The fire crackled low, the only sound in the deepening silence of the clearing.
Leiya crushed the herbs with practiced precision, the stone pestle grinding against the bowl in a steady, rhythmic thrum. The scent was sharp and bitter grounding. Her hands remained steady, though her ears were constantly strained for the sound of snapping twigs or the shift in air pressure that signaled a Void Bearer's arrival.
A loud explosion suddenly rolled across the land from the north.
The ground shuddered beneath her boots. Leiya froze, her head snapping toward the horizon. The sound faded, swallowed by the distance, but its weight lingered in the air like a stain. It wasn't natural thunder it was an impact, power used without care for the earth beneath it.
Her eyes immediately snapped to Kota.
He lay still beside the fire, his breath uneven and shallow. The sickness was leaking from him like heat from a fresh wound, the dark energy shimmering and warping the air around his resting body. Even in sleep, his black hair was visibly bleeding into a pale, ghostly white at the edges a sign that his system was struggling to contain the "sickness" within.
"We need to get out of here," she murmured to the empty clearing. "But you're in no condition to move."
Running would kill him. Staying might do the same.
She finished the mixture and poured it into a small iron pot. The liquid darkened to a deep, murky purple as it simmered over the embers. The fire popped softly, indifferent to the struggle for survival happening just inches away.
Leiya lowered herself beside him, her back against a cold, moss covered stone. Fatigue dragged at her limbs, heavier than any physical pain she had ever endured. Years of constant vigilance, of being the shadow behind a boy the world wanted dead, pressed down on her all at once.
Her eyes drifted shut, and the present faded into the jagged edges of the past.
In the darkness of her mind, she was holding a letter.
The parchment was worn thin, creased and frayed from being folded and unfolded a thousand times. The ink had faded to a dull grey, but the words were burned into her soul.
Watch over my son.
I trained you for this exact moment.
Be his guardian.
Don't let him be confused or consumed.
Show him the light.
She read it again in the silence of her memory. The calm certainty of the writing wrapped around her a legacy of trust from a woman who had known exactly what her son was carrying.
The dream shifted. The smell of herbs was replaced by the ozone of a coming storm.
The Speedhardt estate erupted around her in a cacophony of alarms and screaming metal. Energy tore through the night, shattering the stained glass of the high halls and turning the air into a furnace.
Leiya ran. Her boots skidded on the polished floors, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"Kota!"
The distance warped. No matter how fast she moved, the space bent against her the Void stretching the halls, folding reality just enough to keep her from him. It was a labyrinth made of Koma's boredom.
Then she saw him. Kalamity.
Blood soaked his chest, a jagged ruin where his heart should have been. Black-red lightning crawled across the shattered stone of the library, the very air weeping from the pressure of his final stand. His eyes found hers clear, urgent, and devoid of fear.
Protect my son.
The words struck her mind like a command carved into bone.
Do not let him fall into the dark.
"No," she breathed, forcing her legs to move as power surged through her veins a desperate plea for speed.
The attack formed behind her. She felt the cold, indifferent aura of Koma, the eldest brother who had decided to be a god. She reached Kota just as the force came down.
Light exploded.
Leiya threw herself over the boy, her body a shield. A defensive wind barrier flared raw, imperfect, and fueled by pure desperation but it was enough. The impact tore into her back, pain ripping through muscle and bone as if she were being flayed alive.
Kota was untouched.
The dream did not end in victory. It dissolved into the weight of the years. Into the reality of the sickness that was now finishing what Koma's blades could not.
Dawn arrived quietly. Pale, grey light crept into the clearing, illuminating the frost on the grass. The fire had collapsed into a pile of white embers, ash scattered where the flame once lived.
Leiya stirred, her body aching as she sat up. The memories of the estate clung to her like smoke, but her eyes went straight to Kota.
He was still breathing. Still alive.
Relief hit her hard enough to steal the air from her lungs. She pressed a hand to her face, then looked toward the horizon. The air smelled as if the forest was burning by the explosion made by Koa's departure.
"I won't fail you," she whispered.
She wasn't speaking to the dead. She was speaking to the boy beside her. Whatever was moving through the Void toward them, it would have to go through her first.