits out," he said. "The shadow left when systems ascend and forget who paid the cost."
The Path did not contradict him.
Far ahead, something else shifted.
Not attacking.
Preparing.