Leiya stumbled. Her boots caught on a slick root and she reached out to steady herself against a tree. The wood felt unnaturally cold and brittle beneath her palm.
Ahead of her, Kota kept moving without looking back, his shoulders hunched as if something invisible was pressing down on him.
The forest around them was turning into a graveyard. Branches overhead twisted into jagged shapes, and the air felt thick enough to drown in.
"I think we're far enough," Leiya said, her voice thin and raspy. "We need to stop."
Kota didn't respond. He kept pushing through the underbrush like something was dragging him forward.
Leiya grabbed his sleeve.
"Kota!"
He stopped abruptly. His body went rigid before he slowly turned his head. For a long moment, he looked right through her.
"What?" His voice was entirely flat.
"We need to stop," she panted, leaning over with her hands on her knees. "I can't go any further. My legs feel like lead. My chest is burning."
Kota stared at her. There was no warmth in his eyes, only a cold, detached calculation. The growing darkness inside him made it hard to feel anything beyond survival.
He scanned her face, noting how pale she looked and how ragged her breathing had become.
"You haven't eaten," he said. His tone was clipped. "We will take a break. You need food."
Leiya sank down at the base of a large oak. She leaned her head back against the bark and pulled out a piece of dry travel bread and some dried fruit. Her hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped it.
A few feet away, Kota stood with his back to her. He closed his eyes and tried to seize the jagged edges of the Yen that kept trying to spill out of him.
On his first attempt, he lost control.
A burst of energy erupted from his chest. The ground beneath his feet instantly turned to grey ash.
Nearby saplings withered into skeletal remains in a single heartbeat. He had instinctively angled the blast away from Leiya, but the failure still burned in his throat.
Miles away, Kaola gasped. Her bow arm jerked as the signal flared violently in her mind.
"I have him!" she projected to the twins. "Massive surge to the south! He's losing control. I can feel the rot from here!"
Back in the clearing, Kota didn't let the failure stop him. He gritted his teeth and tried again. This time, he visualized the black ink of his power being pulled into a single, tiny point inside his gut.
Slowly, the distortion in the air began to fade.
The biting chill on Leiya's skin suddenly vanished. Her breath stopped fogging in front of her face. The heavy, suffocating pressure that had been pressing against her bones lifted, leaving behind an eerie stillness.
For the first time in days, Kota became a ghost. A hollow space where a person should be.
Leiya watched him from where she sat. Compared to the crushing force of his power, her own signature was barely noticeable.
She chewed her bread slowly, eyes never leaving him.
Kota looked down at his hands. They were steady for once.
"My sickness… it's not flaring right now," he muttered. "It's easier to hold it back when it's not boiling. I can feel the silence."
At the edge of the ridge, Kaola's face went pale.
The flare she had been tracking disappeared completely.
She frantically adjusted the focal point on her bow.
"They either stopped… or I've lost them," she projected. Her voice trembled. "I can't see Kota anymore. The entire sector just went dark."
The air behind her tore open with a violent surge of pressure.
Hykee stepped out of the veil, his massive frame displacing the mist. Lokee sat on his shoulder, her expression cold and clinical.
"Lost him?" Hykee growled. "You just had a lock. How the hell do you lose a walking nuke?"
"He's not there," Lokee said quietly. "No distortion. No leakage. Nothing. He's gone completely dark. Even the girl is gone. Her signature is too small to pick up in this fog."
Hykee slammed his fist into his palm. The sound cracked through the air like thunder.
"He's mocking us."
Back in the clearing, Kota stood perfectly still. The forest had gone silent, but inside his head it was deafening. Every second he kept the Yen suppressed felt like holding back a landslide with his bare hands.
The weight of it pressed against the inside of his skull, heavy and oily, threatening to explode outward at any moment.
He didn't know how much longer he could hold it.