After HelixCorp's assault, Karura Haven did not sleep. Not truly. People lay on their beds with eyes open, every shadow looking like a drone, every rustle sounding like a collector's boots. Even the spirits hovered close to the ground, their glow dimmed to frightened embers.
Yet the village was not silent. The elders whispered through the night. They gathered beneath the Great Vine Arch, lantern-fruits swaying overhead, the air crackling with a tension that tasted metallic and heavy.
By dawn, the decision had been made. Karura Haven… Would be abandoned.
At dawn the villagers assembled at the village center, Mara's voice carried across the square, firm and steady, but layered with grief. "We cannot remain here. HelixCorp has marked us."
People murmured. Children cried. A mother clutched her daughter, who had been in Kalenji's training group and hadn't spoken since the abduction.
"But this is our home," someone shouted.
"This was our home," Mara corrected. "But a home must shelter its people, and this place no longer can."
Elias slammed a wrench into the dirt. "We can't outrun drones forever!"
Jinx perched lightly on a thick branch of the Spirit Grove, his copper eyes glowing. "It's not just drones." A chilling silence fell.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Jinx's voice dropped lower than I had ever heard it — an unnatural, trembling whisper edged with real fear. "The thing that destroyed the FOB," he said. "A thing that hunts life and all light," his shadow curled around the branch like a frightened animal. "it has turned its gaze toward us."
Whispers rippled, frightened and sharp. Zara frowned. "You said you didn't know what it was."
Jinx shook his head. "I didn't. But last night, the forest told me its name." He looked at me. Straight at me. "Ulgrath'Ma."
The name itself felt heavy — like a stone dropped into the air. Lyra shivered beside me. Orion whimpered. "Dad… that name feels wrong." Because it was. Old. Cold. Hungry.
Jinx wrapped his arms around himself, shaking. "The forest rarely speaks. But last night… it screamed to me. Ulgrath'Ma is moving. It knows about the Haven. And it hates our light."
Mara stiffened. "Describe it."
Jinx swallowed, "I only see pieces when I shift-deep. But… imagine a shadow that learned to walk. A thought that learned to kill. Imagine darkness thick enough to choke a mountain. Its body is smoke and bone. Its eyes are emptiness. It was born of old Eden, a leftover wound that grew teeth." He shivered violently. "And it remembers humanity. And the spirits. And it hates us both."
A woman fainted. A child burst into tears. The spirits flickered wildly overhead. Mara's voice cut through the panic. "We cannot fight HelixCorp and Ulgrath'Ma. Not together. We must leave."
A ripple of anguish spread across the crowd. "But where?" Elias asked. Mara looked toward the mountains. "There is a refuge deeper in Eden. Sheltered. Hidden. A place only the spirits may find." She inhaled. "We go there."
"Now?" Zara asked.
"At dawn" Mara replied. "before the storm of steel or the storm of shadow reaches us."
That night, exhausted and aching from the battle, I collapsed onto my pallet. Sleep did not come gently. It came like a tide dragging me under. My body fell away. My vision became mist. And then… I stood on a plain of stars. Not sky. Ground.
A vast mirror of starlight stretched beneath my feet, infinite and trembling. Above me, another sky — fractured, shimmering, broken like glass struck by a god's fist.
Whispers wound through the air, echoing across eternity. Kailen… Echo-binder… witness…
Shapes emerged. Not human. Not spirit. Not living. Fragments of cosmic memory. A storm of light spiraling downward. Earths first ancient awakening into Eden. Creatures morphing into new forms. Humans awakening abilities. The world learning to breathe differently.
But then… a crack. Darkness spilled from it like ink. A shadow formed, and kept forming… growing. Swirling with hatred. Gathering remnants of pain and suffering. Feeding on the chaos of the Rebirth.
A monstrous presence stepped from the rift. It had no face, only depthless voids where eyes should be. It's body, a swirling mass of tendrils and bone shards. It's breath… a cold wind that extinguished stars.
When it moved, the ground beneath it died. When it opened its jaws, galaxies went silent. It turned toward me, and I felt an ancient, endless fury. Not new, old. Older than humanity. Older than spirits. A hatred cultivated over millennia. A hatred of light.
Ulgrath'Ma, the Echo whispered. The Devourer of Dawn. My heart froze, and then the world shifted.
A voice, the Oracle's, echoed through the dream like wind through crystal. "Kailen… you must see the truth…" A vision flooded my mind.
Ulgrath'Ma tearing through spirit realms. Consuming glowing beings until only ash-like fragments remained. Reaching toward the human world during a forgotten age. Being sealed beyond the veil by the Ancients, the first Echo-binders.
But when Eden awakened… the veil thinned. The seal cracked, and now… the Devourer had noticed a bright spark in this new age; Karura Haven. The children. The Echo. Me.
The Oracle stepped from a ripple of light, eyes sorrowful. "Ulgrath'Ma comes for what glows brightest," she said, HelixCorp… is the lantern that draws him."
I gasped. "They don't just want the children for experiments!"
"No," she whispered. "They want power. But the darkness wants prey."
"Why show me this?"
"Because leaders must see the storm before their people feel the rain."
The dream shattered. I woke with a violent gasp, the night air freezing in my lungs. The Oracle Child stood at the foot of my bed. Glowing faintly, yes wide with urgency.
She spoke aloud this time — her voice trembling like a candle in the wind, "They are both coming. HelixCorp from the sky. Ulgrath'Ma from the deep. Run, before you are surrounded. Before the light goes out."
And for the second time in my life, I felt the world change its shape around me.