*James sneaks away from camp. Toren catches him and insists on coming along. They open a small rift using royal blood-rite, and step partially into the Void—a dreamlike, kaleidoscopic nightmare of hunger and memories. There, they discover the beast carries a piece of James—his lost memories from when he was cast into the Void.*
---
Part IV: The Rift Within
The woods at night were not empty.
Branches reached like hands. Roots curled like veins. The deeper James went, the more the forest seemed to lean inward, as if it too sensed the thinning air, the way the world held its breath when the Void drew near.
He stopped at the base of a withered tree, one hand against the bark, the other curled around a piece of chalk and a small silver blade. His fingers trembled—not from fear, but anticipation.
"You know how stupid this is, right?" came Toren's voice, low and rasping, from the dark behind him.
James didn't turn. "You followed me."
"Of course I did. You were humming the Void's name in your sleep."
"I didn't think I was humming."
"You weren't. But your *blood was.*"
James glanced back. Toren stood with arms folded, a satchel over one shoulder and his ever-present notebook in hand. He looked exhausted, furious, and utterly incapable of turning away.
"You're not stopping me?" James asked.
"No. I'm *watching.* There's a difference."
James knelt and began drawing the sigil. "I'm not opening a full gate. Just a crack. Enough to... feel."
"To *feel?*" Toren muttered. "You nobles really know how to flirt with damnation."
When the sigil was complete, James sliced his palm.
Blood dripped onto the glyph.
The earth did not shake. The sky did not scream. But the space around them *shifted.*
Air bent. Trees leaned away.
And then a thin seam of silver split the world open.
James stepped forward, and Toren swore under his breath before grabbing a vial from his belt and following.
---
It wasn't a place—not exactly.
The Void greeted them with colors that didn't exist, with gravity that rolled sideways, with echoes that answered questions James hadn't asked. Shadows floated like memories. Shapes stirred in the corner of sight but vanished when looked at directly.
James walked slowly, drawn to a flicker—no, a *pulse*—deeper in the haze.
There, floating like a discarded thought, was *it.*
The beast.
Or a memory of it.
Its form shimmered—less monstrous here, more *familiar.* Its bones curved like James's shoulders. Its gait limped with the same old sword-wound he carried beneath his ribs. And its eyes—
His eyes.
Toren reached out to stop him. "James, that thing... it's you."
James stepped closer. "It's not just me. It's what was *taken.* When they cast me into the Void—when I *fell*—something stayed behind. Some part of me didn't come back."
"And now it's wearing a body," Toren said grimly.
James looked into the creature's eyes. The beast did not attack. It stared, mournful. As if waiting.
Then—it *bowed.*
Only slightly. But unmistakably.
James reached toward it.
The Void surged.
Images crashed through him—flashes of flame, of chains, of a throne buried beneath screaming roots. A voice, ancient and cracked, whispered: *You are the key that was broken. You are the gate yet to be named.*
James screamed.
---
When he awoke, he was lying on the forest floor, gasping, clutching dirt in both fists.
Toren stood over him, pale, eyes wide. "What did you see?"
James sat up, trembling.
"It wasn't summoned," he rasped. "It *remembered* its way out."
Toren went still. "That means—"
"There are others," James said.
He looked back toward the trees. "And one of them is coming."