Ahia squeezed her eyes shut, the smell of the Asura's rotting breath filling her nose. She waited for the pain. She waited for the end.
It didn't come.
Instead, the air in the room changed. The freezing cold of the Asura's presence was suddenly overpowered by a crushing, humid pressure. It felt like standing in the center of a cyclone.
"Mine," a voice whispered. It didn't come from a throat. It sounded like wind howling through a cave.
Ahia opened her eyes.
The Asura was frozen mid-strike. Its clawed hand was inches from her face, but it wasn't moving. A tendril of grey, swirling mist had wrapped around the monster's wrist.
Standing behind the Asura was a figure. It looked like a man, but the proportions were wrong. He was tall, gaunt, and wore tattered robes that seemed to dissolve into smoke at the edges. His skin was grey, and where his eyes should have been, there were only pockets of storm clouds.
A Kifofirist. An undead spirit from the Dildillaac.
The Asura shrieked, thrashing against the grip. "Let go! I am of the Deep! I am—"
The Kifofirist tightened its grip. The grey mist expanded, swallowing the Asura's arm.
"You are nothing," the Kifofirist murmured. "Just a hungry dog."
With a sickening crunch, the Kifofirist twisted. The Asura exploded—not into blood, but into blue-black sludge. The Kifofirist inhaled deeply, the storm clouds in its eye sockets swirling faster as it absorbed the Huenergy and Iku of the dying monster.
Ahia scrambled back, her back hitting the wall. She was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Asuras killed for sport, but Kifofirists... they Arora ascended Mufarikha. They rejected all connection, all Ubuntu. They were soul-eaters.
The entity turned its faceless head toward her.
"You," it hissed, drifting closer. Its feet didn't touch the floor. "You taste... strange. Not like fear. Not like flesh."
It leaned in, sniffing the air.
"You taste like the Sky," it concluded.
Ahia grabbed her Kwaya bell, her hands shaking. "Stay back! The King will—"
"The King?" The Kifofirist laughed, a dry, rasping sound. "The King is a prisoner of his own chair. He cannot reach you here."
The room began to dissolve. The walls, the floor, the shattered window—everything was being consumed by the grey mist radiating from the creature.
"We need the Sky's flavor," the Kifofirist said, reaching out a hand that was more smoke than solid. "Come, little root. The Dildillaac is hungry."
Ahia tried to scream, but the mist filled her mouth, tasting of ozone and despair. The world went grey, then black.
The Imperial Palace
"Move, Vhuthu."
Libaax didn't wait for her answer this time. He didn't try to use logic, and he couldn't wield Nommo like Arora or Alem could. He was an Akin. He was a warrior.
He reached into the Ase flowing through his body, channeling it into the Active Weapon Art.
Manifest.
A ripple of blue light distorted the air above his hand. Instantly, a massive Konda sword construct made of pure Aura materialized. It hummed with the Edge characteristic of the Sword art, a heavy, oppressive force that cracked the obsidian floor beneath his feet.
Vhuthu's eyes widened. As a Masani, a master of psionics. She threw up her hands, her Orange Aura flaring to create a telekinetic barrier.
"Libaax, stop!" she shouted. "This is madness!"
Libaax swung.
He didn't aim for her—that would be a violation of Ubuntu. He aimed for the space between them, for the psychic wall she had erected.
BOOM.
The Aura Sword collided with the telekinetic barrier. The sound was like a thunderclap trapped in a bottle. The shockwave shattered the nearby windows and sent the Abambowa guards stumbling backward.
Vhuthu gasped, her barrier shattering under the sheer weight of the Akin's strike. She was thrown to the side, sliding across the polished floor.
Libaax didn't look back. He dissolved the weapon construct and sprinted for the hangar balcony. He leaped over the railing, plummeting toward the waiting gunship.
"Take me to the Outer Districts!" he roared at the pilot as he landed on the deck. "NOW!"
...
The gunship touched down in the agricultural wing ten minutes later, kicking up clouds of dust.
Libaax jumped out before the ramp fully lowered. His Blue Aura was blazing, illuminating the night like a beacon.
"Ahia!" he shouted, sprinting toward the wreckage of the Manomi barracks.
He found her room. Or what was left of it.
The door was smashed. The furniture was overturned. The walls were scarred with deep claw marks that leaked the blue-black slime of Iku.
But there was no blood. And there was no body.
Libaax stood in the center of the room, his chest heaving. He reached out with his Ifunanya sense, trying to find the golden thread, the pull of the Makoma that had guided him here.
He found it. But it wasn't pointing down at the earth.
It was pointing up.
Libaax walked to the broken window and looked up at the sky. The Celestial Lantern was resting, the silver flame gentle and calm. But far below the lantern, in the upper atmosphere, a dark, invisible unnatural shadow was moving against the wind.
The Dildillaac.
Ahia wasn't dead. She had been taken by the Sky-Eaters.
Libaax gripped the windowsill until the wood turned to sawdust in his hands. Vhuthu had been right about one thing: the Asura attack was just the beginning. But she was wrong about the target.
They didn't want the food. They wanted the woman who held the King's heart.
"You want the Sky?" Libaax whispered to the darkness, his voice trembling with a rage that terrified the Ase around him. "Then I will bring it to you."