The Severed Path did not sleep like normal people.
Walliam noticed that first.
While Elaris curled under her cloak and Torren snored like a wounded bear, the riders rotated in perfect silence. No chatter. No firelight gossip. Just still shapes at the edge of the camp, watching the dark like they expected it to blink.
Their leader — she'd given her name as Kael — stood near the rise overlooking the plains, unmoving.
Walliam joined her before dawn.
"You don't trust us," he said.
She didn't look at him. "Trust is earned through survival."
"Comforting philosophy."
"It works."
The sky above them was pale gray, clouds streaked thin. The fractures were faint in daylight but still there, like cracks in a porcelain bowl no one dared touch.
"You really kill Heart-bearers?" he asked.
Kael nodded once. "We end disasters before they begin."
"Even if they're trying to help?"
Her jaw tightened. "Especially then."
That stung more than he expected.
"Fear makes people grab power," she continued. "Hope makes them justify it."
Walliam thought of the First Bearer.
He didn't argue.
They traveled together by midmorning.
The plains rolled endlessly, broken by stone spires and patches of silver grass that shimmered when the wind passed through.
The Severed Path rode ahead and behind, forming a moving perimeter. No one said it, but Walliam understood the formation.
He was being escorted.
Or contained.
Torren walked beside him. "If they stab you, I'm looting their horses."
"Thanks," Walliam said.
Elaris was deep in conversation with one of the younger riders, comparing notes on symbols and Beacon lore. She looked… alive. Curious. This was the world she'd always wanted.
Walliam tried to feel the same.
Instead, the mark in his chest wouldn't settle.
It buzzed.
Like a warning he couldn't hear yet.
Then the horses screamed.
Every mount reared at once.
Birds exploded from the grasslands in panicked clouds.
Kael shouted, "Form!"
The air pressure changed — like before a storm, but wrong. Heavy. Metallic.
Walliam felt it in his teeth.
"Something's coming," Elaris said.
"No," Kael corrected.
"Something's here."
The sky above flickered.
Just for a second.
Like an eye blinking.
And something looked through.
The world tore.
Not physically — not yet.
But space rippled, bending like heat haze.
A shape unfolded in midair fifty paces ahead.
Too large. Too thin.
It had no stable form — limbs stretched and retracted, surfaces flickering between crystal, shadow, and void. At its center floated a sphere of black light, swallowing color around it.
The mark in Walliam's chest flared painfully.
Kael's voice was sharp. "Everyone back! That's not a shard-beast!"
The creature didn't move.
It observed.
And Walliam felt its attention like a hook in his spine.
"It's here because of me," he whispered.
Elaris grabbed his arm. "Don't you dare walk toward it."
The sphere at the creature's center pulsed.
A line of darkness shot outward, striking the ground.
Where it hit, grass turned to glass.
Torren swore. "That's new."
Kael drew twin curved blades that shimmered faintly blue. "Sever its core if you can. Don't let it anchor."
"Anchor to what?" Torren demanded.
"The world!"
The creature extended something like a limb — not solid, more a direction of force.
A rider and horse were lifted into the air and crushed into a burst of crystal dust.
Silence hit like a slap.
Then chaos.
The Severed Path attacked with precision — ropes of glowing wire, blades of condensed light, arrows that burst into binding sigils.
None of it slowed the creature for long.
Every strike passed through shifting matter.
Elaris fired a beam of focused light at its core. The darkness swallowed it whole.
Walliam couldn't breathe.
This wasn't corruption.
It wasn't memory.
It was absence.
Something that did not belong.
"Walliam!" Elaris shouted. "Do you feel it?!"
"Yes," he gasped.
It felt like standing near a hole in reality.
And the mark in his chest was not resisting.
It was… resonating.
Kael saw it. "Don't connect to it!"
Too late.
The creature turned fully toward him.
The black sphere pulsed once.
Walliam's vision split.
He saw the plains.
And beyond them — threads of light across the world.
Beacons.
Places he hadn't reached yet.
The creature's awareness touched those threads.
It was mapping.
Through him.
"No," he whispered.
It wasn't here to kill.
It was here to learn.
He tore his gaze away and dropped to one knee, clutching his chest.
"Walliam!" Elaris knelt beside him.
"I can't block it," he said. "It's using the same pathways."
Kael barked orders, but her voice sounded distant.
Walliam looked at the creature again.
It wasn't angry.
It wasn't hungry.
It was curious.
Like a scientist observing an experiment.
Rage flared hot in his chest.
"You don't get to use us," he said.
The mark ignited.
Not outward.
Inward.
He didn't push power at the creature.
He closed the connection.
The threads inside him twisted, re-routing, folding inward like a shield.
Pain lanced through him — like ripping hooks from skin.
The creature recoiled.
For the first time, its form destabilized.
Kael saw the opening. "Now!"
The riders launched everything at once.
Blades struck the sphere. Sigils detonated. Elaris poured light like a sunbeam.
The creature shrieked — a sound like metal bending.
Its shape collapsed inward.
Then—
It vanished.
Not destroyed.
Gone.
The sky above stopped rippling.
Silence fell over the plains.
Wind returned, gentle and ordinary.
Walliam collapsed.
He woke with Elaris's hand in his.
Torren hovered nearby, trying and failing to look casual.
Kael stood over him.
"You severed its link," she said.
Walliam nodded weakly. "It wasn't corruption."
"No," she agreed.
Her eyes were harder than before.
"It was a scout."
Elaris went pale. "Scout for what?"
Kael looked up at the fractured sky.
"Something that noticed the Heart moving again."
Torren exhaled slowly. "So we've officially attracted cosmic management."
Walliam sat up, wincing.
"They're watching Beacons," he said. "Through the same pathways I use."
Kael studied him.
"Then you're not just a healer."
"No," Walliam said.
"I'm a doorway."
The words tasted like ash.
The mark in his chest pulsed, quieter now.
Not guiding.
Waiting.