"Fear is not the scream that makes you run. It is the quiet voice that tells you you're already too late."
— Fragment recovered from a splintered Veilstone, origin unknown
The first thing Yvonne noticed was the silence.
Not the ordinary hush that came with snowfall or midnight prayer—this was a silence that pressed back. It was thick, deliberate, and personal, as if the forest had wrapped both hands around her throat and decided she would not be allowed to call for help.
She ran anyway.
Branches tore at her cloak. Thorns snagged her hair. Black soil grabbed at her boots like wet fingers, and each step sank too deep, as if the ground wanted to swallow her and keep her close. The pines rose around her like crooked pillars in a ruined cathedral, their trunks slick and glistening as though the trees had been sweating for centuries.
"Kaizen!" she shouted.
Her voice didn't echo. It didn't even travel. The sound died the moment it left her mouth, smothered the way a candle dies under a hand.
She stumbled to a stop, chest heaving, and forced herself to listen.
Nothing.
No armor clink. No steady breathing. No heavy footfalls that had always told her her brother was near. Not even the faint hum she sometimes felt in her teeth when the stone answered him.
Just the forest, holding its breath.
Panic surged—hot, primal, humiliating. The Fifth Veil fed on that. She could feel it like a hook behind her ribs, tugging at her heart every time she tried to steady her thoughts.
The last image she had of Kaizen struck her like lightning: his arms raised, stone surging to protect her, and then the Predator's blow—an impact so violent it bent reality for a heartbeat. Kaizen's body had flown through a tree as if it were paper. The crack of splitting wood had felt like bone.
And then—
The forest had moved.
Not wind. Not magic like Yvonne's flame. Something older. A rearrangement, as if the land itself could rewrite direction. One blink, one breath, and Kaizen had been torn away.
Yvonne pressed her palm against the nearest trunk for balance.
The bark was warm.
Warm like living skin.
She recoiled with a sharp inhale. Her fingers had sunk a fraction of an inch into the surface before she pulled back. For a moment the trunk rippled, and beneath the bark she saw a faint spiral vein of red light pulsing upward like a heartbeat.
This place wasn't just haunted. It wasn't just cursed.
It was constructed—stitched together from the Fifth Veil's emotion, fed by the primal terror of anything that stepped inside.
Yvonne clenched her jaw and summoned flame to her palm. Blue light flickered between her fingers, then steadied into a tight spiral—controlled, deliberate, small enough not to scream her presence into the dark.
The fire illuminated the nearest trees.
Their shadows were wrong.
They leaned toward her like listening heads, stretching longer than they should, twisting into shapes that resembled fingers and teeth. The further her flame reached, the more the forest seemed to drink it, dimming the light until the clearing returned to gloom.
A whisper slid past her ear, so close it raised gooseflesh along her neck.
"Yvonne…"
Her heart slammed once—hard enough to hurt.
She spun, flame rising, ready to lash out.
Nothing.
But the whisper returned, layered now, like the same word spoken by different mouths at different ages.
"Yvonne… Yvonne… Yvonne…"
She forced herself not to answer. Forced herself not to gasp. Fear wanted a reaction the way fire wanted oxygen.
She moved forward, choosing a direction at random and daring the forest to correct her.
The path narrowed into a corridor of pines. The air tasted metallic, like blood on iron. Somewhere far away, something scraped—slow, patient, confident.
Yvonne's grip tightened around her flame. She kept it low, steady, refusing to let it flare into a beacon.
Then she saw a lantern.
It hung from a branch that arched over the path like a bent arm. The lantern's glass was clean and uncracked, its flame a warm gold that did not belong in this colorless place. It swayed gently, though there was no wind.
A figure stood beneath it.
A woman in a dark-blue dress.
Yvonne's dress. The one she wore when she wanted to feel like herself—when she wanted to believe she was something other than a weapon wrapped in skin.
The woman's hair fell in black waves. Her eyes were gold. Her posture was calm, familiar, almost tired.
She looked like Yvonne.
But older.
Older in the way grief ages you without permission.
Yvonne's breath caught. "No."
The woman smiled faintly. "Still running."
Yvonne's flame sharpened into a tighter spiral, the heat rising. "Who are you?"
The woman lifted her hands slowly, palms outward. No fire. No threat. Just a gesture that begged to be believed.
"I'm the part of you that already knows how this ends."
Yvonne took a step back. The lantern's glow trembled. Behind the woman, her shadow stretched across the ground—too long, too jagged, shaped like something with claws.
"You're not real," Yvonne said, voice hoarse.
The woman's smile cracked. "That's what you said before you burned the wrong city."
The world tilted.
For a heartbeat Yvonne smelled smoke—thick and oily—and heard screams that didn't come from any mouth in this forest. She saw a skyline of spires swallowed by flame, saw people running with their hands over their heads, saw Kaizen's silhouette in the firelight, reaching for her through falling ash.
Then the vision snapped away, leaving her blinking, dizzy, furious.
"Get out of my head," Yvonne hissed, flame spiraling around her forearm like a living ribbon.
The woman stepped closer without making a sound. The lantern light warmed her face with something almost kind.
"I'm not in your head," she whispered. "I'm in your fear."
She reached out and touched Yvonne's wrist.
Yvonne's flame sputtered—not extinguished, but weakened, as though doubt had drained its fuel.
And the forest vanished.
Yvonne stood on pale stone beneath a sky the color of dried blood. The black moon with its crimson edge loomed overhead, staring down like a wound that refused to close. Around her rose statues—hundreds, thousands—white stone figures frozen mid-scream, faces twisted in terror.
Vaelcrest villagers.
Lira.
The Veilkeeper of Haldria.
Strangers with blurred features, as if fate hadn't decided who they would be yet.
Every face turned toward Yvonne.
Accusing.
Expectant.
Afraid.
Her knees went weak.
"This isn't real," she whispered, but her voice trembled.
"It will be," the older Yvonne said, now standing behind her. "If you keep waking the world with power you can't control."
Yvonne spun and threw fire—a sharp spiral lance that would have reduced a beast to ash.
It passed through the woman like smoke.
Because fear wasn't a body.
It was an idea sharpened into a blade.
The older Yvonne leaned close, voice soft enough to feel intimate.
"You don't fear dying," she murmured. "You fear living long enough to destroy everyone who loves you."
Yvonne's throat tightened until it hurt to breathe. Tears burned her eyes, furious and unwanted. She clenched her fists and forced her flame inward, compressing it into a small, steady ember—an anchor against the storm.
She had learned in Vaelcrest that panic made the fire wild. She had learned in Haldria that grief could drown her. Now she understood something worse:
Fear didn't want to make her explode.
Fear wanted to make her freeze.
A crack sounded.
One of the statues split down the middle, not from heat, but from the weight of her emotion pressing outward. Another cracked. Then another. The stone faces began to crumble, shedding shards like tears.
The older Yvonne smiled sadly. "Look at them."
"I won't," Yvonne rasped.
"You will," the woman replied. "Because this is what you are."
The ground under Yvonne's feet trembled. The statues' eyes seemed to follow her. The air thickened with the scent of ash.
Yvonne squeezed her eyes shut.
Kaizen. Kaizen. Kaizen.
She reached for the bond she always felt—stone grounding flame, flame warming stone—but it was distant, muffled, like trying to hear someone through deep water.
"Kaizen…" she whispered.
This time, the world answered.
Not with his voice.
With a sound like something large moving between trees.
The statues vanished.
The forest returned in a violent blink, the lantern gone, the older Yvonne gone, the darkness back in its place—only now the shadows were closer, and the air was colder, and Yvonne realized she was standing in a clearing ringed by pines that leaned inward like a trap.
A shape moved at the edge of the light.
Tall.
Wrong.
A smooth mask with spiral cuts glimmered faintly.
The Predator.
It didn't rush her. It didn't roar. It simply stepped into view like it had always been there, waiting for her to realize she was alone.
Its voice slid through the clearing like a knife.
"Where is your brother, Flameborn?"
Yvonne raised her hand, flame flaring brighter, and for a moment the fire steadied—because anger was easier than terror.
"You won't take him," she said.
The Predator tilted its head.
"I already did."
It moved.
Yvonne's flame burst outward in a spiraling wave, scorching the ground and lighting the trees. The Predator slipped through the fire like shadow through rain and appeared to her left. She twisted, fire snapping into a whip, the spiral lash cracking through the dark—
It caught bark. It tore into a trunk. It carved a glowing line through wood.
Not the Predator.
The Predator's hand struck her shoulder with a force that made her bones vibrate. She stumbled, caught herself, slid backward. Pain flashed hot and sharp, but fear was sharper.
The Predator leaned in close, mask inches from her face.
"Your flame hesitates," it whispered. "Because you believe me."
Yvonne bared her teeth. She forced her fire to surge again—stronger, steadier, hotter—not wild, not desperate, but deliberate.
"I don't believe you," she hissed.
The Predator's mask reflected her flame in thin red lines.
"Then prove it," it said.
And the forest shifted again.
The pines blurred. The ground rolled like a wave. The clearing stretched, widened, reshaped.
Yvonne staggered as the world rearranged itself, and in that instant of disorientation—
She saw it.
A figure in the distance.
Broad shoulders. Stone armor. Kaizen.
Relief hit her so hard it nearly buckled her knees.
"Kaizen!" she screamed, sprinting toward him.
The figure didn't move.
Didn't turn.
Didn't answer.
And as she drew closer, the lantern light of her flame revealed the truth:
It wasn't Kaizen.
It was a statue made of stone and bark, carved to resemble him, its face frozen in an expression of quiet disappointment.
Yvonne stopped dead, breath tearing in her throat.
Behind her, the Predator whispered, satisfied and soft.
"Too late."
Yvonne's vision blurred. Her hands shook. Her fire flickered.
And the Fifth Veil, deep inside her chest, tightened like a fist—feeding on the moment her hope turned into terror.
Somewhere in the forest, far beyond her sight, something heavy struck the ground.
A roar—muted but massive—shuddered through the trees.
Kaizen was alive.
But whether she could reach him before Fear convinced her otherwise…
That was the real hunt.