The early light was grey, and the wind felt cold. Julius lay behind rocks, shivering as the stone chilled his back. His ankles ached from landing hard outside the walls. He was more tired than he'd ever been. He had the map scroll tucked safely, if awkwardly, inside his tunic. But the escape felt less like a victory and more like the start of something much worse.
He pushed himself up, wincing. The world seemed tilted, unsteady. He looked back towards the distant House Vorlag settlement. The frantic torchlight was gone, replaced by the cold morning light, but the air still felt… tight. Like the silence after a loud noise, holding its breath.
Something inside him felt different too. The quiet emptiness, the void Charon had called Animus Vacuus, wasn't just still anymore. It felt… stirred. Like a pond after a stone is thrown in, the ripples still moving outwards, disturbing the calm. The memory of the Scriptorium, the warm stone, the sudden, violent connection – it left an echo.
He touched the dried blood on his lip. The nosebleed was gone, but his mouth still tasted strange and sharp, almost like metal. brief, shocking moment when he'd seen the other Julius… the one in the strange, bright world, his face twisted with anger and hostility… it felt burned into his mind.
Who was that? The question echoed in the disturbed quiet inside him. Another me? How? Charon's words came back: Scattered… like reflections! Was that what a reflection looked like? Not just different, but angry? Hostile? It made no sense.
He pulled out the heavy map scroll. It felt real, solid in his numb fingers. He needed to find a safer place, somewhere to rest, to look at this map, to figure out the path to the Sundered Peaks. He needed water, food. His stomach twisted with a familiar, aching hunger.
As he unrolled the edge of the stiff parchment, his eyes traced the rough, faded lines drawn with old ink. It showed mountains, valleys, faint tracks. Then, for just a second, the image flickered. Instead of the rough parchment, he saw a smooth, dark rectangle in his mind's eye, glowing with faint, cool light. Lines appeared on it, sharp and clear, moving like water. The image vanished as quickly as it came, leaving him blinking, confused.
He shook his head. "Where did that come from?" he whispered, his voice rough. It wasn't his memory. It felt like the brief, confusing flashes he sometimes saw behind his eyes, but stronger, clearer. Tied, somehow, to that other Julius he'd glimpsed through the stone. Was this what Charon meant? Fragments? Were pieces of that other world, that other him, starting to stick to him?
The thought was deeply unsettling. It wasn't just that he was empty; it felt like something else was trying to seep into that emptiness. Something alien.
He forced the thought away and focused on the map again, the real one. He needed to move. Staying here was dangerous. House Vorlag knew someone had been inside their precious Scriptorium. They would search. But the fear felt colder now, deeper. That tremor he'd felt in the tower floor… the surge of power when he touched the stone… it hadn't just felt like a local alarm. It had felt… loud. Like shouting in a quiet library.
He scanned the desolate landscape. Grey rocks, thorny bushes, endless wind. Nothing looked different. But the feeling was wrong. The air itself seemed to listen. He remembered the Soulforged Knight, its cold, relentless pursuit. It hadn't been drawn by a simple soul-spark; it had been drawn to him, to the absence. Charon had said his condition resonated with the Void, that it was a beacon.
What had touching that stone, that fragment, done? Had it just made the beacon brighter? Or had it sent out a different kind of signal?
He thought of the Echo Witch by the muddy pool. Her terror. "Demon-marked!" she'd shrieked. "You draw darkness! Your echoes are poison!" She had sensed something clinging to him, pieces of the past. And she had mentioned the Glass Knight following the void.
A cold dread spread through him, heavier than the exhaustion. The power surge in the Scriptorium hadn't just alerted House Vorlag. It hadn't just stirred the fragment. It had likely announced his presence to them. The Soulforged Knights, built to follow energy trails, drawn to the Void. The Echo Witches, sensitive to the ripples he now seemed to carry, fearing the power he didn't understand.
He wasn't just being hunted by Trackers anymore. He was being hunted by specialists. Beings designed to find and deal with things exactly like him. Things connected to the Starborn, to the Void, to scattered fragments of forgotten power.
He looked down at his own hands, small and smudged with dirt and dried blood. He was just a boy. Alone, scared, hungry. But he carried something inside him, this emptiness, that drew the attention of terrible powers. And now, maybe, he carried fragments of memory, of awareness, that weren't his own.
The weight of it felt immense. The weight of the map, the weight of the hunt, the weight of this strange, fragmented self he was only beginning to discover. Charon had sacrificed himself. His parents… he couldn't think about them, not yet. He had to keep moving. He had to reach the Sundered Peaks. He had to find the other fragments, not just because Charon asked, but because maybe, just maybe, understanding them was the only way to survive what was coming.
He carefully rolled the map, tucking it back inside his tunic. The faint pull towards the distant mountains felt a little stronger now, or maybe it was just his desperation. He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the protest of his body. One step. Then another. The journey ahead was long, guarded by more than just cruel lords like Vorlag. It was guarded by hunters forged in soulfire and witches who heard the echoes of shattered stars. And he walked towards it, carrying the weight of an emptiness that was no longer truly empty.