The Derived Apparitions formed behind them .
Kei caught their formation in his peripheral Perception — the two sections of fractured darkness where the Shadow Beasts had died thickening and destabilizing into the moving volatile quality of newly organized non-corporeal entities . Their detection mechanisms activating as they achieved sufficient form to begin hunting . Their shadow affinity sweep reading the immediate environment .
What they found was not Kei and Rada .
Kei's confused triple resonance — the same signal that had agitated the boundary-tier Shadow Beasts without directing their hunt — produced the same result for two entities significantly less stable than anything that had existed before them . Derived Apparitions were the least developed shadow entity category . Freshly organised , their detection capability at its most rudimentary . The confused triple resonance producing not even agitation — genuine inability to resolve the signal into a target category .
