Crickets pulsed their steady rhythm through the night, and, beyond them, owls hooted like distant monks calling prayers; frogs drummed low notes in hidden puddles, and somewhere a lonely nightjar gave its eerie whistle. These voices of the dark wove a strange choir, part lullaby, part warning.

Then, right at the heart of all those living orchestra, came a different noise; a sharp pop, like a bubble bursting under water. It stuttered once, twice, and then, like a glitch in a screen, a blur unfolded and spilled lilac light across the trees. Dry leaves stirred as though gossiping about the intruder.

The blur rose taller, lengthening, and gradually shaped itself into a man leading a horse with a heavy package on its back. The light around them dimmed, as though the woods were swallowing it, and then both figures stood there fully formed, breathing and real.

The young man exhaled and turned in a slow circle. Towering trunks closed around him, their tops lost in a darkness so deep it sometimes seemed to draw faces, like someone peeking from behind the branches.

"Looks like it's now two of us," he murmured to the horse, eyeing the only lit place ahead; the gate at a clearing where guards prowled with their lamps. Had he appeared on the open ground he would have been caught instantly.

"Well," he added under his breath, "Angela is smart after all." He turned away from the glow of the gate and into the vast black of the forest.

What met him was not what he had prepared for. The woods breathed a cold he hadn't expected, a breeze carrying a metallic tang that bit his cheeks. Fog clung low like spilled milk; thin tendrils of smoke-coloured mist wound about his ankles as if trying to tie him down.

Branches reached out like long fingers and roots writhed underfoot, hidden traps in the gloom. Somewhere above, bats flickered past like scraps of night with wings.

Simma stood where he had appeared, horse at his side. For minutes he hesitated, wondering if Sarah had been right, if he should turn back now. But I've come this far, he told himself, jaw tightening. I must finish this.

"I just need a place to lay low until dawn," he whispered.

He staggered through the undergrowth, pulling the horse by the reins, squinting to see through the thickness of the night, every sense taut in case something lunged. This was not his first forest walk, he'd done plenty with Zaro training him, but those had been in daylight. This was darkness, not just the absence of sun but a living dark, thick and pressing.

He kept moving forward. Time stretched thin, each minute an eternity. Then, finally, the shape of a cave loomed ahead. As his eyes adjusted, his mood fell. The last time he had entered a cave, he had not been alone, and the memory of who had been with him burned like a brand.

The cave mouth jutted out of the hillside like a cracked jaw. Its walls were jagged rock, but the floor was eerily smooth, as though something had licked it clean.

The memory crashed over him. Images tried to crawl up from the pit of his heart. He stood there glaring at the opening, a heaviness in his chest that felt as though it could bow a thousand men. Inside, water murmured, a thread of sound winding out from the dark.

He shook his head hard, fighting the stubborn tear forming in his eye, and led the horse to a tree beside the cave. He tied the reins and unstrapped the package.

The bundle was no ordinary pack: a black-and-silver composite frame studded with crystal nodes, humming faintly, stitched with leather straps that glowed faint blue runes. Inside were collapsible metal rods, fire-powder pellets, a sheet of heat-cloth, and a small prism-engine for light, gear meant for a traveller who knew danger. Gently He hauled it down with care.

...

Moments later Simma crouched beside a fire he had coaxed into being on a soft mat at the threshold of the cave. The flames licked upward, golden at first, casting shadows like dancing phantoms on the rock. Sparks rose and snapped like tiny dancers.

His eyes glowed blue, and just beyond the clearing a mid-sized dragon shimmered into existence like a reflection made real. Its body was a sculpture of lucent blue, smoky and translucent yet dazzling, each wing-stretch leaving faint neon trails that dissolved like comet tails.

Looking at it was like staring at a living aurora. It reminded Simma of the first time he had ever seen an inner lucent beast; Sonja's stag, bright, impossible, and sacred.

Memory dragged at him again. Then a rasping lick on his chin startled him. Mr. Paw, his young shadow-blending leopard, had appeared at his side, the young leopard-beast rubbing against his shoulder, then licking his chin.

The little creature's fur was sleek but bristling, its eyes wide with worry. It let out a low, throaty sound that was half snarl, half whimper. In its own way, the beast was saying: 'Don't sink. Don't disappear. I'm here.'

The sound cracked something inside him. The concern in the creature's eyes, the warm tongue against his cold skin. it was a tenderness so raw it might have made an onlooker cry. It was as though the leopard carried Sonja's spirit, begging him not to give in.

"Hey, buddy. It's okay. I'm fine," Simma said, stroking the small predator. He forced a smile.

"I'm gonna be okay. Once I avenge Sonja, I'll be better." The words felt brittle in his mouth. He forced a smile, but it sat crooked on his face.

Then...

whoosh.

Something moved past, quick as a blade of wind, causing the flame to bend and almost give way.

Simma jerked awake fully. His heart double-kicked in his chest, and gooseflesh crawled up his arms. Mr. Paw snarled, hackles high, eyes fixed on the dark.

But Mr. Paw was still very young. Simma couldn't risk him. With a whispered command, he sent the leopard back into the ether, and the blue dragon dissolved as well, leaving only Simma, the forest, and the rushing water echoing from the cave.

Only the cricket chorus remained, and the echo of rushing water from within the cave.

Again it happened, a ripple of movement, and this time the fear was sharp enough to taste. The fire beside him did not flicker as if to go out. Instead its golden flames stiffened, froze, and became pillars of ice. The crackling turned to a brittle chime. Frost spidered across the stones, and the warm glow became a ghostly blue.

'Nexers,' Simma thought at once. He knew that signature too well. Soulnexers; he had met them in past lives, and their touch was nightmare.

Blue light flooded his eyes. From his fists to his elbows glassy lucent scales grew, each plate a shard of frozen ocean. In his palm a hilt bloomed, smooth and glowing, and from that hilt a blade unfurled; first a line of light, then a plane, then a full sword, its edges bright as cut sapphires, forming with a soft ringing until it stood complete.

He raised it, alertness at its peak, and dilated his sight to pierce the dark.

Whoosh!

Again, the unseen force slammed past, knocking him from his feet. Air rushed over him like the wake of a passing train. He scrambled up quickly.

The forest around him dimmed, the nearby trees turning colourless and brittle as if life were draining from them. The air grew eerily cold, reeking of old stone crypts. It was like death itself had begun pacing the undergrowth.

Still turning, sword raised, he searched, listening, listening. His heart thudded loud in his ears.

Then he sensed it at his back.

He spun to strike, heart hammering, but too late. Something struck him and he crashed down, head cracking against the earth. The impact rang in his skull, muffling the world, sending his vision spinning.

Through the dizziness one thought repeated: 'Don't look into its eyes. Don't look into its eyes.'

The soulnexer drifted out of hiding at last. It must have noticed his sword had flown from his hand and that he lay prone. And therefore stopped its circling rush and simply hovered. Slowly it glided above him, face-down, like a corpse lying on an invisible slab, descending inch by inch.

Simma turned his face aside, refusing its gaze. But It was calling him, though it made no sound.

He fought to keep his head turned away, but it felt as though invisible hands were tilting his face. and...

Kpum!

His head snapped upward like someone possessed, eyes locking with the creature.

It was the worst thing anyone could see before sleep. Though it wore the shape of a man, it was a man drained of essence, like smoked meat left too long above a fire. Its skin was parchment gray, stretched thin, its features collapsed inward.

Where a nose should have been were only two black slits. Its mouth was a black hole, swallowing light. A hood of shadow hung over it like a cowl, and its edges frayed into smoke that the wind might scatter at any moment. Its enormous eyes burned red, not bright but deep, like coals buried under ash.

The moment Simma's gaze met its own, his irises went black. Dark veins spidered out thick around his eyes. A tide of nightmares surged through him, not just dreams but memories, poisoned and evil.

...

Flash:

Blood splashed over him as Sonja's body fell lifeless to the ground.

"Hahahahahaha!" the Singrith that killed her laughed, its voice a serrated blade.

"Blood will rain!" it howled as a storm rattled and crimson drizzle fell from a sky gone mad.

...

Another flash: raw, naked wire lashing across his bare back, tearing through flesh, dragging strips of skin from his body until the world was nothing but pain and the metallic scent of blood."Work harder!" a voice barked, distant and cold.

...

Another flash:

"You are broken.

You are pathetic.

You… you did this to us."

...

As he drowned in his own memories, a flicker of light pulsed under his skin. It seeped upward, dimming beneath his clothes With every vicious image it moved higher. It crawled to his throat, then toward his mouth.

It was his soul being pulled free, thread by shining thread. The more the nexer fed him visions, the more his soul rose, curling upward like a ghost unfurling from his body.

Until trembling like a candle flame about to go out, a thin mist of blue-white essence floated from his lips.

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