We planned for speed.
We did not plan for pursuit.
The spirit horses carried us like thought made flesh — hooves never touching soil, bodies gliding inches above Eden's skin. We rode through forest and fog, across luminous plains and fractured ravines, never slowing, never stopping long enough for exhaustion to become real.
Day bled into night.
Night folded back into day.
And still, Ulgrath'Ma followed.
I felt it before I saw it.
The first Echo dive came before dusk on the first day. I closed my eyes in the saddle and let myself fall inward, tethered only by Elias's device humming against my spine.
The Echo opened reluctantly.
Ulgrath'Ma was no longer wandering.
It was tracking.
Not blindly.
Not angrily.
Intelligently.
Its vast presence carved a moving absence through the Echo, devouring resonance as it went — and it was gaining.
"Too fast," I gasped when I surfaced, blood running freely from my nose.
Zara steadied me without slowing her mount. "How far?"
"Less than a day behind," I said. "And learning."
That word settled badly among us.
We pushed harder.
The spirit horses responded, stretching themselves thinner, brighter. Orion whispered to them as we rode — not commands, but encouragement, gratitude, apology.
They listened.
They always did.
By the second night, no one spoke unless necessary. Water mage Neris shaped moisture directly from the air into our mouths as we rode. Tovan, the earth mage, reinforced the ground beneath the spirit horses when the terrain grew unstable, preventing collapses before they happened.
Elias monitored the device obsessively.
"It's holding," he muttered. "But it doesn't like this pace."
"Neither do we," Zara replied.
Near dawn on the second day, we stopped.
Not because we wanted to.
Because even spirit-made things need a moment to breathe.
The clearing we chose was narrow and high, stone rising around us like broken teeth. The air there felt tight, compressed — Eden holding its breath.
I Echo-dived again.
Ulgrath'Ma had closed the distance.
It was less than half a day behind now.
I surfaced with a choking gasp.
"We're still ahead," I said. "Barely."
That was when the forest screamed.
Not metaphorically.
Branches snapped outward as massive shapes exploded from the undergrowth — baboon-like creatures twice the height of a man, shoulders hunched, arms dragging long and knotted with muscle. Their faces were wrong — too human, too knowing — mouths split with yellowed fangs.
Harrowed variants.
Not dead.
Not alive.
"FORM UP!" Zara shouted.
They came at us in a shrieking wave.
The rangers met them first, arrows tipped with spirit-resin striking true but not always stopping them. Neris slammed a wall of pressurized water into the lead creatures, crushing two backward into the rocks. Tovan raised jagged stone spears from the ground, impaling another mid-leap.
Still they came.
One crashed into me, knocking me hard into the dirt. Pain exploded up my side as claws raked where my ribs met my spine.
I felt the Echo flare — instinctive, dangerous.
"No," I hissed through my teeth. "Not yet."
Zara buried her blade into a creature's throat, twisting violently. It collapsed, twitching.
"ORION!" she yelled. "NOW!"
Orion stood at the center of the chaos, eyes closed.
He did not scream.
He did not rage.
He breathed.
The ground beneath us shuddered.
Then the silver backs rose.
Not spirit-animals shaped like ideas — but presences. Massive silverback gorillas formed from condensed moonlight and Echo, each one towering, deliberate, unstoppable.
They did not rush.
They advanced.
One seized a baboon-creature by the skull and slammed it into the stone hard enough to fracture the cliffside. Another picked two attackers up at once and threw them into the trees, where they vanished in a rain of broken branches and blood.
The baboon-things hesitated.
That was new.
A silverback roared — a sound that vibrated through bone and memory alike.
The remaining creatures fled, shrieking as they vanished back into the forest, dragging wounded with them.
Silence crashed down afterward.
Orion dropped to one knee, shaking violently.
I was at his side instantly.
"I'm okay," he said hoarsely. "I didn't lose them."
He looked up at the fading silver giants.
"They didn't enjoy it," he added softly. "But they understood."
We did not linger.
Ulgrath'Ma had felt that.
By nightfall of the second day, HelixCorp rose on the horizon.
Even from miles away, the facility hurt to look at.
Spires of steel and glass pierced the darkness, veins of stolen Eden-light pulsing visibly along their sides. Drones traced slow, lazy patrols above the walls, confident, unaware that something far worse than us was already moving toward them.
Elias swallowed. "That's… bigger than the projections."
"Arrogance scales well," Zara muttered.
We stopped on a ridge overlooking the compound.
Midnight crept in, cold and watchful.
I Echo-dived one last time.
Ulgrath'Ma was close now.
Too close.
Its attention brushed the false star Elias had built — curious, hungry.
It had taken the bait.
I opened my eyes and looked at the others.
"This is it," I said quietly. "From here on, everything breaks fast."
Below us, HelixCorp glowed like a wound that refused to close.
Behind us, the Devourer of light followed our lie.
And between those two truths, we prepared to steal our children back from the jaws of gods and men alike.