The eastern march was slow.
Rivers now ran deeper, carving new paths through the land as if reclaiming forgotten courses. Mountains whispered, not in metaphor but in motion, shifting ever so slightly, birthing fresh ravines and vast, labyrinthine cave systems that pulsed faintly with latent energy.
Even the forests had grown strange. The trees once no taller than temple roofs, now stretched skyward like ancient titans, some rising over a hundred meters high. Their canopies blotted out the sun in places, and when the wind passed through, it carried with it whispers, old names, half-formed chants, the language of the world awakening once more.
Elyra walked ahead most days, attuned to the rhythm of the terrain. She listened to the hum beneath their feet, the tremors in the air. Ryu studied the pulse of the veins, noting where they bent unnaturally or shimmered with an unstable resonance. Yan kept close, balancing calm control with quiet readiness. Kalavan remained a shadow at their flank, constant, measured, ever watching.
It was on the tenth day that they reached the destination.
Thunder Hollow.
A scar in the land.
Once a narrow canyon, it had torn open during the Collapse and now shimmered with unstable spatial Qi. Lightning danced across the rock walls, striking the same locations with unnatural rhythm. Wind roared in spirals, rising from the hollow like breath from a deep lung. Birds did not fly here. No beasts lingered. The silence was a warning.
"This is a broken vein," Elyra said quietly. "The kind you don't cross unless you must."
Ryu studied the edge, the jagged crags pulsing faintly in the fading light. "I guess we must."
They used Qi-threaded anchors to secure their crossing, thin, luminous cords woven from reinforced spiritual energy that latched onto stone like living sinew. Ryu took the lead, compressing his Qi into spiralling drills that pierced the cliff face cleanly, embedding the anchors without disturbing the fragile rock shelf.
Yan followed, shaping footholds by burning them in from condensed flame. Her steps left behind glowing platforms that cooled into obsidian slabs, heat-etched with flame scorched patterns. Each step was deliberate, every foothold reinforced by layers of pressure-resistant flame to ensure they could hold weight even if the wind surged.
Kalavan moved like mist, his water Qi forming flexible tension lines that looped around the path. These ribbons adjusted to wind pressure, tightening when needed and releasing slack when the terrain dipped. His knives occasionally flicked out, severing loose rock before it could tumble and expose them.
Elyra brought up the rear. Her movements were subtle, hands tracing flickers of energy mid-air. She didn't walk so much as skip through folded space, her basic spatial techniques shortening steps, bending the climb. Her boots barely touched the stone. But midway across, she stopped cold.
Her hand hovered mid-sigil. Her eyes narrowed toward the sky.
The Qi around them twisted. A pressure like thunder held back by silence.
She turned, voice low.
"It's coming."
And then it tore open.
A rift, not a beast, but a wound in the world itself, peeled through the air like torn silk. Qi screamed through the breach.
From it emerged creatures of jagged bone and howling Qi, formless and warped. Screams echoed as they moved, no language, only hunger.
"Rift-born," Elyra said grimly. "They followed the mark."
their blades shimmered to life.
The fight began.
Kalavan surged forward first, a blur of motion. His blades shimmered with compressed wind Qi, slicing cleanly through the twisted Rift-born as he weaved between them. Each movement was calculated, precise cuts that didn't kill outright, but forced the creatures into retreat.
He was herding them.
Driving them toward Yan.
She stood firm, palm raised, flame coiling in spirals around her arms. With a single breath she unleashed a fan of phoenix fire, controlled bursts that detonated mid-air in radiant arcs. The blasts struck with surgical force, burning through the creatures' corrupted forms. The surrounding cliff faces trembled from the release of power, stone liquefying into glass where fire met rot.
Elyra circled the edge of the battlefield, her steps light but deliberate. She moved in flickers here, then gone, her distortion techniques folding time in tight loops. Each shift turned seconds into weapons, her strikes landing just before the enemy even noticed she had moved. She carved through their ranks in spiralling motions, not with brute force, but with impossible timing, as if she danced a few heartbeats ahead of the world, she wasn't the most powerful fighter but she had knowledge and experience on her side.
And Ryu?
Ryu reached inward.
He called the mark, not with words but with focus. The star flame responded, warm and cold all at once, the star flames power interwoven with his void Qi.
Qi flooded his meridians, spiralling like stars drawn into a singularity. The world around him slowed. The rift trembled.
He raised his hand and steadied his wrist with his other hand.
Space bent, light curving around him, sound dulling. The nearest rift screamed as the air folded inward. It didn't shatter; it crumpled. Folded like brittle cloth.
The wound collapsed.
And with it came a toll.
Not pain.
But a weight.
A crushing awareness, like the sky had leaned in and taken notice.
Ryu fell to one knee. His breath shattered in his lungs, not from fatigue but from something unseen, something vast beyond the veil that had looked back. Something that now knew him.
The battle ended.
The silence that followed was not peace. It was pressure held in suspension.
They camped on a ridge of smoothed stone, still warm with the residue of spent Qi. Lightning scars crackled faintly in the rock beneath them.
"You shouldn't use the mark like that again," Elyra warned, her gaze never quite meeting his. "I don't know the toll it might demand. That power is ancient. Alive."
Ryu looked up. "I didn't have a choice. I'm not even sure how I did it."
"She agreed, he didn't know how it was used. "But next time… it might open a door you can't close."
The fire crackled low, embers drifting like glowing insects into the dusk. The stars above had begun to shift in alignment. Constellations Ryu had never seen before now traced patterns through the heavens, fractal, spiralling, impossibly distant, yet somehow familiar. The mark on his hand tingled in response.
He lay back on the stone, arms folded behind his head. The warmth of the fire sank into his bones, easing the fatigue threaded through his limbs. Every part of him ached, not with pain, but with truth. The kind earned in battle, in fear, in knowing you'd glimpsed something bigger than yourself.
Moments later, Yan lay beside him.
Close, but not quite touching.
At first.
They stared up at the sky together. The flicker of the firelight danced across their faces, softening shadows and outlining the curve of her cheek, the quiet furrow in his brow.
After some time, Yan whispered, "You see more than we do, don't you? When you look up?"
Ryu turned to her, his voice barely above breath. "Sometimes, it's like… I'm staring at a memory that hasn't happened yet. Like I can see the past and future trying to speak."
She smiled faintly, not looking away. "Sounds lonely."
"It is," he said quietly.
A pause between the two sank in for a brief moment.
Yan turned back to the stars. "When I was younger, I dreamed of being chosen. I thought if I trained harder, fought harder, the bloodline would answer. It felt like a children's tale, distant, unreachable."
She gave a short, breathless laugh. "I never imagined I'd find it in a collapsing palace. Or alongside a boy who sees time in stars, are you sure I didn't hit my head too hard when the ground collapsed."
Ryu looked at her, the corner of his mouth lifting. "You're more than your bloodline, Yan, you're a person who deserves to have dreams of her own."
Her expression softened. "And you're more than some inheritance."
She hesitated, then reached across the space between them and took his hand.
Warm and steady.
His pulse steadied with hers, the noise in his mind quieting. He didn't pull away.
Her fingers curled around his, and her thumb traced the star-flame mark, barely touching it.
"Stay like this," she whispered. "Just for a little while."
"Okay," he murmured.
The stars above swirled. A bird cried faintly in the trees below. The fire continued its slow song.
And in the hush of a world learning to breathe again, Yan fell asleep holding his hand.
Ryu stayed awake a little longer, listening to the rhythm of her breath and the silence between the stars.
And for the first time in a long while, the mark on his hand didn't pulse with warning, or as a compass.
Only with quiet, steady light.