CHAPTER 202: THE ’BEING’

The fog rolled in thick that night, curling like pale fingers around the jagged stones and sparse trees clinging to the cliffs.

The full moon hung enormous and low above the sea, its light bleeding through the haze and casting everything in an eerie, silver glow. The wind whispered through the cracks of the rocks, hollow and restless, as though something unseen breathed just beneath the mountain’s surface.

Kai hadn’t even tried to sleep.

He’d slept plenty alongside Vepice during the trip to the mountains just to make sure he could remain alert and aware for however long he needed to once he entered Ebonbrand’s resting place.

He sat cross-legged atop the same rock spire he’d claimed earlier, his cloak wrapped tight against the chill. His mana sight traced the horizon and the black valleys below, the world appearing to him as a web of faintly pulsing threads.

And there, out in the shifting fog, he could see them. Faint signatures, moving.

Too many to be animals. Too fluid, too deliberate. They skirted the edges of his perception like wolves pacing around a fire, never fully revealing themselves.

Vepice slept below, beneath a dome of layered barriers he’d woven around her.

Five in total.

Each of them were nested within the other. Her breathing was steady, but even in her slumber, Kai could feel the faint hum of her mana brushing against his own. The soft glow of the campfire at her side cast a faint warmth upward, barely reaching him.

The silence was sharp. Unnatural. The kind of stillness that made even the ocean below seem hesitant to roar.

Then, a shift.

Something moved differently. Not on the ground, not skirting the fog. Above.

Kai’s eyes snapped upward, his mana sight catching the faint, predatory glide of something flying against the silver-lit clouds. It turned, and the air pressure changed as it descended. A long, thin shadow passed over the moonlight.

’Closer... faster... straight for me.’

Kai was already moving before it breached the cliff’s edge. His hand traced a sigil in the air, shadows spilling from his palm to snap into a dome around his perch. His other hand flicked open his shadow space with practiced ease, pulling forth Mari.

The Divine Lich emerged silently, her skeletal frame draped in dark ceremonial robes, her staff already in hand. Her empty sockets flared with cold green light as she took position beside him without a word.

The creature cleared the cliff edge in a single beat of its massive, bat-like wings. Its dark skin gleamed faintly under the moonlight, stretched taut over a humanoid frame. Its bald head and sharp, masculine features were devoid of expression as it hovered there, wings churning the fog.

’A winged human? No. This is some sort of sinister abomination.’

Kai felt its presence before his eyes locked on it. The mana it exuded was wrong.

There was a thickness to it that made Kai want to gag.

The level of taintedness felt like an oil that coated your mouth after a disgustingly greasy meal.

Similar to the dimensional bleed he’d felt years ago when Orlin had left his alternate dimension open too long. Back then, rough red hands had clawed at the edges of reality itself, reaching for anything alive on Kai’s side of the rift.

This was the same kind of presence.

Mari’s staff lifted, golden light flaring. She didn’t wait for an order. With a flick of her wrist, she summoned a blazing cross of pure light, brighter than the moon, and hurled it forward. The projectile cut through the fog like a spear.

The creature hissed, baring sharp teeth, but it didn’t even have time to move. The light struck its chest, and in that instant, its skin began to boil. Steam hissed into the air as cracks of glowing light spread across its form.

Then there was nothing but dust.

The fog swallowed what little remained, scattering it into the sea breeze.

Kai lowered his hand slowly, releasing the barrier. His shadows writhed once, then settled as he stepped toward the remnants.

Only ash. Not even bone.

His brow furrowed. "Raise dead."

The system’s cold, ever-neutral voice answered.

[This being cannot be raised from the dead.]

Kai exhaled sharply through his nose. "Figures. It’s not even calling it a creature. ’Being,’ huh? Not mortal, then? And the system won’t tell me what it was... Demeris already removed the old restrictions, so this isn’t some arbitrary block. Even the system doesn’t know what it is?"

His gaze flicked to the faint traces of where it had hovered, the last wisps of its presence dissipating. A part of him, deep and calculating, took note of every detail.

The bat-like wings, the clawed hands, the fangs, the oily aura.

"Interesting," he muttered.

He reached out his hands with a sly smile on his face.

"Soul Manipulation."

[The soul of this being cannot be extracted or manipulated at your current rank.]

"At my current rank? So I can? Just not yet? I wonder what it would be!"

He turned back to Mari, whose hollow gaze lingered on the fog. She didn’t share in his excitement.

"You really don’t have much will of your own, do you? Probably best. If you retained some of that loyalty to the divine, like Ralts cares for people and Joe thirsts for bloodshed, I might be in trouble."

Again, she paid him no mind. It was as if there was something in the fog. Much deeper than even he could see with his mana sense, that took her attention.

"Whatever sent that thing... knows what I’m trying to do here."

She didn’t respond, only tilted her head, the glow in her sockets dimming slightly.

Kai looked back at the ash, a faint grin tugging at the edge of his mouth despite himself. "Well, good. Let them know I’m not easy prey."

He dispelled Mari back into his shadow space, layered two more barriers around Vepice’s dome below, and resumed his perch.

But the fog felt thicker now. And the moving signatures? They hadn’t stopped.

If anything, they’d crept closer.

And Vepice? She hasn’t stirred at all, even during the encounter with the ’being’.