The voice hit like thunder inside Ren's skull.
He doubled over, fingers clawing at his temples as the pendant seared against his chest, a hot coin pressed into bone.
Around him, the Devourer's hiss sliced through the air and the village fell into a ragged chorus of screams and shouted orders.
"Ren!"
Kira's shout cut through the noise.
Her goggles were fogged; her hands flew over the glider's harness.
"If you don't move now, Li won't make it!"
Ren shoved past collapsed crates, boots slipping in ash.
The scar along his jaw tightened like a pulley.
"Pick—what?" he rasped.
The voice hammered again, sharper.
A translucent line of washed light blinked at the edge of his vision, the words hanging like a verdict.
The pendant throbbed, counting down or warning.
Ren set his jaw and ran toward the barn where Old Li moved like a whetstone—firm, unquestioning.
"Hold the line!" Li yelled, shoving two children into a skiff with arms that did not tremble.
The Devourer's shadow licked the barn roof; slates powdered into dust where its mist brushed.
"Kira—now!" Ren ordered, grabbing a splintered beam to bar the door.
His hands burned where rope had sliced them earlier; blood slicked the wood.
The pendant flared against his sternum, a furnace hiding beneath cloth.
A pirate staggered through the smoke, face blank.
"This thing—" he breathed, then bolted, leaving a trail of half-spoken curses.
"Don't run!" Li snapped, planting a foot to brace a woman who faltered. "We move together!"
Ren planted the beam, forcing the door to hold while Kira wrestled with the glider's release.
"I need a wedge!" she hissed, thumbs stiff and slick with oil.
"Here."
Ren jammed a length of bar into the mechanism and shoved, muscles flaring.
The glider shuddered, then budged.
Fabric snapped tight like a drumhead.
A child's sob turned into a cough; someone clutched a sack of Celestial Grains and ran.
The Devourer's keening ramped—high and corrosive—scraping at ears.
A gust colder than winter pressed at Ren's face; breath came out in ragged clouds.
His arm ached where the saw had bitten, a dull ache threaded with hot pins.
The pendant pulsed, then dimmed, then pulsed harder, as if sensing the noise.
Ren gritted his teeth and held the door.
"Kira!" he barked. "Get them to the dock. I'll—"
"Don't be stupid!" Kira snapped, eyes flashing. "You bloody promised you wouldn't chase storms without fixing a plan."
That promise snagged like a hook.
Ren answered by planting his shoulder against the frame, muscles burning, the world coarse and immediate.
A ripple of ash crawled across the courtyard; where it passed, grass wilted and color leeched away.
The Devourer didn't strike like a beast—it tasted like a winter and moved like smoke with teeth.
Villagers stumbled, faces slack, then snapped back with a shove and a swear.
"Make the signal!" Li roared. "If the guard island hears—if they hear—"
"They hear if we launch," Kira said, breath ragged as she hauled a child into the glider harness.
Her hands shook so hard the rivet trembled on the wing.
"Ren, now!"
Ren reached for the glider, wood biting his palms.
The voice in his head dropped into a single imperative.
He set his jaw and sprinted for the barn mouth where Li flung a child over his shoulder and turned to meet the thing.
Ren hit the open yard at full speed.
Muscles screamed, lungs burning like coals.
The Devourer loomed—an undulation of shadow threaded with violet that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Tendrils of fog coalesced into teeth; each motion left a smear of ash on the earth.
"Behind you!" Li shouted, hauling another child.
His face was a map of lines cut by sun and worry.
Ren slammed into the gap between Li and the creature, shouldering a heap of spilled grain sacks to form a broken barricade.
The Devourer hissed and reached, tendrils stabbing like night-blooms.
A tendril lashed across Ren's forearm.
Cold exploded into him, white-hot and numbing at once.
The skin took the strike and did not tear—pale plates flashed like fish-scales beneath mud, then settled back into ordinary flesh.
Pain flared, a bright comet that tore through muscle and sent hot shock running up his arm.
"By the gods—" a villager breathed, hands up to his mouth.
Ren pushed on instinct.
He drove his shoulder into the creature's nearest tendril and felt it thud like wet fabric.
The pendant burned, and the voice in his head magnified into syllables that tasted like iron.
He staggered, knees bending like springs, then shoved again.
The cost came immediate—a wash of nausea and a ringing down his spine that dulled his vision at the edges.
Each breath became heavier, like wading through water.
Still, he held the line.
Kira sprayed powder into a pirate's face and seized a rope, hauling a child behind the barricade.
"Ren! Use the glider!" she yelled. "Get to the dock—don't get stuck here!"
Ren patted at his breast where the pendant pressed, then shoveled another sack to block a new hole.
The Devourer withdrew a fraction, drawn by the shifting panic, but its bulk already marked a path of rot where it had brushed the soil.
The creature's core brightened—violet at the center, a pulse like a bruised heart.
It flexed as if smelling for warmth, and its tendrils focused like fingers pointing to Li, to the children, to the archive of the village's life.
"Li—move!" Ren cried.
But Old Li moved slower than Ren wanted, not out of weakness but out of decision.
He planted his feet and met the creature's gaze, face calm as a weathered stone.
Ren slammed a hand onto the glider's wing and felt the varnish tack under his palm.
The decision cut like a blade.
"Get the signal," Li said, voice low and certain.
He shoved a child toward Kira, then stepped into the line of the Devourer's approach as if making himself an anchor.
"No."
Ren ripped off a strap and flung it around a post.
His fingers trembled, vision narrowing until the world was nothing but lines and movement.
The voice inside roared again.
Ren hurled himself forward, arms raised without plan, palms open to catch the incoming fog-tentacles.
The Devourer struck like a falling curtain, thin and heavy and full of teeth.
White-fire pain lanced his temples as the mist hit; his bones felt like they picked up the cold of the deep earth.
The scales flared across his shoulders and arms—bright, visible, then wavering like a mirage.
Pain seared; a sound like splitting wood echoed in his head.
He held.
A child vomited ash by the barricade.
Kira's hands bled where she'd fought off a pirate.
The glider's frame creaked; varnish flaked where smoke touched.
The Devourer's fog crawled across the yard, making a path of muted gray that sucked color from the world.
"You can't—" Kira panted, stumbling toward Ren. "You'll die doing this, idiot!"
"Then don't waste it," Ren grunted, muscles folding like ropes under strain.
A tendon in his leg twanged; pain knifed his breath.
The scales across his skin burned with a light that made dust dance.
Li shoved another child into Kira's arms, eyes meeting Ren's.
No pleading—only a soft, terrible calm.
Ren rocked on his feet, every limb a ledger of small injuries and a big decision.
The pendant at his chest thrummed an ancient rhythm.
He braced his shoulders and shouted, "Go—now! Get the signal!"
Kira ripped the glider free and ran, the wing catching the wind.
The dock below erupted into frantic motion as the glider lifted, straining against a world that wanted to hold it.
Ren felt the air change as the craft rose—a hollow that tugged at his chest.
The Old Man Li, trying to evacuate children from a barn, stood directly in the path of the thing.
Ren was fifty meters away.
The eyes of Li met Ren's, full of calm and terrible acceptance.
A low command thrummed through the pendant, then exploded into his head in a language older than breath.
"TO PROTECT, YOU MUST BECOME. ACCEPT THE SEED. FORM OF THE CLOUD DISCIPLE."