"Let us go. We will be traversing through the void from now on. Kaola, use that bow and try to track Kotas yen or whatever you do with it. We will be in the void following you. If you need to tell us anything, use your telepathy."

  Hykees voice was a jagged command as he pointed towards his shoulder for Lokee to hop on. Standing in the dim woods, Hykee was a titan, a physical anomaly born larger than any of his siblings. He was not soft, but vast, a mountain of muscle whose presence created a gravity that pulled the air from the room. Lokee climbed onto his broad back, and Hykee reached out to grip the air. The space around the twins began to ripple and fold like ink in water, and within seconds, they vanished into the shimmering vacuum of the sub dimension, leaving Kaola alone at the edge of the forest.

  Kaola stood still for a moment, the sudden silence of the physical world ringing in her ears. She reached back and detached the long recurve bow from its housing on her shoulder, feeling the familiar grain of the wood beneath her fingers. Her father had made the bow for her specifically, a gift of precision in a family that usually favored blunt force, and it felt like a heavy anchor to her past. This was not just a weapon, it was a conduit. She pulled a single shaft from her quiver, but these were not actually arrows. They were void enhanced focal points, crafted to withstand the immense pressure of her power. Instead of nocking a physical projectile, she closed her eyes and began to hum a low, steady frequency that resonated with the Yan in her own blood. She focused on the leading edge of the focal point, until the air around it began to shimmer with a faint, pale light as the void energy began to coat the surface.

  She opened her eyes and scanned the treeline from her vantage point. Using the bow as a focal point, she began to filter the world through the lens of energy signatures. The vibrant green pulses of the healthy trees were easy to spot, but she was looking for the absence of light. Far to the southeast, where the terrain began to slope downward into a misty valley, she spotted a jagged grey tear in the sensory field. However, as she focused her vision on the descent, the signal began to waver. The grey tear started blinking away, flickering in and out of existence like a dying flame. She realized Kota was finally attempting to suppress his Yen as he moved into the lower valley, and the effort was causing her tracking to falter from this distance. The path was no longer a solid line of decay, but a series of disjointed pulses that made her head throb with the effort of maintaining the lock.

  "I am losing him," Kaola thought, projecting her voice through the telepathic link she shared with the twins. "The signal is blinking. He is fighting to keep it inside, and the trail is vanishing into the natural background of that valley. I need more focus. Stay close to the veil, because if he succeeds in masking it completely, we will be hunting in total darkness."

  She felt a cold prickle at the back of her mind, a confirmation from Lokee that they were moving alongside her in the dark. Kaola began to move, her boots barely touching the ground as she slipped into the shadows of the forest. The further she went, the more the environment began to decay despite his attempts at suppression. She saw a squirrel frozen in a state of mid leap, its body brittle and grey as if it had been turned to stone by a sudden frost. Kaola felt a shiver run down her spine. Even when he tried to hide, the world around him still broke. Kota was a walking void, and the world was struggling to fill the hole he was leaving behind.

  The static in the air began to grow louder, a low frequency hum that made the bow in her hand vibrate. Kaola slowed her pace and knelt down by a cluster of blackened mushrooms. The decay was fresh, and the air was unnaturally cold. "He is not just leaking anymore," she projected her thoughts toward the void where the twins hovered. "He is starting to draw energy in. The inversion is beginning."

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  If the Yen finally overtook his Yan, the boy would lose all access to the light. He would become a full void bearer like them, but with a raw potential that put him on par with Koma and Kova. It was the nightmare scenario, the very reason he was supposed to die alongside his father. An inverted Kota would not just be a fugitive, he would be a catastrophe they could not contain. If that happened, he would become a beacon that Koma would be able to see from the Haven.

  The response from Hykee was a sharp pulse of aggression that flooded her mind. "Then move faster scout. If he inverts before we find him the mission will be a failure." Hykee stopped there, his silhouette jagged and heavy in the pressurized dark. Lokee chimed in immediately after him, her voice cutting through with a cold, impatient edge. "We are not here to observe the scenery. Move."

  Kaola pushed forward, but as she entered a small clearing, she came to a sudden, jarring halt. In the center of the grove stood a massive ancient cedar tree, split perfectly down the middle as if a giant blade had fallen from the sky. The wood was charred black, but not by fire. The edges were smooth, cauterized by a precision that did not match Kotas erratic, leaking Yen.

  "Wait," Kaola projected, her voice sharp with caution. "Look at the cedar tree. It is split clean in half."

  The air rippled as Hykee and Lokee paused within the void, their presence lingering near the tear. Lokee examined the signature through the veil. "This was not the boy," she whispered, her tone shifting from impatience to genuine calculation. "This is a controlled strike. The energy is old, but the impact is absolute. Kota does not have the focus for this, especially not while he is fighting an inversion."

  Hykee growled, the sound vibrating in Kaolas skull. "If it was not the brat, then who else is in these woods? Who else has the power to cleave an ancient like that without making a sound?"

  The three of them fell into a heavy, thinking silence. The realization that they might not be the only ones hunting in this valley hung over them like a shroud. If someone else was here, someone capable of such refined destruction, the mission had just become infinitely more dangerous.

  Kaola broke the silence by looking at the damp soil at the base of the ruined tree. She noticed a set of footprints moving right past the wreckage. "There," she thought, pointing her bow toward the slope. "Kota and Leiyas footprints. They walked right past this. They did not stop to look, or perhaps they were too exhausted to care. They are still moving toward the valley floor."

  "They are descending into the basin," Kaola whispered into the link. "Kota is stumbling, his power is pulling the life out of the ground with every step he takes. He is reaching for her, trying to keep her close, but the weight of the inversion is slowing them both down. They are heading into the thick fog where the air is warmer. He thinks the mist will hide them, but the rot leaves a scent that the fog cannot muffle."

  "I see the distortion in the mist," Lokees voice echoed, regaining its clinical coldness. "They are deep in the valley now, looking for a place to ground themselves. Hykee wants to break the veil now and jump the distance, but I am telling him to wait. If we move too fast, we lose the scent of the rot in this damp air."

  "No," Kaola thought back, her heart racing as she kept her eyes on the misty basin below. "Do not break the veil. We have to maintain the distance. If you jump them now, the boy might panic and trigger a full collapse before we are in position to bind him. We need to track them through the valley floor. Once they are isolated in the heavy timber, I will use a suppression shot to pin the girl, and then you take the boy."

  She felt Hykees jagged laughter resonate in her skull. "You talk as if you still have authority here, Kaola. If the girl dies to bring the boy in, then that is the price of success. We are moving to the flank. Do your job with that bow, and dont let that signal blink out for good."

  Kaola watched the air ripple to her right as the huge figure of Hykee, carrying Lokee, moved through the void toward the edge of the valley. She felt the isolation of her position more than ever. She was the scout and the leader, but she was surrounded by wolves who were only waiting for a reason to tear her apart. She took a deep breath and focused on the fog. The Yen was thicker even from here, and the air felt like it was being squeezed out of her lungs.

  Dawn began to grey the sky. Ahead lay the valley. Somewhere in that mist, Kota led Leiya away from the world. Kaola followed the grey tear down.

  "I have eyes on the target," she signaled. "We maintain the chase."