We spend the next few days carving a trail through broken wilderness. Whatever nest this was, it spread wide—through fields split by glassed-over craters, through blackened trees whose leaves whisper wrong when the wind stirs.
The Aether here is different. Unfiltered by the bounds of Altinium's wards or the clean containment of practice fields. It buzzes deeper in my veins, less restrained, more alive. I feel it responding to me without needing full incantation. Sometimes it hums under my fingertips before I even finish drawing. Sometimes it pulses through my limbs just from thought. It's raw, unpredictable, but most importantly, powerful.
Zach notices. "You've been resonating faster. Drawing faster, too."
"I thought it was just adrenaline."
"It's the field. No Altinium here. The wildlands don't compress Aether like Altinium does. Whatever's inside you, it's listening now."
That unsettles me more than it should.
By the third night, we find another imprint—Jennifer's. A partial reading left in the bark of a felled tree, the Aether signature still glowing faint. Faint... and smeared with blood.
Zach crouches beside it. "She was injured."
"But alive?" I ask.
"For now."
We push onward. Aoki, despite her wounds, keeps pace. She never slows us down. When the fog grows too thick, or the terrain turns too chaotic, she takes point—no hesitation.
Then we run into the first real blockade.
A creature crawls from a collapsed gulch—four-legged, hunched, ribbed like an exposed skeleton with a jaw that splits into three. It pulses with corrupted Aether, eyes burning orange with something wrong. More follow. Six of them. Maybe seven.
Zach draws immediately. I grip on my sword, fingers tingling. But Aoki's already stepping forward.
She doesn't summon weapons. Doesn't chant.
Instead, she slides a finger along the edge of her blade, and the world shifts.
The ground beneath the beasts twists like pulled fabric. Spires of light refract into existence, as if the air itself fractures around her. Her domain—a compression field.
Time bends. The creatures slow—no, drag—like they're swimming through molasses. Their screeches distort mid-throat.
Aoki raises her hand and clenches her fist once.
The refracted light shatters—blades of it carving through the slowed beasts before the rest of us even move.
By the time her field dissolves, they're nothing but limbs and melted chitin.
"That was…" I start.
"She warps Aether density," Zach says. "Manipulates pressure and temporal delay. Gets stronger the longer she holds the field."
Aoki exhales, a little winded. "I prefer not to use it unless I have to. Burns energy fast."
"What class are you?" I ask her.
"I am a channeller, I can channel spatial energy."
That is insane. I have never imagined a channeller to be so powerful that they can crush monsters just like that.
We move again, a little quieter than before. But now we know: Aoki isn't just a senior. She's elite.
We follow the trail Jennifer left behind—bits of energy embedded in trees, scorched handprints on stone, and once, a half-shattered mirror shard tucked between two roots. Each one points east, toward the deeper wilds, where even the sky starts to darken at the edges like a storm that never quite breaks.
Aoki's pace falters only slightly now. Her leg's healing, though the limp remains. Every time we stop, she meditates, channeling Aether into her own body the way Zach once showed me how to do. She doesn't speak much. But when she does, it's never wasted breath.
"You feel that?" she says one morning as we pass through a field of bone grass—sharp, white blades that hum when brushed.
I pause. Close my eyes.
The ground isn't moving, but the air is. Tensed. Pulled. Like a vacuum somewhere ahead is dragging the very atmosphere toward it.
"Jennifer's ahead," Zach says before I can speak. "Or whatever took her."
Abdul, leaning against a twisted branch, mutters, "She better still be herself."
We climb over a ridgeline, and the land opens into a basin—ashen ground, shattered monuments, and in the center, a gaping hole leading into the earth. It pulses. Not with Aether, but against it. A vacuum zone.
"Static field," Aoki says. "Temporal inversion, maybe layered."
Zach frowns. "Can you break it?"
"Not from here. But I can get us inside."
We move fast, slipping into the basin as quietly as possible. The descent takes us through half-buried catacombs, their architecture older than anything from Altinium. Glyphs run in reverse along the walls. Time doesn't feel right down here—torches don't flicker; they freeze, then catch up all at once.
Finally, we reach a chamber, half-crumbled and full of shifting mist. At the far end:
Jennifer.
She stands alone in front of a twisted root structure coiled like a throne. Her eyes are glowing faintly, lips moving in a whisper too soft to hear.
Zach calls her name.
No response.
Then—
She turns slowly, her face pale and cold. The markings on her Aetherplate have changed—black veins running through once-gold etchings.
And behind her, something stirs. Something inside the throne.
Aoki moves first, forming a compression field instantly, but it rebounds—her energy snapping back like a rubber band. "That rootwork is absorbing external Aether," she hisses. "It's shielding something inside."
Jennifer speaks finally—voice doubled, like two versions of herself at once. "I heard it. And now I see."
Zach's knuckles whiten on his hammer.
Whatever this is... Jennifer's not alone anymore.
And we might already be too late.