Lian Mei was strong, very strong. In normal circumstances, she would actually investigate the place and find exactly what happened here and who did it. But the particular situation they were in right now was completely different. She had the original curse to protect, whose survival was of the utmost importance. If whoever happened to be watching them was of a strength comparable to hers, she wouldn’t be able to protect Adam, and he would become a hurdle, used as leverage by the other party, all of this, influenced her decision making heavily.
Before hurriedly leaving the cathedral, Adam’s eyes darted across the scattered offerings on the floor.
Suddenly, he froze. His eyes widening, at what he noticed.
Lying there on the cold stone was a small, hand-carved wooden toy, a little horse. It was identical, right down to the rough, amateur chisel marks, to the one he had seen shattered in the ashes of the City of Light. The one that had belonged to Angelo.
The world around him seemed to mute, replaced instantly by the deafening, phantom ringing of the explosion and the acrid smell of burning wood and flesh. His chest tightened with a paralyzing, suffocating guilt. He could almost see the little boy’s body in the ground where he left him to die.
But as his vision tunneled on the unbroken toy on the cathedral floor, his sharp eyes noticed something profoundly wrong with it. The fine cracks and hollows of the pale wood weren't filled with ordinary dirt. They were packed tightly with an unnatural, shimmering black dust that looked like ground obsidian.
It settled so deeply into the carved grooves that it created stark, dark veins across the toy, as if someone had hurriedly and desperately stuffed the strange black sand inside it before dropping it in a panic.
A cold sweat broke across his neck. His hands began to shake.
"Adam! Move!" Lian Mei’s sharp command shattered the memory, violently pulling him back to the present.
He gasped for air, forcing his paralyzed legs to unfreeze. He picked up the wooden toy and put it in his pocket.
Adam then tore his eyes away from the ghost of his guilt, as they stormed out of the cathedral.
They ran rapidly toward where the moths were tethered. The abandoned village was silent as they sprinted through the winding, empty streets. Their boots slammed against the cobblestones, the echoes bouncing off the vacant, looming buildings.
Adam's chest heaved as he kept pace with Voss and Renn, his eyes darting toward the dark windows and narrow alleyways that felt pregnant with unseen threats.
Lian Mei led the formation, her eyes sweeping the perimeter while keeping Adam firmly within her protective shadow. They didn't slow down until they burst out of the dense cluster of houses and arrived at the open dirt courtyard where they had left their mounts.
"Huh??" They all stopped, stunned.
"Don’t tell me," Renn said, too confused to finish the sentence.
One of the moths was not there. It was specifically the fourth one, the one carrying the bulk of their supplies. Furthermore, the small amount of extra supplies that had been strapped to the third moth was also nowhere to be found.
"Why? Where is it?" Sable asked.
Whatever was here, it took all the available supplies and one specific moth. Why did it do that? Why? Adam was completely confused.
Lian Mei started scanning the area. The oppressive feeling hadn't faded; it felt like they were still being watched.
"Is it playing with us?" Voss said, annoyed. "Come out! Be a true warrior and show yourself!"
"This is weird," Adam muttered, trying to push past the lingering shock of the cathedral. "You would think its goal is to trap us here, but if that was the case, it would have removed all the moths. Why only one? And why the supplies?"
"You are right," Renn responded, his usual grin completely erased. He turned to Lian Mei. "What should we do now? Shall we search for it?"
Lian Mei stayed silent, thinking, she knew that without the supplies, their journey to the city of gold will be slowed heavily.
Suddenly, the air snapped open into a hovering, flat black circle of void one meter above the ground, violently spitting a small child onto the dirt. They all froze, staring at it, but before they could even process what it was, the tear snapped out of existence, leaving a small body in its wake.
"Is this a child?" Adam whispered. This was an actual kid; he doesn’t even seem above twelve years of age. What the hell?
"What was that black circle exactly?"
The child didn’t move, looking as if he were just sleeping.
They all ran over to the kid. Renn reached him first, dropping to his knees and carefully rolling the boy onto his back.
"He's breathing," Renn confirmed, his large hand gently hovering over the boy's small chest. "Pulse is steady. He's just unconscious."
"We can't stay here," Lian Mei stated coldly, her eyes fixed on the spot where the void had just been. "Whoever, or whatever, opened that tear might still be here. We leave him."
"Are you out of your mind?" Adam snapped, stepping in front of her. The memory of Angelo's broken body was still too fresh, too raw in his mind. "He's just a kid! We don't know what happened to this village, but we are not leaving a helpless child behind for whatever just robbed us!"
"Whatever just robbed us is exactly what threw this kid here in the first place.", Lian Mei responded.
Lian Mei's expression tightened, her voice flat and unyielding. "My mission is your survival, Adam. Every unknown element is a potential threat. He is an anomaly. We do not have the luxury of charity when the world relies on us."
"Then make him a known," Adam insisted, his voice leaving no room for argument. "He could be the only survivor. He might know what happened here. We take him with us, or I'm not getting on that moth."
For a tense moment, Lian Mei stared him down. Analyzing the situation, weighing Adam's stubbornness against the looming danger. Finally, with a sharp exhale, she relented.
"Fine. But he stays closely monitored. If he shows any signs of hostility, I will eliminate him. Let's move. Now."
With a swift nod, Renn scooped the small boy into his arms as easily as if he were a feather. They scrambled onto the remaining mounts. Lian Mei and Adam took the lead on the first moth, immediately pulling it into the air. Sable and Voss mounted the second, taking the flank, while Renn settled onto the third with the unconscious child secured safely in front of him.
With a powerful beat of their wings, the giant moths accelerated out of the village, leaving the silent, ruined settlement far behind them.
The cathedral was behind them. They had made the decision quickly and unanimously , whatever it contained, it wasn't what they'd come for, and the moths were rested. The forest had swallowed them less than an hour after departure, the open plains giving way without warning to a dense and suffocating woodland where ancient pines grew so thick their canopies knitted together into a single dark ceiling. They flew in a tight line, weaving through the massive moss-draped trunks, the light dropping to a dim, filtered green around them.
Adam sat rigid behind Lian Mei on the lead moth. To their right, Renn rode the third mount, one arm wrapped securely around the small unconscious boy they'd pulled from the village. Voss and Sable covered the rear.
The silence of the forest was absolute.
Until it wasn't.
It began with a rhythm, deep, percussive booming that came up through the tree roots and into their ears.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Lian Mei's head turned a precise few degrees. "Behind us. Fast."
Adam twisted around. Through the columns of pine, a colossal shape detonated through the treeline , a six-legged amalgamation of bone-plating and matted dark fur, built like an armored wolf. It didn't lumber. It sprinted, each footfall cratering the earth, and as it closed the distance it drove its shoulder through a massive oak without slowing, the trunk exploding outward, its jaws snapping open as it fixed on them.
"It's gaining!" Sable yelled, both daggers already drawn.
"Push the moths harder!" Renn shouted.
"No." Voss's voice was completely level. She was already standing on the back of her moth, balancing against the rushing wind. She looked toward the lead mount. "Lian Mei. We don't run from wild dogs. Its target is Adam , stay with him. I'll carve this thing apart and catch up."
Before Lian Mei could respond, Voss stepped off the side of the moth.
She hit the forest floor at speed and used it, boots sliding across damp earth, body coiling low to bleed off the momentum, muscles loading. Then she launched herself forward directly at the beast, a cannonball of controlled aggression aimed straight at its jaws.
Space folded.
A glowing white portal snapped open in the exact line of her trajectory , not ahead of her, not to the side, but precisely in her path at the moment her velocity was highest and her ability to change course was impossible. She had a fraction of a second to register it. Her eyes went wide.
Fwump.
The portal sealed. Voss was gone.
The silence that followed lasted about one second.
"Voss, " Sable's voice cracked.
Renn’s jaw dropped. Adam felt the cold move through him from his stomach outward.
Lian Mei's eyes had gone very still. "Circle pattern," she said, her voice controlled. "Above the treeline. Now."
The moths banked immediately into a wide holding arc. Lian Mei was already standing.
She dropped from the moth and hit the diagonal face of a pine trunk, one foot connecting with the bark , and then the muscle along her thighs compressed, like load-bearing cable pulled to its limit, and she launched from the tree with a force that split the entire tree behind her in half.
The portal user reacted instantly. A white portal bloomed open directly in her downward path.
She was already past it. She'd outpaced the spatial tear before it fully opened, the portal snapping to completion in the empty air behind her , and with her momentum completely intact she hit the six-legged beast like a guillotine, cleaving through the armored neck in a single clean arc. The head tumbled heavily into the dirt. The body followed in a geyser of dark blood.
Lian Mei landed on the thick trunk of a nearby pine, legs already coiling for the return jump.
A white portal opened directly beneath her feet.
She felt it , dropped her weight instantly, dragging both boots against the bark with every ounce of friction she could generate, feeling the edge of the void pulling at her soles, then she wrenched herself free with a violent backward launch, hitting the air just as the portal snapped shut below her.
She landed in a crouch on a branch above.
Before Lian Mei decided her next action, she was surprised that everybody jumped out, joining her on the ground battle, it was clear they had no chance of escaping this, so they would better fight it head on, however, as soon as they landed on the ground, the rest of the moths, was swallowed immediately by black holes.
And the forest, was calm once again.
"So that’s why the enemy didn’t take all the moths earlier and only the supplies, he wanted us to get here, the perfect fighting ground for his power, now we are really trapped.".
"Adam, stay close!".
"No, I can hold my own, we should all focus on survival, I refuse to drag everyone down. Don’t throw your lives away for me."
They all went silent, Adam continued.
"We don’t know where Voss was taken, this happened because she prioritized my safety over hers, and now we are both compromised."
"Adam is right, dying here puts him in more danger, we should have some trust in him and make the right call.", Renn responded.
Lian Mei, who had received strict orders from Selena, still was skeptical.
"Our goal now has changed, since we are now trapped here, we eliminate the threat, get back Voss, the moths and the supplies back", Lian Mei said as straight orders.
They all nodded, and suddenly, Renn’s head snapped up.
"Above us!".
A black portal opened above them, this one was significantly much bigger than the others, carryind a new kind of threat.