The moment Naty gave the signal to leave, Lucian summoned Madame. The spider emerged from his Orb in an almost silent shiver, her long legs unfolding with unsettling grace. After six days spent alternating between battle and recovery, she was once again in perfect condition, her immaculate white exoskeleton bearing no trace of her earlier wounds. Kenzo studied her for a moment, then raised his eyes toward the horizon.
Ahead of them loomed the crushing silhouette of the Gargantuan Tree.
The Sacred Tree.
Or rather, what it had become: the Cursed Tree.
Even from such a distance, its presence seemed to press down on the world around it, as though the air itself grew heavier the closer one came. Kenzo looked away. He still was not ready to face it.
Madame set off, swift and silent, carrying the group across her back. Kenzo had suggested returning to the eighty-meter trunk, a place he knew, had already explored, and which now seemed almost safe by comparison. He guided the spider instinctively, the way he had been doing for several days.
Today, however, something felt different.
He focused on avoiding the Void Creatures, but it did not take long for him to realize that what he sensed was no longer quite the same. It was not their silhouettes, their movements, or even their hostility that reached him.
It was their hearts.
The hearts of the Void Creatures.
After consuming so many of them, his perception had changed. It had become sharper. Wider. As though his own heart now served as the center of an invisible web stretched throughout the forest. He could feel distant pulses, irregular and unnatural. Some were weak and fractured. Others felt denser, heavier, packed with power. His range had increased without him truly noticing it happen. Now, he was almost certain he could detect a creature from more than eighty meters away.
He remembered exactly when he had first realized the change. During one of their hunts, he had begun counting: the moment he sensed a presence, then the time it took to reach it. The distance matched. Since then, he had even begun to estimate a Void Creature's approximate strength from the density of what he felt. It was a crude, visceral instinct, but it was rarely wrong.
Madame moved far faster than Kenzo ever could have on his own. When he had first gone searching for Lucian, guided by nothing but smoke, it had taken him more than twelve hours of running and climbing while wounded and exhausted, passing from the eighty-meter trunk to the one measuring one hundred and twenty, then farther still.
Now, riding the spider, he guided them with almost frightening precision.
They reached their destination in barely four hours.
When they arrived at the foot of the eighty-meter trunk, Kenzo felt a brief wave of vertigo. He tilted his head back, following the towering line of the tree he had once climbed with his bare hands, driven by nothing but the fear of dying.
— « This is where you spent your first night… You really climbed all of that? » Ophelia asked, barely concealing a mocking smile. « The will to survive really does make people do incredible things. »
Kenzo did not answer. He was not in the mood.
— « Now we just need to head toward the Sacred Tree. We'll pass through the place where I first appeared. »
They resumed their journey on Madame's back. Fifteen minutes later, they finally reached Kenzo's point of arrival.
Nothing had changed.
The bones were still there, bleached white and scattered exactly as he remembered them. The chains remained as well, rusted but intact, some broken and others still locked, as though waiting for their next prisoner.
Kenzo felt his stomach tighten.
— « Why did you appear in chains? » Naty asked, studying the area carefully.
The question brought back a specific memory.
— « I was tied up… but I was dressed too. In something that looked almost like a prisoner's uniform. I'm still wearing it beneath my armor. »
Ophelia frowned.
— « Probably another Deviant thing. »
Naty examined the chains, the marks in the ground, and the scattered remains.
— « This looks like a place of sacrifice. »
Lucian seemed increasingly nervous. His eyes kept moving across their surroundings, his hand clenched tightly around the hilt of his sword.
— « Kenzo… can you sense any Void Creatures nearby? » he asked tensely.
Kenzo focused.
For a long time.
More intensely than he ever had before.
— « No… »
The silence that followed was heavy.
None of them found the answer reassuring. Quite the opposite.
Now that Kenzo could detect creatures from such a great distance, the complete absence of anything nearby felt profoundly wrong.
At that exact moment, the sky began to change.
Slowly.
Almost imperceptibly.
The blue faded, giving way to a dull, oppressive gray.
The fog was coming.
They did not know how long it would take to reach them, but they knew it had already begun to rise.
Lucian instinctively moved closer to Madame and drew his sword. Naty and Ophelia summoned their weapons as well. Kenzo felt his muscles tense. Deep down, he knew Ophelia would not change her mind.
They were going to approach the fog.
Then something happened.
Ophelia staggered backward.
Not a strategic step. Not a measured retreat.
A genuine recoil, instinctive and almost panicked.
All the color had drained from her face.
Kenzo turned toward her, and a chill immediately raced down his spine.
Naty had seen the same thing. He knew it without her having to speak. Her green eyes were wide, her breathing faster. Fear real fear was there, bare and impossible to hide.
Only Lucian still did not understand.
Then Kenzo felt something else.
Something he could never have perceived the first time he came here.
His senses awakened violently, as though a door had suddenly opened inside his mind.
He felt it.
And what he felt surpassed everything he had ever encountered.