Remembering Sidney’s precise cadence, Jared pinched the ragged Guiding Talisman between two numb fingers. With that memory guiding his fingers, he snapped the Guiding Talisman open; pale threads of light seeped out, wriggling like earthworms desperate for soil.
Each thread found a current in the raging void and anchored, tugging him toward a path too narrow to see. He stepped after it, jaw clenched against the sideways gravity that kept trying to tear his boots free.
News of the Ghostspring Sect swelled behind his ribs like a second heartbeat, forcing speed over caution. Boulders of compressed air slammed into them; what could have been clever detours became straight-through collisions. Each impact left a fresh bruise singing beneath his armor. Half a day of that punishment sharpened into raw ache along his shoulders and the back of his throat.
When the talisman finally led them to the warped shimmer at the belt’s far edge, dried blood had glued one sleeve to his arm. The sight still stole a breath: space folding into itself like liquid glass kneaded by invisible hands. Jared traced the corrugated horizon, searching for shards of gray crystal sturdy enough to pin an array.
“Someone’s coming, a lot of them, fast,” the Vermilion Demon Lord whispered, sound out thin by the wind.
Jared let his awareness unfurl, a silent net pouring from the crown of his head. Ten… No, thirteen spears of presence…
These presence ripped through the gala behind them, each one brighter than lightning on new snow. Even the dimmest of those signatures burned at Heavenly Immortal peak, two at the front blazed hotter, High Immortal, second level, the kind that stepped over mountains as stepping-stones. The flavor of their energy matched the trio they’d gutted earlier, black water threaded with corpse-salt. Ghostspring’s vanguard, and now the rest of the swarm had found them. He bared his teeth. Persistent, rotting ghosts.
“Let them catch up,” Jared said, voice steady enough to surprise even himself.
The Demon Lord‘s eyes narrowed, recognition flickered like flint. “You plan to use their hands.”
“Two of us against that snarl of glass? Arraying our own passage would bleed us dry and still leave the odds ugly,” Jared replied. “They brought a fragment of the chart. They’ve studied the Ancient Energy Refiners’ Abode longer than we have. Let’s watch, borrow what works, and slip through after.”
He swallowed his breathing, then pressed into a cracked floating monolith veined like dried mud. Chaotic aura seeped from his palms, blending scent and light until flesh became stone shadow. Beside him, the Demon Lord faded as easily as dusk.
Not long after, thirteen silhouettes punched through the wind wall and halted at the warped rim. The tallest carried a Whitebone Staff, parchment skin clung to his skull, and his eyes sat in hollows deep enough to drink rain. Beside him waddled a dwarf with an oversized head; sickly green light rolled in his pupils as he toyed with a string of miniature skulls.
Jared measured them, both High Immortal, second level, pressure thick as wet wool. Ten lean figures in black robes fanned out behind, movements clipped, disciplined. One of the robed men bowed so low his hood brushed his knees. “Great Elder, Third Elder, the soul-lanterns of the Shadowkill Trio have darkened. Their last pulse ended here…”
The withered elder, Ghostspring’s Great Elder, dragged his gaze across the gutted landscape, lingering on the ripple of warped space. “Those three were cautious. Something far beyond their measure snatched them before they could even run. Whoever did it is already inside,” he rasped.
The dwarf’s tongue slid over cracked lips. “Could be the Malevolent Path Hall. Their agents crawl all over level twelve, recruiting anything with teeth.”
“No… We’ve never crossed them, and we have stayed hidden. They have no reason to strike us,” the Great Elder answered.
The dwarf frowned, skull beads clacking. “Then who, in all of level twelve, can butcher the Shadowkill Trio?”
The Great Elder’s voice cracked through the wind, impatient and metallic. “Enough waiting. We go in now. Someone else might already be eyeing that abode.” One gloved hand lifted, fingers snapping for obedience. “Map…”
A nervous disciple in black rushed forward, presenting a cracked strip of leather. Even from the ledge, Jared recognized the etchings; it matched the copy tucked inside his sleeve, only older, edges worn thin as dried bark. The Great Elder and the Third Elder bent over the parchment like surgeons over an open heart, lines of gold light bobbing across their faces as torn space writhed before them.
Their voices dropped to a hush, syllables lost to the gale, but Jared read enough from their urgent gestures: measure, align, argue, decide. Then the Third Elder produced a gourd the color of pitch, its surface riddled with tiny round holes. He uncorked it and muttered a rhythmic string of tones that scraped across Jared’s nerves.
A torrent of black insects, each no larger than a bean, poured from the gourd. Transparent wings buzzed against one another, a raw, fevered hum that thickened the air as they arrowed toward the warped horizon. At the boundary, the swarm slowed, spiraling like shavings around a magnet. In sudden accord they formed a single-file braid and threaded into the distortion along a jagged, unseen corridor. Where they passed, the savage rips in space rippled like bruises touched by a healer’s palm, the turbulence settling into sluggish eddies.
“Tracker Beetles, flawless as ever!” The Third Elder’s laughter bounced off the broken void. He turned to his followers, voice dropping into lecture. “This maze only pretends to chaos. It follows the ancient Chaos Reversion Array. When the pattern realigns, a safe insect trail shows. Shadow the swarm and the gate to the Eye of the Return-to-Void will open.”
The Great Elder offered a curt nod, eyes cold with calculation. “Move. The trail won’t hold.”
Every robed figure stiffened, waiting for the next tremor. Then, single file, the Ghostspring Sect members stepped into the distortion, shoes skimming patches of suddenly quiet air that closed behind them like cooling glass.
Above them, concealed on a hovering slab of rock, Jared and the Vermilion Demon Lord watched the procession sink into the labyrinth.
“Clever little trick,” the demon murmured, admiration edged with hunger. “Breeding insects that chew through space itself.”
Without turning his head, Jared formed a silent thread of intent. “Stay on them. Let them clear the thorns; we claim the rose once the door shows.”
The pair slipped after the sect, cloaked in Jared’s chaotic aura, senses tuned to every ripple. He kept roughly a hundred yards of breathing room, close enough to borrow the beetles’ passage, far enough to stay unseen. Inside the corridor the air felt tight yet steady, while beyond its edges spatial currents still snarled like chained storms. The route corkscrewed, paused, resumed; at times the procession halted, holding their breaths until the next pulse of calm. Jared realized the worm-road itself drifted, a living vein sliding through muscle.
***
Nearly an hour later the twisting grew violent, light braided into knots, and Jared’s spirit sense returned only static. Following the beetles, they slipped through a membrane so thin it offered no warning.
The pressure vanished. A blue sky poured over them, mountains emerald, rivers glass, birds singing as though the void outside had never existed. Jared tasted loam and blossoms on the air; this had to be the Eye of the Return-to-Void, Sidney’s rumored paradise hidden in the storm.
Ahead, the Third Elder’s voice cracked again, this time with trembling joy. “We found it! A true sanctuary!”
Even so, the Great Elder’s gaze sliced through the meadow. “Do not grow careless,” he warned, every syllable weighted. “An Ancient Energy Refiner never left treasure without tests. Muffle your breath and probe with care.”
The Ghostspring Sect members stifled their excitement as they crossed the threshold. Jared, crouched behind a mossy boulder, caught the held breath in each of them, as though Peach Blossom Haven might shatter if they exhaled too loudly. A current of antique energy drifted past the boulder, smelling of wet stone and forgotten incense.
Jared felt the fine hairs on his wrists lift. Ahead, the intruders slowed in unison, palms half-raised, fighting an urge to run that none of them dared admit.
“Jared, they‘ve found the spot…” the Vermilion Demon Lord hissed, voice vibrating like a struck blade. “Let’s butcher them now and claim the Ancient Energy Refiners‘ Abode for ourselves.”
His crimson sleeves twitched, as though raw impatience had become a living animal under the fabric.
“Hold it…” Jared murmured without turning his head. “This place feels wrong…”
A frown pinched the bridge of his nose. To him, the world ahead looked serene, yet Jared’s unease seeped outward until the silence itself seemed staged.
“Let them scout,” Jared whispered, letting the breeze swallow the words. “Peach Blossom Haven looks calm, but every breath inside carries a knife.”
