Maren stood at the checkpoint watching the portal turn over its blue distortions, while the demonic core under his sleeve kept a slow beat against his forearm.
His fingers curled shut, opened, then curled again around nothing.
"Two people went in a few minutes ago," a guard said, planting himself across the opening, "so nobody else crosses until they come back out."
Maren gave no sign of having heard, since his eyes stayed on the blue seam standing between him and Hajin.
'He is on the other side of that,' he thought as the crystal burned a line into his skin, 'so if these two moved, I could be finished inside ten minutes.'
"Sir, are you all right?" a second guard asked, his hand tightening down the shaft of the spear.
Maren turned without answering and walked back toward the trees in short mechanical steps.
Both guards watched him the whole way to the tree line, neither of them able to put a name to the thing they had spent the last minute standing beside.
