They ran until their lungs burned and the forest changed around them.
The trees grew older here—trunks thick as houses, roots tangled like sleeping giants. Moss fell in curtains, and night pooled in the hollows between the roots. Even the insects hushed as if the world respected whatever thing was hunting them.
Elara stumbled once, then Lucien steadied her. "We go slower," he muttered, but his eyes never stopped scanning the shadows. "No more straight paths. Circle the old birches. They confuse trackers."
Elias moved with quick, efficient strides, carrying a small satchel that held a few supplies and a string of ward charms. The Ghostborn walked a quiet distance behind, eyes half-closed as if listening to distant music.
The forest tasted of rain and something else—metal and old hunger. The bond pulsed in Elara's chest, but it was steadier now: no more sharp, stuttering terror. Still, every flit of wind, every snapping twig tugged at her nerves as though a thousand tiny fingers probed for a place to latch.
"Do you think they'll stop sending things?" Elara whispered.
Lucien's jaw tightened. "No. The Devourer is patient. It sends what it can use."
They had learned the hard way the night before: the Shade Knight had been a sentinel. Now the Devourer would try subtler tools—hunters who could track the new kind of resonance their bond created.
Night deepened. The moon stringed pale silver through the leaves. Lucien paused and pressed his hand to a tree trunk. The bark thrummed faintly under his palm, as if the wood itself remembered old music.
"Listen," he said. "It's calling."
Elara tilted her head. Faint at first, like the echo of a bell, then clearer—an absence in the air that felt like a throat clearing. The sound was not simple; it threaded into thoughts, made colors feel colder.
Something slithered between the roots ahead—a shape like stretched shadow and loose skin, the air around it warping like heat over stone. It moved on legs too long for its body, and its head was a smooth mask with no eyes, only a thin vertical slit that drank in light.
Elias's hand flew to his satchel. "Hollowstalker," he breathed.
The Ghostborn watched with a tilt of head. "A good choice. Old. Efficient. It senses the bond through echoes of hunger."
Lucien dropped into a crouch, pulling Elara behind him like a shield. "What does it do?"
"It doesn't eat flesh," Elias said, breath tight. "It eats warmth—life's noise. It drains your spark until you are a husk. And it can track by touch—by the tug of connected hearts."
Elara felt real cold despite her cloak. "So it will find the bond and follow us—perfect."
"It will try," Lucien said. "But it's not invincible."
A low sound rose from the Hollowstalker—almost a laugh, though birds don't laugh like that—and then it glided closer. The slit in its face flickered and a taste of an idea passed through Elara's head: We are delicious. We are light and shadow braided. Feed.
Panic tried to take root. Elara pressed her forehead to Lucien's shoulder. "I don't want to be a meal."
"You won't be," he promised. "Not on my watch."
The Hollowstalker lunged—fast as smoke. It moved too quickly for the eyes but not for the bond; the tug at Elara's chest was raw and hungry. She felt what it touched, a cold that numbed and scraped like wind over metal.
Lucien was faster. He threw out a hand and shadows rose like a net, catching the creature's flank. The Hollowstalker yowled—an odd, mournful noise—and twisted free. Its touch found Elias instead, who screamed and dropped the satchel as warmth siphoned from his limbs.
"Eliaa—" Lucien snapped, then threw himself between the Hollowstalker and Elias. The shadows around him thickened, claws of black smoke snapping at the creature. The Hollowstalker recoiled, then struck at Lucien's back, leaving a trail of numbness in its wake.
Elara felt it too—Lucien's backbone shiver as something laced into his shadow. Pain that wasn't only his. The bond jolted her, a lightning strike across the chest.
"Focus!" Lucien rasped. "Center on the bond. We are a single thing."
"Merging," the Ghostborn said softly. He didn't move as if he had nothing physical to fear; he moved with the confidence of someone who knew the rules and which could be bent. "Use that. Not to hide—use it to bind."
Elara didn't know what he meant, not at first. But the words threaded into her panic like a rope. She shut her eyes and thought of the last time she and Lucien had pushed a shadow and a light together—how the air had screamed and then held still. She felt his breath, his pulse, and answered it: I am here. We are together.
Something in her chest rose like a lantern. The mark on her sternum glowed—soft gold edged in a new, strange hue that Lucien had seen once in his father's sigils. It hummed through them both, the bond now a channel rather than just a tie.
Lucien clasped her fingers. The shadows around him tightened and then softened as if kneading warm dough. Where the Hollowstalker had touched Elias, light licked upward from Elara's palm, meeting the darkness Lucien offered. The two forces braided, not to battle but to weave.
They cast a lattice of fused magic outward—gold braided with black. The Hollowstalker recoiled, an unearthly keening tearing from its throat. The lattice wrapped around it like vines, not to crush but to contain. Its cold couldn't crawl beyond the net. The creature writhed and tried to strike through the gaps, but every strike burned like frost meeting flame.
Elias slid to his knees, panting, warmth slowly returning to his limbs. "By the river—what did you—?"
"We found a way to do what the Sanctuary forbade," Lucien said, breath rough. "We took our bond and made it armor."
The Ghostborn watched with a small, keen smile. "A new song," he murmured. "A duet."
The Hollowstalker howled—a sound full of fury and the sense of being cheated. It lashed at the lattice until it snapped one tie and slipped through like smoke, vanishing into the underbrush with a promise of return.
"Elara," Lucien breathed, voice strained. "We can't hold forever."
She nodded, blood pounding. "I know. I felt it. We need to learn to cast it faster."
Elias picked up his satchel with shaky hands and found a small mirror. He held it up toward the lattice. "Hold it steady," he said, voice thin. "Let something solid anchor it."
They did. The mirror's sheen caught the lattice and focused it into a cage of light-and-shadow that pulsed like a heartbeat. For one breath, the Hollowstalker was trapped. Its face—if that thing could be said to have a face—twisted, and then it was gone, slipping through magic thinned by urgency.
The forest felt emptier after it left, as if a living lung had exhaled. The air tasted colder where its absence bled out.
Lucien sank to the ground, one hand curled against the soil. He was pallid where the creature had struck. The bond hummed in Elara's chest like a small drum. They had blunted the hunt, not ended it.
"We can use the lattice," Elara said quietly. "We can make it a trap. Teach villages to weave it into nets, into wards."
Elias's eyes flashed with hope. "If we can spread it—maybe we can protect more people. Maybe we can slow the Devourer."
The Ghostborn's smile vaned into a thin line. "The Devourer will learn to avoid nets. It is endless. It will adapt. But you—" He looked at Elara with something like respect and pity combined. "You have become far more interesting than a mere seal."
Lucien closed his fingers around Elara's hand. "What do you mean?"
"That you are both weapon and wound," the Ghostborn said. "And the Devourer will send hunters who can pierce either or both."
A rustle in the brush, then silence.
Elara swallowed hard. "So what do we do now?"
Lucien's voice was steady despite the trembling in his hands. "We find allies. We learn to build this lattice fast. And we stop running in straight lines."
Elias exhaled and glanced at the Ghostborn. "And what about you?"
The Ghostborn bowed slightly, a courtly motion that somehow felt like a knife. "I will watch. I will teach—when I am amused enough to remain. For now, consider me a patron of your chaos."
Elara wanted to hate him, but the truth of his words settled with a cold logic. They needed knowledge—and the Ghostborn had it in painful abundance.
The forest at moonfall seemed to listen as they moved again, no longer merely fleeing but walking with purpose. The lattice cracked the night air like a promise in their wake.
Behind them, somewhere deep and sealed, the Devourer turned in its sleep and felt the echo of their magic. A hunger tightened in the dark.
Good, it thought faintly, like wind in a cave. Come to me.
Elara shivered.
Lucien tightened his hold.
They kept walking.