THE SCREAMING WOODS
Thorns ripped at Kaelen's cheeks like tiny knives. He hauled Jax deeper into the Whisperwood, the suffocating smell of damp earth and rotting leaves thick in his throat. Behind them, the angry orange glow of torches shrunk, devoured by trees that twisted away from the poisoned sky like they were trying to escape their own roots. Every shadow felt alive, watching.
"My feet won't stick!" Jax gasped, his boots skidding uselessly over slick moss. Panic flared in his eyes, mirrored by the frantic violet sparks dancing at his fingertips – wild, untamed, terrifying.
Kaelen clamped down on Jax's thin wrist. The Ψ symbol on his palm ignited with a surge of bone-deep cold against the boy's racing pulse. "Focus on my hand, Jax! Heavy thoughts—think rocks! Anvils! Harken's fucking awful radish stew!"
A choked, half-hysterical laugh burst from Jax. And just like that, gravity bit. Jax's feet slammed onto the ground with a thud. For three desperate, gasping breaths, they pounded through the undergrowth, lungs burning.
Then—
A howl tore through the woods.
Not a wolf. Not the wind. This was the sound of worlds grinding together, metal shearing metal. It vibrated in Kaelen's teeth.
LIRA'S CHOICE
The heat radiating from the barn's blackened timbers stung Lira's face as she pressed her forehead against the charred wood. The acrid stench of burnt hay and something darker – fear, maybe hate – filled her nose. Her fingers traced a dark, sticky smear near the splintered doorframe. Kaelen's blood. Further down, the salt-stain of Jax's tears. Her throat tightened.
Bram's roar echoed across the trampled festival ground, thick with rage and pain from his cracked ribs: "Check the root cellars! Flush the little bastards out!"
Lira's fists clenched until her nails bit crescents into her palms. Cowards. Every single one of them. Yesterday, they'd ruffled Jax's hair, slipped him honey cakes. Today? Hunting her eight-year-old brother like he was vermin. Her eyes scanned the ashes near the doorway. A glint. Jax's little carved wooden horse, half-charred. She snatched it, the wood still warm, and shoved it deep into her pocket. A piece of him. A piece of before.
"Lira Vanya!" Bram's shadow fell over her, his torch held high, casting jagged, dancing light. Ale and fear soured his breath. "Where'd your devil-brother run? Spit it out!"
She lifted her chin, meeting his bloodshot eyes directly. No flinch. "Whisperwood." The word tasted like ash, but it was truth. Let him choke on it.
As Bram bellowed orders, rallying the hunters towards the treeline, Lira melted into the dead cornfield. The stalks, brittle and skeletal, clawed at her clothes. Above, the Glimmer-dust fell thicker now, a silent, gray shroud. It settled on her shoulders, cold. And then… she heard it. Not a hum. A song. Seven distinct notes, pure and aching, cutting through the silence. The lullaby Mother used to sing, every night, before the coughing sickness stole her breath and then her life. Lira froze. The dust… it was singing her mother's song.
HOUNDS OF HUNGER
The goddamn gravity-hound lunged. Kaelen yanked Jax sideways just as jaws lined with teeth like rusted, jagged shrapnel snapped shut on empty air where his neck had been. Hot breath, smelling of ozone and decay, washed over him. His collar tore.
"UP THE OAK! NOW!" Kaelen roared, shoving Jax towards the massive, ancient tree.
The hound circled below, a nightmare stitched together by a mad god. Molten amber eyes burned with mindless hunger. Its spine wasn't bone, but floating, disjointed vertebrae clicking against each other. Where its paws touched the moss, the earth didn't indent – it unmade, leaving perfect, shallow voids of nothingness.
Jax clung to a high branch, trembling so hard the leaves shook. "K-Kae..." he whimpered, pointing with a shaking finger. "There's... there's two more!"
Kaelen's Ψ-mark didn't just pulse; it turned to ice. Not fear this time. A screaming warning. He slammed his marked palm flat against the rough bark of the oak.
Memory bled silver, pouring into the ancient wood like water into thirsty roots:
Two hundred summers of roots drinking deep, cool rain.
The scratch of squirrel claws, the warmth of hidden nests.
The rhythmic thock-thock-thock of a woodpecker's drumming.
The great oak shivered. Then its branches, thick as a man's thigh, lashed down like colossal whips. One hound was skewered mid-leap, impaled on a splintered limb with a sickening crunch. Another was smashed flat against the ground, bones pulverized into dust that sparkled faintly violet before vanishing.
The third hound, impossibly fast, ignored the tree. It gathered its haunches and flowed upwards, aiming straight for Jax.
Jax screamed. Pure, unfiltered terror. Violet light didn't just flare; it detonated from him in a silent shockwave.
The hound didn't just stop. It folded. Its disjointed spine compacted like an accordion, bones snapping like dry kindling. It hung in the air for a split second, a broken doll, then dropped like a stone.
Silence crashed down, heavier than before. Then the sound of retching. Jax vomited over the branch, thin and watery, tears streaming down his face. "I didn't..." he sobbed, wiping his mouth with a shaky hand, smearing snot and tears. "I didn't... mean to kill it."
STATIC RAIN
Farmer Pell grumbled as he checked his rabbit snares near the Oakhaven outskirts. Empty. Again. "Fucking Glimmer-freaks," he muttered, kicking at a clump of withered grass. "Scaring off decent game." The gray dust coated his worn jacket like frost.
The rain started. Not water. Tiny droplets of liquid static. It sizzled faintly as it hit the dusty path, leaving tiny, perfect circles of... absence. No dampness. Just gone.
One drop landed on the back of Pell's weathered wrist.
His skin vanished. Just... gone. No blood. No pain. Not even a sting. Just a smooth, impossible circle of nothing where his flesh had been. He stared, dumbfounded. "Wha—?"
The Void-Locust landed beside him on the path.
It didn't have wings. It was a hole in reality, shaped vaguely like a mantis, edges crackling with that same hungry static. It turned its featureless void-head towards him.
Pell ran. Terror lent wings to his heavy boots. He didn't look back.
The locust didn't chase. It simply... flickered.
One heartbeat, Pell was sprinting. The next, he was floating three feet off the ground, screaming soundlessly. His legs were gone from the knees down. Clean cuts. No blood. Just... gone.
"Help m—" The plea died in his throat.
The locust flickered again. It stood before his floating torso. One razor-sharp forelimb, made of pure, devouring static, reached out and touched his chest.
Farmer Pell didn't scream. He unraveled:
His wife's name (Mara) dissolving like smoke.
The crisp, sweet taste of last autumn's apple cider fading on a phantom tongue.
The familiar ridge of the scar on his thumb from his first plow, decades ago, simply ceasing to be.
Gone. Utterly. Completely.
Where he had been, only a faint, fading crackle of static remained in the dusty air. Then nothing.
THE MOSS SANCTUARY
Kaelen found the cave hidden behind a curtain of floating stones – boulders hovering weightlessly in the air, water trickling around them. Inside, the air was cool and damp. Jax was curled into a tight ball on a thick bed of luminous green moss, crying silently, his shoulders shaking.
"It looked at me," Jax whispered, his voice raw and small, muffled against his knees. "The hound. Right before... I saw it. In its eyes. It was... hungry. And scared. And then I..." He couldn't finish.
Kaelen knelt, soaked a large leaf in the trickling water, and gently wiped the grime, tears, and dried sick from Jax's face. The boy flinched but didn't pull away.
"You saved us, Jax," Kaelen said softly. The Ψ on his palm pulsed with a soft, steady light. It wasn't comfort. It was undeniable truth.
Outside the cave mouth, the Whisperwood screamed. Not wind now. It was the sound of gravity tearing itself apart. Trees ripped from the earth with wrenching groans, roots dangling uselessly. Stones the size of cottages hovered silently, like tombstones waiting to fall.
Jax suddenly gripped Kaelen's torn tunic, his small fingers like ice. "Lira," he breathed, eyes wide with fresh terror. "She's alone back there. What if Bram...? What if those things...?"
Kaelen's chest locked tight, the air suddenly too thin.
What if? The words echoed, cold and sharp, in the hollow space left by the question.
THE SONG IN THE STATIC
Lira pressed herself deeper into the thorny embrace of the blackberry brambles, ignoring the scratches tearing at her skin and clothes. She watched, heart hammering against her ribs, as static rain hissed down. One drop landed squarely on the heel of Bram's heavy boot as he stumbled past, bellowing in pain and rage. The leather dissolved instantly, then his sock, then the skin, then the bone. He howled, hopping on one foot, frantically trying to brush the static away before collapsing and dragging himself towards town, leaving a smear of void on the path.
The Void-Locust turned its featureless, devouring face towards her hiding place.
Run. The command screamed in her mind. Her legs were stone.
The locust flickered—
—and then jerked. Like a puppet yanked by an unseen string.
Seven perfect notes shimmered in the charged air, cutting through the hiss of the static rain. Clear. Pure. Heartbreakingly familiar.
Lira's lips moved, forming the words of her mother's lullaby without a single sound escaping her tight throat.
The locust shuddered. The falling static rain froze mid-air, droplets hanging like obscene jewels.
In that impossible, suspended heartbeat, Lira saw:
Hairline cracks spiderwebbing across the locust's void-shell.
A faint, trapped glimmer of something deep within the darkness. Was that... a face?
Reflected in a nearby puddle of suspended static: the Architect's sorrowful eyes. He gave a single, slow nod.
Then the shimmering notes faded. The song ended.
The Void-Locust vanished. Not flickering away. Just... gone.
The static rain resumed its deadly fall.
Lira raised a trembling hand to her own throat. Had that song been her voice? Or had the dust sung through her? The silence offered no answer, only the relentless hiss of annihilation.