# Chapter 763: The Hunter's Trap
The voice of Soren, warm and impossibly close, was a hook in Nyra's heart. It felt real. The scent of sun-baked dust and leather, the low timbre of his voice, the unwavering faith he always had in her—it was a perfect, poison-laced memory. *I'm waiting for you.* Her fingers tightened on the Shard of Hope, its cool surface a stark contrast to the phantom warmth spreading through her chest. She knew it was a lie, a desperate gambit from a cornered beast, but the sheer precision of it was terrifying. The Withering King wasn't just a monster of raw power; it was wearing Valerius's mind like a mask, and it knew exactly where to press.
"Nyra?" Kaelen's voice was rough, cutting through the illusion. He stood before her, his massive frame a solid wall against the insidious whisper. "Don't listen. It's not him."
She took a sharp breath, the vision shattering like glass. The cold, dead air of the Sunken Quarter rushed back in, carrying the metallic tang of the fallen guardian. "I know," she said, her voice strained. "But it's getting better at this." She looked from the sealed doors to her team. Elara was still at the control panel, her brow furrowed in concentration, while Lyra stood guard, her own expression a mixture of fear and fierce determination. Kestrel was already scouting the perimeter, his movements economical and sharp. "The door is the puzzle. The King is the distraction. We solve the door, we ignore him."
"Easier said than done," Elara murmured, her fingers tracing a glowing sigil on the panel. "This isn't just a story. It's a philosophical trap. The First Spark… the Great Unraveling… it's asking for a justification. Why should creation be allowed to exist if it only leads to suffering?" The symbols on the panel shifted, rearranging themselves into a new, more complex pattern. A soft chime echoed, and a line of text burned into existence beneath the sigils: *To build, one must first sacrifice. What will you give?*
As if on cue, the air around them shimmered. The grey stone walls of the antechamber dissolved, replaced by the vibrant, sun-drenched spires of Sableki, the League's capital. Nyra could smell the salt of the distant sea, hear the murmur of the bustling markets, and see her father, Lord Vane, standing before her with a proud smile. "You've done it, my daughter," he said, his voice rich with approval. "You've proven our family's strength. Leave this folly. Come home. The League needs you. I need you." He held out a hand, an offer of everything she had ever fought for: acceptance, power, a place where she belonged.
Kaelen snorted, unimpressed. "A cheap trick." He drew his blade, the steel singing in the magically conjured air. "It's just light and sound."
"It's more than that," Nyra whispered, her gaze locked on the image of her father. The temptation was a physical ache. To go home, to rest, to be free of this crushing weight. But she saw the flicker in her father's eyes, the cold, calculating glint that was not his own. It was the King, searching for a crack in her armor. She raised the Shard of Hope. "This is my home now." A pulse of pure, white light erupted from the crystal, not an attack, but a wave of absolute truth. The illusion of Sableki wavered, distorted, and then ripped apart, revealing the grimy, ash-choked walls of the Sunken Quarter once more. The shard's light faded, leaving Nyra feeling drained, the cost of that single act of defiance a heavy weight on her soul.
The Withering King's voice returned, no longer Soren's, but a cold, furious hiss that slithered into the cracks of their minds. *You will all break. One by one.*
The control panel chimed again. The line of text vanished, replaced by a new one: *The path forward is not given, but earned. Show me your worth.* The concentric rings on the panel spun, the symbols blurring into a vortex of light before resolving into a three-dimensional map of the Bloom-Wastes, projected into the air above the console. A single, glowing path was highlighted, winding through treacherous-looking canyons and across crumbling bridges. It was the only way forward.
"A map," Kestrel said, stepping closer to study the projection. "It's showing us a way out of here. Through the wastes." He pointed to a narrow canyon on the map, its entrance marked by a pulsing beacon. "This looks like the most direct route. If we move fast, we can be clear of this sector by nightfall."
Elara shook her head, her eyes still fixed on the console. "It's too simple. It's a test. The King wants us to follow this path."
"It's the only path," Kaelen countered, gesturing to the sealed doors behind them. "We can't go back through there, and I don't fancy waiting around for him to throw another one of those tin cans at us. We follow the map. We stay sharp."
Nyra looked at the glowing path, then at the exhausted faces of her team. Kaelen was right. They were low on options and lower on energy. Staying put was a death sentence. "Alright," she decided, her voice firm. "We follow the path. But we stay together. No one strays." She looked at Kestrel. "You take point. Ruku, you're with him. Your eyes are better than ours in this light."
The giant, mute man gave a slow, deliberate nod, his hand resting on the crude axe at his belt. He and Kestrel moved toward the far wall of the antechamber, where a section of stone had slid away, revealing a dark, narrow passage that perfectly matched the entrance to the canyon on the map. The air spilling from it was cold and smelled of ancient dust and something else, something acrid and sterile, like ozone after a lightning strike.
As they stepped out of the antechamber and into the passage, the world seemed to shrink. The walls were made of the same grey, compressed ash as the rest of the ruins, but here they were unnaturally smooth, as if worn by a million unseen hands. The only sound was the crunch of their boots on the gritty floor. The passage opened up into the vast, shadowed maw of the canyon. Towering walls of jagged rock, stained black by centuries of ash-fall, rose hundreds of feet into the sky, choking out what little light filtered through the perpetual grey overcast. The air was still and heavy, the silence so profound it felt like a pressure against their eardrums.
The path on the map was clear. It led down into the canyon floor, then followed a dry riverbed toward a distant, narrow pass. Kestrel moved with practiced ease, his eyes constantly scanning the shadows. Ruku bez followed a few paces behind, his massive presence a silent comfort. He moved with a strange grace for a man of his size, his head tilted as if listening to a sound no one else could hear.
They had been walking for nearly an hour when Kestrel stopped dead. He pointed ahead. "There. The riverbed." The path on the map led directly across it. The ground looked solid, a flat expanse of packed ash and grey silt. It was the most level ground they had seen since entering the canyon. "Looks safe enough," Kestrel said, taking a step forward.
A hand the size of a ham hock clamped down on his shoulder, stopping him cold. Ruku bez. The giant man wasn't looking at Kestrel. His gaze was fixed on the riverbed, his brow furrowed in concentration. He grunted, a low, guttural sound of warning, and pointed with his free hand.
"What is it?" Kaelen growled, his hand already on his sword hilt.
Ruku just grunted again, more insistently this time. He took a small piece of loose rock from the canyon wall and tossed it underhand into the center of the riverbed. The pebble sailed through the air, a tiny black arc against the grey. But when it was about ten feet from the ground, it stopped. It hung in the air for a fraction of a second, shimmering like a heat mirage, and then it was gone. Not falling, not shattering. It was simply erased from existence.
A collective gasp went through the group. Nyra felt a cold dread creep up her spine. She had seen that effect before. In the Ladder, when High Inquisitor Valerius had used his Gift to nullify another competitor's power. He had created a zone of absolute nothingness, a void where magic and matter simply ceased to be.
"It's a trap," Lyra whispered, her voice trembling.
"He's learning," Nyra said, her voice grim. "The big illusions didn't work. So now he's using Valerius's tactics. Smaller, more precise. More lethal." She looked at the shimmering air, which was almost invisible now that she knew what to look for. A faint distortion, like a flaw in a pane of glass. The nullifying field stretched across the entire riverbed, a silent, invisible wall. Anyone who stepped into it would be unmade.
"So we go around," Kaelen said, his tone pragmatic. He scanned the canyon walls. "We can climb."
Elara, who had been studying the projection from the shard, now held it up, the map glowing faintly in her palm. Her face had gone pale. "We can't," she said, her voice tight with dawning horror. "Look." She pointed to the map. The glowing path they were following was not just a suggestion. It was a line drawn on a finite grid. The canyon walls were marked as impassable cliffs. The riverbed was the only way forward. But it wasn't just a trap. It was a choice.
She zoomed the projection out, showing the larger section of the Bloom-Wastes they were in. The glowing path from the door led them into the canyon. But there were other paths, faint, almost invisible lines branching off from their main route. All of them, she now saw, were dead ends. They led to collapsed tunnels, to sheer drops, to impassable ravines. Every single one. The only viable route was the one they were on, and it led directly to the invisible wall of nothingness.
"He's not just trying to kill us," Elara said, her mind racing as she connected the pieces. "He's herding us." She looked up from the map, her eyes wide with understanding as she scanned the surrounding terrain. The high, unscalable walls. The single, obvious path. The perfectly placed, invisible trap. "Every path we take, every choice the map presents… it's all an illusion. A false choice. They all lead to one place." Her voice dropped to a whisper, the final, terrible realization landing with the weight of a tombstone. "A dead end."