Kael Voidwalker's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

The loop held for three days. Kael fed the shard and drew from it in one steady turn, and his hands stayed his own. But holding a current was not the same as using one. When Rook led him back to the caravan, Kael understood the real lesson had not started yet. The caravan waited on open rock. A dozen Voidwalkers stood in their patched black cloaks, faces hidden, blue and violet light tracing lines across their chests. None spoke. When Rook walked between them, every one stepped aside. Kael had seen soldiers fear a blade. He had not seen grown fighters fear a child. "They stopped where you are now," Rook said. "Some of them. Show me what you can pull." Kael raised his hand. He reached into the shard and drew. Dark energy rose off his fingers, thick as smoke, and gathered into a mass that clung and flowed like water. It spun. Violet threads whipped through it. He felt the cold climb his arm, familiar and hungry. "More," Rook said. Kael pulled harder. The mass swelled. His feet slid on the rock. The nearest Voidwalkers turned their hidden faces toward the light, and one drew a spear. The energy wanted out. It pushed against his grip like a beast against a rope. "That is the danger," Rook said, flat and unhurried. "Not the pulling. The wanting. It will not tire before you do." Kael's arm shook. The cold reached his shoulder. He remembered the flood that had wrapped his wrists and would not let go. He thought of the child he had let die because he believed the ending was already set. He decided this ending was not. He fed a thin stream back into the shard. The two currents met. They caught and circled, out and in at once. The spinning mass slowed. It shrank. The violet threads dimmed. Kael turned the loop tighter until the energy sat quiet in his palm, held, not fighting. The Voidwalker with the spear lowered it. "You held power without spending your soul," Rook said. "That is the whole of it. Some pull until nothing is left inside them. Then the Void wears their skin." A pause. "You did not." Kael closed his hand. The mass folded into the shard. His breath came even. For the first time since the iron went into his chest, the power felt like a tool and not a wound. "What happens to the ones who fail?" Kael asked. Rook did not answer. He looked past Kael, out at the rock, where a single Voidwalker stood apart from the others. That one had not stepped aside. That one had not moved at all. "Ask that one," Rook said, and walked back toward the caravan. Kael watched the still figure. It watched him back. He had learned to hold the Void. Now he had to learn what waited for the ones who couldn't.