The path through the forest was thick with silence — not peaceful, but suffocating. Trees stood like bones, bark blackened as if burned by shadow. Even the birds dared not sing.
Ariya walked beside Kiran, each footstep crunching against fallen leaves. The air was colder here. Wrong. As if something ancient had died and refused to leave.
"Where are we?" Ariya whispered.
Kiran's gaze scanned the canopy above. "The Dead Woods. We're close to the outer border of the Void's advance."
"Why does it feel like it's watching us?"
"Because it is."
She flinched. "That's not funny."
"I wasn't joking."
Just then, the trees creaked. Not from wind — there wasn't any — but as if something enormous was shifting beneath the roots. Ariya paused. A strange rhythm pulsed in the soil. A heartbeat.
Something stirred below.
Kiran unsheathed his blade. Wind circled the weapon like a living thing. "They've sensed your power."
From the earth, pale hands burst through the ground — dozens of them — clawing upward. Hollow-eyed figures rose, their bodies stitched with void rot. Not beasts. Not alive.
Wraithborn.
Ariya stumbled back. "What are they?!"
"Souls that couldn't escape the Void. They've been… reshaped." Kiran moved fast, slashing one apart with a gust of wind, its body scattering like ash.
One lunged at Ariya — she screamed, shadows surging from her in a wave. The Wraithborn was swallowed in black tendrils, screeching as it disintegrated.
Her hands trembled. "I didn't mean to—"
"Don't hold back," Kiran said, voice firm. "Your power listens to emotion. Use it. Shape it."
More Wraithborn closed in, forming a ring around them.
Ariya took a breath, planted her feet, and reached inward — not away from her fear, but into it.
She raised her hand, and a shadow spear burst into existence.
Kiran gave a faint smile. "Now we're getting somewhere."
They moved as one. Wind and darkness. Blade and curse.
By the time the last Wraithborn faded to dust, the forest was silent again.
Ariya dropped to her knees, panting. Her body ached. Her soul throbbed.
"You okay?" Kiran asked.
"I think," she said, breathing hard, "I just won my first real fight."
"You did more than that," he said. "You commanded the darkness."
Ariya looked at the fading tendrils still wrapped around her fingers. For the first time, she didn't feel afraid of them.
But high above, in the rotten trees, a shadow lingered — one with eyes like fire and a voice that whispered to the Void:
"She has awakened."