The trees swallowed them whole.
Eryk Thorn stumbled forward, boots sinking into the damp earth. The undergrowth clawed at his legs like skeletal fingers, pulling, grasping, and whispering secrets in the hush of dusk. This was no ordinary woodland. The forest was a living thing, ancient and aware, its gnarled limbs twisted into unnatural shapes. Branches knotted high overhead like fingers interlaced in prayer or chains, blotting out the bruised twilight sky, leaving behind only fractured beams of moonlight to guide their path.
The air was thick with scent—pine and rot, wet soil and moss, older and wilder. Something that made Eryk's skin itch and the hairs on his arms rise. A primal knowing.
Behind him, Sera moved with the grace of a predator, silent and sure. Her dark cloak blurred against the shadows, her boots barely brushing the earth. A glint of steel flashed at her side. Her knife was always ready and always near. Her expression was unreadable, but the tension in her shoulders betrayed her. She listened not to the trees but past them, for the sound of boots on soil, of magic crackling in pursuit.
They both knew what followed.
The Council's scouts would not be far. Perhaps a pack of Black Tongues, with their twisted words and severed cores. Maybe magehounds, bred to sniff out even the faintest thread of arcana. Or Eryk's father himself.
The thought of his father sent a fresh blade of ice into Eryk's gut.
Kael. His fire extinguished by Eryk's own hands.
He's a monster.
The word echoed inside him.
A twig snapped to their left.
Eryk froze. His breath caught in his throat, heart hammering like a war drum. Sera's hand clamped around his wrist, sharp and commanding, pulling him into a crouch behind a crumbling log thick with fungus and shadow.
Her breath brushed his ear. "Don't. Move."
Eryk obeyed.
Time stretched. The forest seemed to still, to hold its breath. Not even the wind dared whisper. Then came the rustle. Too heavy to be a deer. Too slow to be a bird.
Footsteps.
Eryk's fingers dug into the soil, cool and damp. The hunger inside him stirred, drawn to the spark of magic in the air. He felt it before he saw it—a shimmer, a vibration in the stillness.
"More," the void within hissed.
"No!" he growled back in his mind.
The footsteps halted.
"You see anything?"
"No. But the trail ends here."
Eryk's breath faltered.
Sera's fingers slipped from his wrist to her knife. The metal gleamed dully, her knuckles pale with pressure.
Crunch. Another step.
The clearing ahead bloomed with silver light, a scout emerging, armored, insignia of the Council glinting across his chestplate. His eyes glowed faintly with magic. A mage tracker.
Sera's lips brushed his ear.
"On my signal."
The scout took another step. Closer.
Then she moved.
She lunged with animal grace, her blade slicing through the air. The scout turned, a warning spell blooming around him too slow. Her knife bit through the gap in his armor, steel singing as it met flesh. A cry echoed, strangled and sharp.
Eryk reacted.
His hand rose, fingers wide. The void roared. Magic rushed from the scout in a blinding surge, visible only to Eryk's hollow sight—a golden stream of light, torn free from the man's chest. The scout's scream was cut off as the essence ripped from his core, feeding the darkness inside Eryk.
The hunger sighed momentarily satisfied.
The body dropped.
Empty and dead.
Sera stood above him, blood on her blade with her breath too heavy. She looked down but she didn't speak.
Eryk staggered back. He could still feel it. The magic lingering inside him. The weight of another soul devoured.
"Did you—did you see—?"
"I saw," she said, voice flat. "We need to move."
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
She didn't call him a monster.
She didn't need to.
They moved deeper into the woods.
The air grew colder. The trees older. Each step was harder than the last. Eryk's body ached. His mind swam with guilt and magic, pain and fear.
Sera led them through the thickest parts, where moonlight barely touched the moss-covered floor. Once, she paused to let a horned shadow pass overhead—a skyrend, likely loosed from the northern cliffs. Another time, she pulled him away from a nest of sleeping spellmoths, their wings glowing faintly, charged with paralysis dust.
Finally, they reached an outcrop of stone, jagged and veined with glowing fungus. Sera dropped her pack onto the ground with her breath shallow.
"We rest here."
Eryk collapsed beside a moss-covered stump, his chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. His arms felt like iron rods—bent and brittle—and his legs trembled as though the earth beneath him pulsed with the same dread he carried. Sweat clung to his skin despite the forest chill, and his fingers were numb from gripping the void too tightly for too long.
The void inside him had quieted.
But his thoughts hadn't.
They surged like a black tide. The memory of the scout's core unraveling into his own emptiness still lingered behind his eyes, like a scream he couldn't unhear.
Sera tossed him a strip of dried meat with a casual flick of her wrist. It landed on his knee, and he caught it automatically, though his appetite had long since fled.
He didn't eat it. He just stared at the bark beneath his feet.
"You should've run," he said, voice raw and brittle, like cracked glass.
Sera tilted her head, tearing a bite from her own rations. "What?"
Eryk's eyes were hollow. They didn't meet hers at first.
"Back there. When you saw what I did." He swallowed. The words tasted like ash. "You should've run."
She blinked, slowly.
"I didn't." Her tone was neutral, but her eyes were sharp, watching him.
His gaze finally lifted, searching her face for any sign of revulsion.
"You should have." He sounded more like a boy than a soldier. Like a child begging to be punished before someone else could do it.
"I've done this too many times now," he continued. His voice shook despite his best effort to steady it. "And I didn't know what to do. I still don't. I just… react. The void takes and takes and takes, and I can't stop it. I can't even slow it down or control it."
Sera chewed slowly, the silence between them stretching taut like a tripwire. She didn't flinch.
"Wouldn't be the first time I've seen magic kill," she said finally.
Eryk's mouth twitched. His fists curled into the fabric of his trousers.
"That wasn't just magic." His voice dropped to a whisper. "That was something else. That was—"
"Necessary," she cut in, her voice clipped.
"I didn't want to," he breathed. His head fell into his hands.
Sera nodded, slow and steady. "I know."
He raised his face again, pale and tired and threadbare. "Then why aren't you afraid of me?"
That stopped her. She paused mid-bite. For a moment, everything stilled: the night wind in the trees, the rustling leaves, even the distant pulse of the forest's life seemed to hold its breath.
She looked at him.
And in the weight of her silence, something ancient settled between them.
"Because you're not the first hollow thing I've met, Stray Dog."
Eryk blinked and stunned. He wasn't sure what he'd expected—pity, maybe, or condemnation—but not that.
"What?"
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she tilted her face to the trees above. The moon's light laced through the leaves, silver threads against the night. It painted her scars in pearl and her expression in shadow.
"I was at the Academy once," she said, voice quiet but firm. Not ashamed but she seemed it was too distant to reach. Like telling someone else's story.
Eryk straightened, heart slowing. "What happened?"
"Six years ago." She exhaled slowly. "Earth core. And I'm the weakest one. I could coax flowers to bloom in winter. Feel the heartbeat of the trees beneath the soil. Sense their breath." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Pretty tricks. Nothing useful."
"That's not—" Eryk started, but she held up a hand.
"Took the Starfire Trial. Everyone does, eventually. Pushed too far. My core… cracked." Her voice faltered for the first time. "Then shattered."
Eryk sucked in a breath. The hollow feeling that followed, the phantom ache of what once was magic—that wound never truly healed.
"Well, they dragged me out of the circle," she continued, "half-dead, ribs broken, core splintered. I couldn't even feel the trees anymore."
"They exiled you," Eryk said, the words heavier than iron.
She nodded, staring into the dark beyond the trees. "My family disowned me before the council had the chance. Said I was a curse. That I embarrassed their bloodline. No better than the Hollowborn."
Eryk looked at her beyond the sharp words and the sharper blade, past the scars and the soldier's stance. There was pain there. And a strength forged in abandonment.
"Sera…" he whispered. "I'm sorry."
She shrugged, not unkindly. "Don't be. I learned to survive. Without a core. Without them. The forest doesn't care who your parents were. Only that you keep moving."
There was a pause between them, filling the silence gaping through each other. Then Eryk asked, quietly, as though it were sacrilege.
"What was it like? Having one?"
Sera went still. Her eyes clouded, and for a moment, she looked younger.
"Like carrying a candle in the dark," she said. "Flickering. Fragile. But it was mine. No one could take it from me. Until they did."
Eryk stared at the ground. The fire they didn't dare light haunted the center of their camp. It might've offered warmth, but it would also give them away. They sat in darkness, together but apart.
"And now?"
Sera drew her knife and laid it across her knees. The blade glinted like a frozen tongue.
"Now I carry a knife instead," she said. "It's sharper though."
Eryk didn't laugh.
He wanted to. Wanted to pretend this was gallows humor and not the truth of two broken people bleeding quietly in the woods.
But he understood. Perhaps too well.
A wolf howled then, high and keening, like mourning. But something about the sound was wrong.
The trees shivered. The branches creaking in unison like bones under pressure.
Sera rose immediately with her every muscle alert. Her hand returned to her blade.
"We should go," she said, eyes narrowing toward the east.
Eryk nodded. His legs ached as he pushed himself upright, bones screaming in protest. But he stood.
They began to pack in silence, until Eryk paused and said something softly.
"Sera," he called her.
Sera turned slightly, her shadows painting her face.
"Thank you. For not running."
Her gaze met his. Just for a flicker of a second, something in her eyes softened like thawed frost on a winter branch. A breath of warmth.
Then it was gone.
"Don't thank me yet, Stray Dog." Her voice was steady, but not cold. "We've got a long way to go."