Kael supported Leiya with one arm, her blood staining his sleeve. Her right leg barely touched the ground as they limped through the scorched clearing, past the craters and still-smoking Varnok corpses.
"You're lucky you're light," he muttered.
"You're lucky I didn't pass out," she shot back weakly, teeth gritted through the pain.
He glanced down. Her breathing was shallow but steady. The wound across her ribs had stopped bleeding, frozen slightly from residual Ice Essence. Her leg was worse. Broken in at least two places. No way she was fighting again today.
"No more heroic charges," he said, trying to keep his tone even.
"No promises."
They cleared the last tree line near the ruined monolith, the way they came in. Kael's senses strained for more movement—more stalkers. But the pack was gone.
Burned. Crushed. Vaporized.
Yet the pressure hadn't lifted.
If anything, it had gotten heavier.
Leiya noticed it too. "Something's still watching."
Kael didn't respond. He felt it. Beneath his boots, the earth vibrated—slow, distant pulses. Not footsteps.
Breaths.
The Hollow Verge itself exhaled.
A shrill whistle suddenly pierced the silence. Not Essence. Not magic. A sound—raw, animal—rising in pitch like something being torn apart very far below them.
Then it stopped.
And from the cracked floor of the old crater, the ground pulsed once—like a heartbeat.
Kael froze.
The roots at the edge of the clearing twisted.
One rose.
Then another.
Not roots.
Limbs.
Long, gnarled arms of stone-flesh and warped Essence began pulling themselves from the crater's edge. A shape too massive to make sense began to emerge—its body woven from petrified tree bark, fused bone, and molten glass. Essence bled from its joints like magma, and where its face should be was a hollow with hundreds of eye-like glyphs blinking open in unison.
Leiya gasped. "That's not a Varnok. That's—"
Kael's voice was low. "A Verge-Touched."
Mutated.
Transcended.
The kind of horror that only appears when a place becomes permanently cursed. When too many deaths, too many distortions, and too much corrupted Essence fuse together into one towering, hateful thing.
It didn't speak.
It just breathed.
And the trees around them withered.
Kael didn't wait. He threw Leiya over his shoulder gently but quickly and surged Essence into his legs.
Stormflash.
He rocketed away through the trees as the Verge-Touched began to move. Each step it took left holes in the ground that hissed with dark steam. Trees warped away from it. Essence itself bent.
Leiya coughed against his back. "You can't outrun that thing forever—"
"I'm not trying to outrun it," Kael said, voice tight. "I'm just buying us time."
They broke into a hollow passage between fallen roots. Kael skidded to a stop and pulled out a flare crystal. He stabbed it into the ground—its burst would call for backup, but no guarantee it would arrive in time.
The air behind them shivered.
The Verge-Touched wasn't fast—but it was inevitable.
It broke through a wall of trees like paper.
Kael gritted his teeth. His reserves were low, but his limbs still sparked with voltage. Not enough for another full Voltbreaker… but maybe just enough for a wall.
He turned, planting his feet.
"Get behind me," he said.
Leiya, still semi-lucid, barely managed to crawl to the hollow wall behind them.
Kael reached for every scrap of power still inside him. Storm. Lightning. Kinetic. Flame.
One last stand.
But just before he fired—
The Verge-Touched stopped.
Its glyph-eyes flicked toward the flare crystal glowing behind Kael.
Then—like a mirage folding in on itself—it sank back into the earth.
Gone.
As if the forest had reclaimed it.
Kael stood frozen, Essence flickering at his fingertips.
No sound but breathing.
Then—
A sharp whoosh.
Three figures dropped from the treeline above in streaks of polished armor and glowing sigils — Elandor's Vanguard Division. Platinum-ranked.
Kael staggered.
Leiya blinked.
The lead Vanguard, a woman with Voidsteel pauldrons and hair like white fire, stepped forward. "Report."
Kael exhaled and dropped to one knee, still holding Leiya close. "Pack neutralized. Verge-Touched engaged. We need medics—now."
She nodded, already signaling.
As the other Vanguards swept the area, Kael finally let himself breathe.
But even as they treated Leiya, he couldn't forget that moment.
The Verge-Touched saw the flare… and stopped.
Not afraid.
Just waiting.