The Pale Petal Order's hunt party arrived at the edge of Rainlight Hollow two days later, moving like silk across stone—silent, precise, and deadly. Seeker Hwen led them, face veiled, his spirit-thread cloak trailing behind him like a living shadow. Eight cultivators followed: a blend of scouts, glyph-callers, and light-channelers—all handpicked from the Thirteen Petal Accord's elite enforcement division.
They paused on a high ridge overlooking the hollow, where the light still shimmered unnaturally from the broken glyphs below. A scorched resonance of stormglass lingered in the Qi. Hwen narrowed his eyes.
"He was here," he said.
A spirit-seer beside him nodded. "And he touched the Hollow's breath. The Rainlight style has stirred. He learned something."
Another voice rose, steady and cold: "He's adapting too quickly. He's no longer just a threat to our hunt—he's a potential echo."
Hwen turned toward the speaker, a woman cloaked in dusksteel, her hair braided with symbols of the Tribunal's Inner Circle. Her name was Chariin, and she had not come merely to assist.
She had come to judge.
"Then the order has shifted," she said calmly. "This is no longer a recovery mission. This is a full silencing directive. The Tribunal demands it."
Far below, unaware of how close they circled, Kairo made his way through a winding gorge where old Veilwither paths had been buried by landslides decades ago. The soul-map pulsed softly in his robe, pointing to a location deep beneath the Wailing Clefts.
He paused near an overhang, summoning the Rainlight glyph once more—not to attack, but to read the wind. A flow of Qi carried whispers and scents: the burn of spiritsteel oil, the faint taste of dried lotus bark—used by Pale Petal scouts.
They were close.
He sat and began drawing a new glyph in the soil. His own, this time—a blend of Abyssal Codex script and the sorrow-born Rainlight resonance. Twinblight hovered beside him, its blades faintly humming.
He closed his eyes.
Let them come.
Night fell fast.
Hwen gave the signal.
Three scouts descended first, sliding down the gorge's eastern wall with ease. Two more launched from above, threads of golden light binding their bodies into tight orbits of acceleration. A sixth carved a shadow-path with her blade.
And then all hell broke loose.
The soil around them erupted in spiraling glyphs. Kairo's trap activated.
The Rainlight sorrow-glyph flared, catching them in a wave of emotional feedback—memories of their own fears magnified into choking illusions. One stumbled and fell screaming. Another dropped his sword and backed into a razorvine wall.
Kairo emerged from the mist like a demon in mourning. His cloak billowed behind him, Rainlight aura laced into its folds.
Twinblight danced.
The first to recover charged, blade high.
Kairo dodged and struck, the curved sickle slicing open the man's thigh before twisting into a backhand arc. The second attacker released a lightburst—Kairo shielded his eyes, rolled, then flung a corrupted sigil that coiled into the man's chest and exploded with whispered screams.
Two down.
Four more to go.
But something shifted.
Chariin dropped from above.
Her aura hit the earth like a falling star. The mist parted. Her presence broke through Kairo's storm-born veil.
"You're not the only one who's evolved," she said.
She struck with a twin-sigil blade—one edge spirit, the other shadow. Kairo blocked, but her second strike sent him skidding.
"You wear sorrow well," she said, "but I've seen grief become a noose. Let me tighten it."
Kairo grinned despite the pain in his ribs. "You talk too much."
They clashed again—light and void, memory and rage. Chariin's strikes were flawless, each movement a product of centuries of refinement. Kairo's were jagged, unpredictable, fed by loss and warped power.
She cut him across the cheek.
He drove Twinblight into her shoulder.
They separated, panting.
Then Hwen appeared behind him.
Blade to throat.
Kairo didn't flinch. "Now or never," he whispered.
The Old Bone Flute at his side pulsed once.
And Kairo blew.
The note wasn't loud. But it carried.
A raincloud formed overhead, summoned by memory, not weather. Lightning surged down—not from the sky, but from within the earth.
It hit all three.
Kairo vanished into the smoke.
When the haze cleared, only Hwen and Chariin stood—injured, but breathing.
Their target was gone.
But the mountain remembered his name.
End of Chapter 17