Kael Voidwalker's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

Kael walked toward the still figure at the edge of the rock. He had learned to hold the Void. Now he needed to know how a Voidwalker lost that hold. The one who stood apart had not stepped aside for Rook. That alone told Kael it was different from the others. But it was not the figure who answered him. A voice came from behind, flat and even. "Don't touch it." Kael turned. A thin, gray creature stood at the camp's edge, bald, its skin split with old cracks. Two violet points burned where eyes should be. A shard hung at its chest on a chain, glowing faint. Kael's Void eye showed him no death-mark on it. There was nothing left to mark. "I count the perimeter," the creature said. "You crossed it twice. Caelan Watchmen." He did not offer a hand. "That one you're walking toward stopped feeding its shard. Now it doesn't move. It doesn't need to." "What happened to it?" Kael asked. "It pulled and never pushed back." Caelan's voice did not rise. "The Void filled the space. First it took the wanting. Then the counting. Then the name." He tapped the shard on his chest once. "I was thirteen packs short when it took my warmth. I count to stay. That one stopped counting." Kael looked at the still figure. Its cloak hung on nothing. No breath moved it. He raised his Void eye and reached, gently, into the space around it. He felt no current. No loop. Just a cold draw that ran one way, in and in, like water down a drain with no bottom. "There was no trap," Caelan said. "You keep looking for the trap. There isn't one. It's easier than the balance. That's the whole danger. Pulling feels like strength." Kael understood then what he had missed. He had feared some hidden thing that broke a Voidwalker. There was no thing. The failure was simple. You pulled because pulling felt good, and you never gave anything back, and the giving-back was the only wall between a man and this. He fed a thin stream into his own shard and drew at the same time. The loop caught. The cold climbed his arm and stopped where the current turned it. He held it a long moment, out and in, and let the still figure stand. "You feel the pull," Caelan said. It was not a question. "Every time," Kael said. "Then you know." Caelan turned back toward the perimeter. He took three steps and stopped. "The shards run out. Ours get recharged. Yours won't." He did not look back. "Push more than you pull. Every dawn. Or you'll stand where that one stands." Kael watched him go. The mystery was gone. There was no secret trap, only a daily choice, and he now knew exactly what it cost to lose it.