The silence in the Kharman woods was not an absence of sound, but a presence, a thick, velvet quiet that pressed against Kenji's eardrums. The gatekeeper's glowing blue eyes were unwavering embers in the dark.
"Men are forbidden," the rustling voice scraped from the shadows beneath its hood. "The blood-price is still unpaid."
Rina stepped forward, her own voice cutting the heavy air. "He needs sanctuary. The King's hunters are on our heels."
"Your burdens are not our covenants."The gatekeeper's lantern tilted, its pale, cold light spilling toward a narrow gap between two monstrous, silver-barked trees. From the mist coalescing there, a second figure emerged, slight, robed, its face a void within its hood. It lifted a slender hand, gesturing for Rina alone.
Kenji's jaw tightened. The cold hollow in his bones, the ghost of his power's cost, throbbed in the gatekeeper's light. "Go," he said to Rina, his voice low. "Get the answers we came for."
Their eyes met, a flash of shared desperation, a silent pact forged in flight, before she turned and followed the spectral guide into the swallowing mist. Kenji was left alone in the eerie quiet, the gatekeeper's gaze a sentinel's weight upon him.
In the heart of the glade,the air was perfumed with night-blooming jasmine and the sharp, clean scent of ozone. The Kharman Witch floated cross-legged above a pool of water so still it was a mirror to a starless void.
Rina's breath hitched. The woman was a vision of lethal beauty. Hair like spilled ink woven with living vines and tiny, bioluminescent flowers. Silks of deepest violet and silver draped a form of perfect, powerful curves, revealing more skin than they concealed. But her eyes, when they opened, were ancient, holding not years, but cold millennia of memory and a grief polished to a hard, brilliant edge.
The guide melted away into the trees.
The Witch's voice was a haunting melody that seemed to vibrate in Rina's very teeth. "How is the shadow doing?"
The question, so intimate, so impossibly knowing, stole the air from Rina's lungs. She stiffened. "What?"
A slight, predatory tilt of the head. "Does his blood run cold yet? Do the veins of ash burn when he dreams of his father's sins?"
How could she know? Fear, cold and sharp, coiled in Rina's gut. "Who are you?" she demanded, defiance masking her dread.
The Witch descended, her bare feet alighting on the moss without a sound. "I am the mother of the woman who died giving him breath. My daughter… and that assassin's… legacy."Each word was precise, surgical, carving a tragedy into the space between them. "His blood is a war. It killed her. Arran's debt is now his to bear."
She offered a devil's bargain: sanctuary, training to chain the shadow that was eating him alive. "The price is him. He stays. A living heirloom. A penance. You may leave with my blessing and protection."
A gilded cage of roots and sorrow.
"And if I refuse?" Rina's voice was a thread.
The Witch's benevolent mask dissolved. "Then you both are cast out. And the King's hunters… they are already at my western border. I will lower the wards. I will let them in."
The ultimatum hung, poisonous and sweet. Survival versus solidarity. A possible future for Kenji versus his freedom.
Rina saw his defiant stance in her mind. Felt the ghost of his shared warmth in the freezing hollow. Heard his grunt of effort as he wielded the shadow not with rage, but with will.
He left me in the ashes, she had once said of Arran. But Kenji had not.
Rina's spine straightened. The fear crystallized into a cold, diamond-hard resolve. "He is not a debt to be paid,"she declared, her voice gaining strength, echoing in the still glade. "He is a person. We face our hunters together."
The air in the glade screamed.
A terrifying, invisible energy erupted from the Witch, not an attack, but a pronouncement. The light bent. The pool's surface shattered into a thousand ripples without a touch. Rina's bones hummed with a primal, atavistic fear. The Witch's eyes glowed with frigid, stellar fury.
"Then go."
Outside the boundary, Kenji felt the ripple of distortion, a psychic shockwave. Then, the baying of hounds, much closer now. Torchlight flickered between the ancient trunks, painting dancing, monstrous shadows.
General Zed stepped into the clearing, six King's Shadows flanking him like grey ghosts. The torches gilded his sharp features, his pale eyes finding Kenji immediately. "The chase ends here, boy. Come quietly. The girl, too."
Kenji's back was to the shimmering, impassable boundary. No retreat. The cold ember in his chest flared to life in response to the threat. Dark veins ignited along his forearms with a smoky, violet glow. He dropped into a low stance, his father's knife held ready. He would not go quietly. He would make them pay for every step.
"Predictable," Zed sighed, the sound devoid of all warmth. He gave a slight nod.
Two Shadows detached from the group, moving with silent, lethal grace, short swords gleaming dully.
Kenji braced, the hollow ache in his bones screaming in protest.
At that precise moment, the boundary shimmered and parted like a curtain.
Rina stumbled out, her face pale but set. Behind her, the Kharman Witch emerged.
Her presence changed the clearing. The torches dimmed, their flames straining sideways as if in a strong wind. The hounds tucked their tails and whined, pressing themselves to the ground. The very air grew dense, difficult to breathe.
Zed's composure fractured for a single, revealing instant, his eyes widened, his hand twitching toward his sword. "Witch," he spat, the word an accusation.
"General," the Witch replied, her voice now the sound of bedrock grinding deep underground. She glided forward, placing herself between the hunters and the two teens. "The boy is under my protection. You will leave. Now."
Zed's lip curled into a sneer. "He is a flagged asset of the Crown. Your forest whims do not supersede the King's law."
"The King's law," the Witch said, her tone soft yet carrying to every ear, "ends where my first tree took root."
Then, it began. A visible aura bled from her, a shimmering, corona of silver and amethyst light that warped the space around her. Spiritual pressure descended, a tangible weight that pressed on shoulders, staggered the Shadows, and forced Kenji to one knee. It was the pressure of deep earth, of a mountain's patience, promising utter annihilation.
Zed's knuckles were white on his sword hilt. "Do not think your parlor tricks frighten me, hag. I have burned witches before."
The Witch did not move a muscle. But the aura intensified. Leaves tore from branches and swirled in a silent vortex. The ground vibrated. The pressure built until black spots danced at the edges of vision, until every breath was a ragged fight. It was pure, undiluted power, a force of nature given a beautiful, terrible face.
"Try to take him," the Witch whispered, the words slithering through the crushing silence. "See if your king's warrant means anything when your bones are nourishing the roots of my silver grove."
Zed's eyes darted, a rapid, tactical assessment. From his cowering hounds, to his men struggling to even stand upright, to the Witch's serene, implacable expression. He was a strategist, a calculator of costs. This was a battlefield where the terrain itself was a hostile army. Victory here would cost him everything, his men, his life, and yield nothing.
Pure, scalding hatred burned in his gaze as it locked onto Kenji, then Rina. "This is not over," he hissed, the promise venomous. "The Crown does not forget what it owns. And it owns you both."
With a sharp, slashing gesture, he turned. The Shadows retreated into the forest, dragging the terrified hounds, the torches fleeing like cowardly stars.
The pressure vanished instantly. Kenji collapsed forward onto his hands, gasping. The dark veins snuffed out, leaving him trembling, emptier than ever.
The Kharman Witch turned. Her galactic eyes fell upon him, holding no warmth, no familial comfort. Only a cold, possessive calculation, the look of a collector beholding a uniquely dangerous specimen.
"Come, grandson,"she said, the word 'grandson' sounding like a sentence. "Your real trial begins tonight."