The land did not sleep after the Devourer left.
Ashen felt it in the spaces between breaths—threads tightening, distant points flaring like sparks struck in darkness. Not all awakenings were gentle. Not all corrections were clean.
Some things woke up crooked.
They moved at dawn.
The hunters led them away from the plateau, down into a ravine where the air grew cold and metallic. The sigils here were older—rougher, carved by hands that hadn't trusted permanence enough to make them elegant.
Lyra walked close to Ashen now.
"You're pulling more than before," she said quietly. "Aren't you?"
Ashen didn't answer immediately.
"Yes," he admitted. "And it's pulling back."
She frowned. "That sounds bad."
"It depends," he said. "On who reaches it first."
The ash-skinned hunter stopped suddenly, raising a clenched fist.
Everyone froze.
Ahead, the ravine opened into a ruined settlement—stone foundations, broken pillars, symbols carved into walls that had been scratched out violently, not eroded by time.
Ashen's chest tightened.
"This place was corrected," he said slowly.
Lyra swallowed. "And?"
"And someone rejected it."
A sound echoed through the ruins.
Not a roar.
A chant.
Low, rhythmic, layered with too many voices moving in imperfect unison.
The hunters spread out, weapons drawn.
From behind a collapsed archway, figures emerged.
Students.
Teachers.
Civilians.
Their eyes glowed faintly—not crimson, not void-black, but fractured, like glass catching the wrong light. Symbols crawled beneath their skin, misaligned and bleeding into one another.
Lyra recoiled. "They're alive."
"Barely," the ash-skinned woman said grimly. "Awakened wrong."
One of the figures stepped forward—a man in a torn academy uniform, face twisted in rapture.
"You felt it too," he said, voice echoing strangely. "The silence. The freedom."
Ashen met his gaze.
"You filled it with noise," Ashen replied.
The man smiled wider than his face should allow.
"We couldn't stand the emptiness," he said. "So we listened when something answered."
The air behind them rippled.
Not a Devourer.
Something smaller.
Meaner.
A parasite born in the gap.
Ashen's instincts flared.
"Step back," he ordered Lyra softly.
She didn't argue.
The corrupted figures began to move—not rushing, not attacking—approaching, as if drawn by gravity.
"You broke the cage," the man continued. "But some of us liked the bars."
Ashen raised his hand.
"I can still help you," he said. "But you have to let go."
The chanting grew louder.
Their symbols brightened—then twisted.
The parasite surged forward, slipping between bodies like smoke given hunger.
Ashen felt it latch onto the wrongness, amplifying it.
"No," he breathed.
The thing screamed—not in sound, but in pressure—and the awakened wrong surged as one.
The hunters charged.
Steel met flesh.
Sigils flared and failed.
Ashen stepped into the chaos.
He didn't erase.
He didn't overwrite.
He reached for alignment.
The first corrupted student collapsed, symbols unraveling as Ashen whispered context back into their bones. Another followed.
But each correction cost more.
The parasite adapted.
It learned.
It split.
Lyra shouted, "Ashen—behind you!"
He turned—
Too late.
The parasite lunged, bypassing space entirely, slamming into Ashen's chest.
For a heartbeat, the world inverted.
Ashen saw himself.
Not as he was—
—but as he could become.
A version crowned in silence, worlds bending to meaning alone, connection replaced by command.
The parasite whispered eagerly:
"You could end the hunger by becoming it."
Ashen screamed—not aloud, but inward.
No.
He reached for the one thing the parasite couldn't touch.
Choice.
The parasite shrieked as Ashen tore it free—not destroying it, but casting it out, flinging it into the empty space between sigils where nothing had permission to exist.
The ruins went still.
The corrupted figures collapsed, breathing shallow but alive.
Ashen dropped to one knee.
Lyra ran to him, catching him before he fell.
"Ashen," she whispered, fear raw. "You scared me."
He laughed weakly.
"Good," he said. "That means I'm still me."
The hunters regrouped, wounded but standing.
The ash-skinned woman looked at Ashen with something like reverence—and dread.
"That parasite came from the gap you made," she said. "And it won't be the last."
Ashen nodded, exhausted.
"I know."
Lyra looked up at the broken sky above the ravine.
"If the Devourers notice the correction," she said slowly, "what notices the mistakes?"
Ashen followed her gaze.
Far above them, unseen by all but him, something vast shifted—not hungry, not curious—
attentive.
And for the first time since BloodBorn Academy,
Ashen Rowan felt something watching him that did not want to consume—
but to claim.