The air in the hidden courtyard changed after Lyra's warning. The scent of damp earth and strange flowers now carried a metallic tang of tension. Time, which had once blurred into a cycle of meditation and practice, now felt like a rope rapidly fraying. Each moment was a countdown.
Lyra's training became brutal in its intensity.
"Deeper," she would snap as I held the Stillness. "They will not be looking for a Sephirah. They will be looking for a stain. A blight on the world's energy. You must be nothing. A vacuum."
I pushed myself further than I thought possible, my consciousness retreating into the core of that cold void until my own heartbeat felt like a distant, foreign drum. The world outside—the hum of the city, the scent of the plants—faded into a faint murmur. I was becoming the emptiness I contained.
Elara did not return. The courtyard felt barren without her clandestine visits. I missed the strange music, the eager questions, the simple, human connection. Her absence was a constant reminder of the danger snapping at our heels. Lyra had undoubtedly forbidden her from coming, locking her away somewhere safer.
Three days after the warning, the first sign came.
It was not a sound, but a feeling. A deep, subsonic thrum that vibrated through the soles of my feet, up through the bones of my legs. It was a feeling of immense, patient pressure. The Earth itself was being questioned.
I broke from my meditation, my eyes flying open. Lyra was already standing, her form tense, her head cocked as if listening to a frequency I couldn't hear.
"They are here," she said, her voice devoid of all emotion. "A Gevurah. A master of Earth. He is listening to the stone of the city, feeling for inconsistencies. For voids." Her silver eyes locked onto me. "You are a very large void, Kaelen. Or whatever your name is."
The thrumming intensified. I could feel it in my teeth. It was a methodical, grid-like search pattern. It was two streets away. Then one.
Lyra moved with sudden, terrifying speed. She grabbed my arm, her grip like iron. "The Stillness. Now. Not just inside. Project it. Make the very air around you dead. Muffle your heartbeat. Suppress your breath. Be a hole in the world."
I tried. I poured every ounce of my will into it, pulling the cold void around me like a cloak. The air within a foot of my body grew preternaturally still and cold. The sounds of the city dampened as if I were submerged in water.
The thrumming reached our wall. I felt it pause. The Hound had sensed something. An anomaly. A patch of street that didn't echo right. A silence where there should be resonance.
Lyra's lips moved in a silent curse. Her free hand wove a complex pattern in the air. The light around us twisted, the courtyard shimmering like a mirage. She was layering her Perception illusions over my Entropic silence, trying to create the optical equivalent of a dead zone—a blur, a forgotten corner of the eye.
A voice, deep and gravelly, spoke from the other side of the wall. "There's a dissonance here. A flaw in the stone."
Another voice, higher, answered. "A sinkhole? A buried stream?"
"Deeper than that," the first voice replied. "Older. Check the registry for this plot."
We were out of time. Lyra's eyes met mine. There was no fear in them, only a cold, calculating fury. "They will break through the wall. When they do, you will run. Do not fight. Do not look back. Your only purpose is to survive. Do you understand?"
Before I could answer, the world exploded.
The entire section of the ivy-covered wall bulged inward as if struck by a giant' fist. Then, with a deafening roar, it disintegrated. Not into rubble, but into a fine, controlled cloud of dust that was instantly swept away by a gust of wind from the second Hound—an Air Sephirah.
Two figures stood in the gaping hole. One was a mountain of a man, his armor seemingly forged from living rock, his hands still glowing with the power that had unmade the wall. The Gevurah. Beside him stood a lean, sharp-faced woman, her hands moving gently, controlling the dust and air with effortless precision. A Hod.
Their eyes scanned the courtyard, bypassing Lyra's initial illusions with practiced ease. Their gaze landed on us.
"The heretic," the Gevurah boomed, his voice like grinding stone. "And his witch accomplice. By the order of the Council and House Malkuth, you will submit."
Lyra didn't hesitate. She shoved me backward with surprising force. "RUN!"
At the same moment, she thrust both hands forward. The air in front of the two Hounds didn't just shimmer; it shattered. The light fractured into a thousand blinding, dizzying fragments, a kaleidoscopic nightmare designed to overload the senses. The Air Sephirah cried out, clutching her head.
I turned and ran for the interior door, as Lyra had drilled into me.
"The void is not a sword, it is a shield," she had said. "Your greatest weapon is escape."
I heard the Gevurah roar in frustration. The ground behind me erupted, a spike of stone shooting up from the floor to block my path. I didn't slow down. I slapped my palm against it as I ran, pouring a focused point of Entropy into its core.
The spike didn't just break; it aged. The magically summoned stone crumbled into sand before it could fully form, raining harmlessly to the floor. I burst through the door into the small, dark warren of rooms that made up Lyra's safe house.
"After him!" the Gevurah shouted. "I will handle the illusionist!"
I didn't look back. I heard a sound behind me—the sickening crunch of stone on flesh, and Lyra's gasp of pain. I pushed the sound away, focusing on the path ahead. A narrow hallway. A sharp turn. The back door that led to another alley.
I slammed my shoulder into the door, bursting out into the cool night air. Freedom. But for how long?
A whip-crack of compressed air snapped past my ear, slicing a deep groove in the wooden doorframe beside me. The Air Sephirah was already free of Lyra's illusion and on my tail.
I ran. I poured my energy into my legs, into the Stillness around me, trying to be a ghost, a whisper. But she was faster. Another gust of wind slammed into my back, throwing me forward onto the rough cobblestones. The breath was knocked from my lungs.
I rolled over, scrambling backward. The Air Sephirah stood over me, her face a mask of cold professionalism. There was no hatred there, no zealotry. I was a job. A task to be completed.
"Do not make this difficult," she said, raising her hand. The air around it began to swirl, forming a blade of solidified, screaming wind.
This was it. Capture or death. Lyra's words echoed in my head. Your sentimentality is a weakness.
But so was theirs.
As the wind blade descended, I didn't raise my hands to defend myself. I didn't try to decay the air itself—a concept too vast, too formless for my current control. Instead, I focused on something small. Something vital.
I focused on the sound.
I reached out with my power, not to destroy, but to listen. To find the precise, delicate vibration of the tiny bones in her inner ear—the hammer, the anvil, the stirrup. I found their inherent entropy, the microscopic fissures that came with age and use.
And I gave them a push.
The effect was instantaneous. The Air Sephirah's eyes flew wide. The wind blade dissolved into a harmless gust. She clapped her hands over her ears, a scream of sheer, disorienting agony tearing from her throat. I hadn't destroyed her hearing; I had accelerated its decay a hundredfold. Every sound, from the rustle of her clothes to the beating of her own heart, was now a crashing, painful cacophony inside her skull. She stumbled, blind with pain and confusion.
I didn't wait. I was on my feet and running again, leaving her writhing on the ground.
I had used my power on a person. Deliberately. Not to kill, but to inflict a fate perhaps worse than death. There was no satisfaction in it. Only a cold, hollow horror.
I had chosen. I had become what I needed to be to survive.
And as I vanished into the maze of alleys, the echo of her screams chasing me, I knew the quiet part of my training was over. The war Lyra had spoken of had begun. And I had just fired the first shot.