"Want is the first frontier; everything else comes after."
The boy's warning hadn't even finished vibrating in the air before the forest changed.
Not visibly.
Not dramatically.
Just… wrong.
The leaves stilled.
The wind died mid-breath.
The shadows stretched upward instead of sideways, bending at angles the eye wasn't meant to understand.
Aarav felt it first.
A cold pressure behind his ribs, like a hand pushing from the inside. The hum that had been whispering all morning surged—sudden, sharp, electric. His heartbeat faltered, then synced to something not his own.
A pulse.
Steady.
Distant.
Approaching.
Amar stepped forward, maintaining a low stance, knife drawn. He didn't raise it yet. He wasn't fighting. He was **gauging**. Calculating the shape of something he had never faced.
Meera pulled the boy into her arms and backed against the fallen tree's roots, keeping one hand on Aarav's sleeve as if that alone could anchor him.
Arin didn't move at all.
He simply said, very quietly:
"Stay behind me."
A flicker appeared between the trees—
not light,
not shadow,
but the absence of both.
A thin slit in the air, shimmering like a crack in glass. The edges glowed faintly with colorless light, bending the space around it.
Aarav felt his breath catch.
"That's not a person."
"No," Arin said. "It's a will without form."
The slit widened.
And the shard stepped through.
It didn't have a body—only suggestion.
A distortion.
A ripple of intent shaped into something barely humanoid.
A hollow silhouette.
Limbs formed from trembling air.
A head shaped from refracted light.
No face.
But the sense of one.
The boy buried his face into Meera's shoulder, trembling.
The shard's arrival sent a shock wave through the forest—a silent one—but Aarav felt it hit him like a blow.
His knees buckled.
Amar caught him, gritting his teeth. "Stay with us."
Aarav's vision blurred at the edges. "It's… looking at me."
"It doesn't have eyes," Meera said.
"It doesn't need them," Arin replied.
The shard tilted—barely—like a dog catching a distant scent.
Then it moved.
Not walking.
Not floating.
Just appearing a few steps closer in an instant.
Amar shoved Aarav behind him. "Try that again."
The shard tilted its head.
No emotion.
No understanding.
Only purpose.
Arin raised his staff. "Stop."
The shard paused.
Not because it listened.
But because it recognized something.
A faint echo—
old, familiar—
embedded in Arin's staff.
Aarav felt the resonance spike in his chest again.
"No—don't provoke it—"
The shard reacted.
Fast.
A ripple surged toward them—like compressed air, like memory striking physical space. Amar grabbed Aarav and threw both of them sideways as the blast carved a clean line through the soil where they had been standing.
Meera ducked behind the tree, shielding the boy.
Arin slammed the staff down.
A barrier flared up—faint, strained, bending under the shard's pressure.
"This is not a fight we win!" Arin shouted. "Anchors destabilize shards—Aarav, step away!"
Aarav stumbled back. "It's following me!"
"That's why you need to run!"
But the shard wasn't chasing.
Not yet.
It was sensing.
Searching.
The presence inside Aarav—the resonance—called to it.
A pull.
A tether.
A gravitational bond formed from echoes older than history.
Aarav felt it like a hand closing around his lungs.
The shard twitched.
And then—
It lunged.
Not at Arin.
Not at Amar.
Not at Meera.
Straight for Aarav.
Amar moved faster than Aarav had ever seen him, slamming into him and shoving him out of the shard's path. For a fraction of a second, the distortion clipped Amar's shoulder—
—and he staggered, dropping to one knee.
"Amar!" Meera cried.
Aarav grabbed him. "What did it do?"
Amar gritted his teeth. "Cold. Inside. Like it tried to pull something out of me."
Arin's voice cracked with urgency. "A shard extracts memory. It **hollows** whatever it touches. If it reaches Aarav, it won't stop."
The shard reoriented.
The air around it vibrated like a plucked string.
Aarav stood, heart pounding. "It won't leave me alone."
"No," Arin said. "Because you are what it was sent for."
The shard twitched again.
Aarav felt something tear inside him—
the resonance trying to **answer** the call.
"No—no, stop—" he gasped, pressing a hand to his chest.
Meera ran to him, grabbing his face in both hands, forcing eye contact.
"Aarav. Look at me. Not it."
He tried.
He tried to focus.
But the shard's pull grew stronger—
like the first fracture,
like the echo in the fields,
like his name whispered from the ground.
Arin lifted his staff again.
"Aarav—listen to me—Anchors attract shards because shards are pieces of Anchors lost. You have to shut the resonance down. With intent. With emotion. Push it away."
Aarav gasped. "I don't know how!"
"Then learn! Now!"
The shard blurred forward—
Amar threw his knife—
Meera pulled the boy tighter—
Arin raised his staff—
But none of it happened in time.
The shard reached Aarav—
—and touched him.
Aarav's vision exploded.
Not with pain.
With **memory**.
Not his own.
A city of white stone collapsing under a burst of silent force.
A man standing alone in the center.
A crown splitting down the middle.
A scream swallowed by layers of reality.
A choice made too late.
A world breaking like glass.
Aarav collapsed.
The shard recoiled, shuddering violently—as if shocked by what it found, as if the touch hurt _it_ more than him.
Arin seized the moment.
He slammed his staff into the ground—
once
twice
three times—
A pulse burst outward.
The shard froze mid-motion.
Cracks rippled through its form.
Light bled from its edges.
Then, with a sound like air tearing,
it broke—
shattering into fragments of pale light that scattered upward like sparks into the canopy.
Silence.
Aarav lay trembling, chest burning.
Amar rushed to him, gripping his shoulders. "Aarav—Aarav, look at me—are you here?"
Meera knelt beside him, fear in her eyes. "Stay with us, please—"
Aarav dragged in a breath, voice hoarse.
"I saw him."
Arin's face paled. "The Voided King?"
Aarav nodded weakly.
"He saw me too."
The forest seemed to exhale around them—
but the world had never felt heavier.
"He didn't know what he wanted yet, but the Vale had already begun listening."