Chapter 15
Seth
The pull hasn’t stopped.
It’s been—hours? Days? Who the hell knows—since that silver light flickered through the dark, and the thing hooked under my ribs hasn’t let up since.
Worse, actually.
It’s gotten sharper. Tighter. Like someone replaced the thread with barbed wire and decided to yank.
I stumble over nothing—because everything here is nothing—and catch myself against empty air.
“Fantastic,” I mutter. “Haunted by a ghost with better cardio than me.”
I keep walking anyway.
What else am I going to do? Stop? Let the pull rip me apart from the inside? At least moving feels like I’m doing something.
Even if that something is probably walking straight into a trap.
The scent hits me again.
Ozone. Sharp. Clean.
Stronger this time.
I freeze, breathing it in like it’s the first real air I’ve tasted in years.
It probably is.
I turn slowly, trying to pinpoint the direction, but it’s everywhere and nowhere. The Void doesn’t do directions. Doesn’t doanythingexcept crush hope and swallow light.
But this—
This is different.
The darkness around me feels… wrong. Not the usual oppressive nothing. There’s a pulse to it. Faint. Like veins of light running through the black.
Silver veins.
I reach out, and the air shimmers where my fingers pass through.
“What the hell?”
I’ve been here long enough to know the Void doesn’t change. Doesn’t react. It justis—static, eternal, empty.
But now it’s moving.
Breathing.
Alive.
And I realize: it’s not the Void changing.
It’sthem.
Whoever crossed over, whatever power they’re carrying—it’s rewriting the rules just by existing here.
