The silhouette didn't wait. It didn't care about his words.
It jumped.
The air cracked. It filled his vision, a storm of claws and hate. Elijah flinched—knees bent, chin down, hands up. The ghost's move.
It wasn't enough.
The thing's fist hit his forearms. A deep, sick thump echoed in the dead air. The force didn't feel like a punch. It felt like a car hitting a wall. He was lifted off his feet. The ground vanished. He flew back, the world tilting, and slammed into the frozen earth. All the air left his lungs in one painful rush.
He skidded to a stop, sprawled on his back. Stars danced behind his eyes. He tasted blood.
Where he had stood, the ground wasn't just disturbed. It was pushed in. A shallow, cracked bowl in the dirt. The dead tree behind him had a fresh split in its grey bark, oozing black sap like thick blood.
He lay there, gasping. Above him, the angry red star pulsed. Each throb sent a fresh wave of gut-twisting nausea through him, mixing with the blooming agony in his chest. His ribs screamed.
What is this thing? he thought, his mind scrambling. It's not just her anger. It's… feeding on it. It's hungry.
"It's a Vaelor." Wonko's voice scratched in his head, thin and staticky, like a bad radio signal. "Not magic. Worse. Old family craft. Sealers… they don't just lock doors. They harvest. Fear. Despair. Rage. The ugly human stuff. They take it, shape it, bind it with their own blood. A contract. The Vaelor gets to feast. In return, it becomes their perfect, mindless puppet."
A puppet made of pain. That's what was walking toward him now. Slow. Deliberate. Its blank, featureless face seemed to drink the twilight, growing darker.
Vivian stood farther back, her hands clenched. The crimson light in her eyes was steady, unwavering. She didn't look triumphant. She looked vacant. Like she'd handed the leash to a rabid dog and let it run.
The Vaelor raised a claw. Golden light—the same as the ribbons from before—coalesced around its hand. But this wasn't a ribbon. It snapped and crackled, forming into long, vicious whip-tendrils of light.
"Desert Monastery Whip," Wonko's mental voice hissed, edged with panic. "It doesn't just hurt. It seals. If it wraps your core, your will just… stops. You become an empty box."
Elijah scrambled backwards, his boots digging useless furrows in the hard dirt. His body was a symphony of pain. He tried to remember the pivot, the dodge, anything from the ghost's training. His movements were jerky, fear-stiff.
The Vaelor's arm snapped forward.
The golden whip was a blur of light. It didn't aim for where he was. It aimed for where he was trying to go.
It wrapped around his left ankle.
The pain was instant—a searing, cold burn, like dry ice on skin. Then came the nothingness. A numb, icy silence crawled up his leg, killing feeling, killing the want to move. His leg gave out beneath him. He crashed down, the back of his head bouncing off the frozen ground. Lights exploded in his vision.
He was caught. The golden tether glowed, connecting his ankle to the Vaelor's claw. He could feel it pulling, not on his body, but on the fight left in him. Draining it sip by sip.
The Vaelor began to reel him in. Slow. Relentless. An angler pulling in a exhausted fish.
Elijah clawed at the ground, fingernails tearing on roots and frost-hardened stone. He kicked with his good leg, but the cold numbness was spreading. He was so tired. The pain in his ribs, the sick twist in his gut, the icy silence climbing his leg… it was a weight crushing him flat.
This is it, the thought came, cold and clear as the air. After the Loom. After remembering. After saying no. I just get dragged over and sealed away. What a pointless way to end.
He looked past the looming Vaelor at Vivian. Her face was stone. Duty done. He was just a mess to be cleaned up.
The Vaelor was close now. It raised its other claw, fingers curling into a cruel, grasping shape. It was going to take his head. Crush the last defiant thought right out of his skull.
Regret, bitter and heavy, washed over him. Not for fighting. For not understanding more. For not knowing what Nina truly wanted. For not figuring out who Azaqor was. For leaving Chloe alone in these awful woods.
He closed his eyes.
A new sound tore the silence.
Not a voice. Not a whip.
A WHOOSH-CRACK—like the sky itself tearing—followed instantly by a deep, shuddering THUD that vibrated up through the ground into his bones.
Elijah's eyes flew open.
The Vaelor had stopped reeling him in. Its head was turned, looking off to the left, toward the deeper shadows of the wood.
Something was coming. Fast.
The Vaelor let go of the golden whip. The light around Elijah's ankle vanished, the numbness retreating into a deep, throbbing ache. The construct took a single step away from him, its posture coiling toward the new threat.
A split-second of distraction.
Not enough.
The object hit it from the side.
It was a mask. Flat burnt-orange, the color of a rotten pumpkin. It hung in the air for a phantom moment before impact, its wide, thin-crescent grin seeming to stretch even wider. Then it struck the Vaelor's shoulder.
The collision didn't sound like metal or flesh. It sounded like reality breaking. A deafening BRAAAM mixed with the shriek of tearing energy.
The Vaelor didn't stagger. It was blasted sideways. A visible shockwave of distorted air erupted from the point of impact and ripped through the clearing. Dead trees groaned and shuddered. The earth where Elijah lay heaved upward, tossing him like a toy.
He was flung through the air, tumbling, before his back slammed into the base of a thick, gnarled trunk. White-hot agony erupted in his side. He curled around it, coughing, blood spraying from his lips onto the frost in bright, shocking red.
Through the ringing in his ears and the thick cloud of dust and debris now choking the clearing, he heard Vivian's voice. Not cold. Not controlled.
A raw, outraged shriek.
"WHO IS IT? SHOW YOURSELF!"