The dawn didn't bring light to the Obsidian Forest; it only turned the pitch-black air, purple.
Ren was struggling. Every step felt like wading through chest-deep mud while someone hammered nails into his joints. The heavy pack dug into the raw skin of his shoulders, and the iron collar felt like a ring of ice now.
'Keep moving,' Ren told himself, his breath hitching. 'One foot. Then the other. Don't look at the Prince. Don't look at the leash. Just don't die. Dying is the one thing you can't afford right now.'
Beside him, the three Princes were silent, their eyes scanning the fog-heavy trees. They looked like gods. Ren, on the other hand, felt like a glorified pack-mule with a nosebleed.
"They're surrounding us," Kael noted, looking around, at something invincible.
He didn't sound afraid—Kael didn't seem to know how to be afraid—but his hand was on his greatsword. "I can hear the hounds. They've been on our scent since the cave."
He was the warrior amongst them, the best at locating a prey.
"Let them come," Cian said. He looked better than he had last night, his skin glowing with a restless, white-gold light, but his fingers kept twitching toward the silver lead in his hand.
Ren watched that hand. 'He's itching for it again,' he thought bitterly. 'He doesn't want an attendant. He wants a fix. I've become a human drug for a royal junkie.'
"Don't be a fool, Cian," Julian cautioned, idly plucking a shard of obsidian from a passing branch.
"Alaric isn't here for a 'friendly spar.' He's here to ensure the Valerius name ends in this forest. If you spike here, the Sages will declare you 'unfit' before the sun sets." Julian smiled.
They reached a narrow land-bridge spanning a deep, fog-filled gorge. The bridge was made of slick, black stone, barely wide enough for the horses, with strong ropes twisted on both sides as rails.
Ren swallowed hard, he was never one for heights. He looked at the drop and his heart nearly stopped. It looked bottomless, like fog all the way.
'Great. If the lightning doesn't kill me, the gravity will.'
Ren noticed the change in the manna signature around before the rest.
They were already halfway across when the first bolt struck.
It was like an arrow, but a glob of orange condensed mana that exploded against the stone bridge with the sound of a cannon blast. The horses screamed, rearing up. Ren lost his footing, the heavy pack pulling him toward the edge. Only the silver lead, held tight in Cian's hand, kept him from plunging into the abyss.
"Cian! Look out!" Julian shouted.
From the fog on the other side emerged Alaric and five South Tower students. They were standing in a star-shaped ritual formation, their hands joined.
"The Resonance Collapse," Julian hissed, his usual smugness vanishing. "They're going to fold the mana-field. They're going to force a meltdown! Destroy everything including themselves. Are they mad?!!"
Ren's eyes widened.
He looked at the South Tower's "Ground"—the pale girl from before. She was arched back, her skin literally cracking as Alaric forced their combined magic through her.
'They're using her like a fuse,' Ren thought, a flash of pure, cold terror cutting through his exhaustion. 'They're going to blow her up just to get to us.'
The obsidian roots beneath the bridge began to glow a violent, toxic orange. At least he knew how far the drop was now.
He felt the compression first. It felt like an invisible hand was squeezing his lungs. The silver stitches in his palm flared white-hot, vibrating so hard he thought his skin would tear.
Cian let out a strangled cry. His white-gold lightning mana didn't shoot outward; it turned inward, imploding toward his own heart, through his own system. He fell from his horse, his body convulsing on the stone.
"Take it!" Cian roared, his eyes wide with agony. "Take it all!"
He shoved the silver lead toward Ren.
Ren grabbed it, but the power was wrong.
It wasn't just Cian's lightning anymore. The South Tower's ritual had turned the very air into a sea of hostile, jagged mana. It was as if the forest was trying to drown them in liquid fire.
'If I just take it, I'll explode,' Ren realized, his mind racing at a-thousand miles an hour-pace. 'The girl over there... she's already breaking. If she goes, we go.'
He fell to his knees, his knee touching the cold stone. His body shook with confusion and the weight of a possible overload.
He forced his mind to think.
'The book... Elias... "Mend the ash."'
Ren didn't just open his core. He reached out with his free hand and slammed his palm against the glowing obsidian stone of the bridge planning to take it all.
'Stop fighting me,' he snarled at the chaotic energy that was still being controlled by Alaric.
He didn't know what he was doing, but he imagined he was a needle.
He mentally reached out and grabbed the jagged orange fire from Alaric and the white-blue lightning from Cian. Instead of letting them clash, he braid them. He forced the hostile condensed energy to wrap around each other, neutralizing the charge.
A shockwave erupted from Ren's body.
It wasn't a bang. It was a hollow silent something, like the sound of a vacuum sealing shut.
For a hundred yards, the orange glow died. The lightning vanished. The South Tower students collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Ren had sucked the mana right out of their ritual.
Silence returned to the gorge, broken only by the heavy breathing of the Princes.
Alaric stared at Ren, his face pale with terror. "What... what are you?"
Ren didn't answer. He couldn't. His nose was gushing blood now, and his vision was swimming in silver spots. His body hit the floor.
'I think... I think I just ate a mountain,' Ren thought dizzily. 'Never again will come out for a hunt.'
The fourth stitch was complete. He could feel it—a solid, shimmering line of power near his thumb. And beneath it, a fifth one was starting to itch.
Cian crawled over to him, his hands trembling. He didn't ask if Ren was okay. He stared at Ren as if making sure he was still functional, with echoes of a terrifying, dark greed.
"You are the entire field,"Cian whispered.
"He's a monster," Alaric screamed from the other side, scrambling to his feet. "Cian, that's not a Ground! That's—"
Kael didn't let him finish. With a flick of his wrist, he sent a shockwave of physical force that knocked Alaric back into the fog. "Leave. Or the Hunt ends for you here."
The South Tower students fled.
Julian and Kael approached too.
Julian's eyes were narrowed, his mind clearly working through the impossibility of what he'd just seen. A Null shouldn't be able to stop a six-person ritual. It was like a bucket stopping a waterfall.
Cian still hadn't let go of Ren's hand. He looked up at Julian and Kael, his sapphire eyes burning with a feverish light.
"He's staying with me," Cian said, his voice possessive. "From now on, no one touches him. He is mine."
'Oh, great,' Ren thought, his head falling back against the stone.
'I went from being a tool to being a prized possession. Upgrade? Probably not.'
Not the kind he was hoping for at least.
Ren felt someone lift him—Kael, judging by the smell of iron and the sheer strength. He felt the heavy cloak wrapped around him again.
As they moved deeper into the forest, Ren didn't close his eyes. He couldn't.
The fourth stitch had given him something new: Mana-Sight. He didn't know each stitch gave him something new. He'd have to check for the rest three.
The forest was no longer dark to him. It was a web of glowing, frayed threads. And in the shadows of a glass-tree, he saw the man in the robes again.
"Four down," the voice whispered in Ren's mind. "Ninety-six to go, little King."
'Little King? I can barely keep my pants up. This ghost is as crazy as the Princes.'
Ren thought as his consciousness faded.
Or maybe he had really gone mad.