The space between worlds was dangerous in a way no Mage of this era could truly understand—no one except Kai. It was true that it was a pathway between realms, but it was also a void that could swallow the unprepared without leaving even a trace behind.

There were two reasons for that. The first was the absolute, consuming darkness of it. Any attempt to illuminate the space would be devoured instantly, as if the void itself fed on brightness.

The second was the mana. Thick, oppressive mana was everywhere. That part, at least, could be endured. But the darkness could not.

The moment Kai felt himself stabilize within the space between realms, he opened his mouth and called out, “Is everyone here?”

For a brief second, there was nothing. A dreadful thought occurred to his mind, but before it could expand, voices began to rise around him.

Most of them were strained. Claire’s was the loudest.

“What is this pressure, Lord Arzan?” she said, her voice tight. “It feels like I’m being crushed.”

Kai responded immediately. “That’s just the mana concentration. I have told you about it,” he said. “Don’t panic.” He steadied himself, forcing his voice to remain calm. “You’ll survive for about ten minutes without doing anything. After that, your body won’t be able to handle it.” There was a pause. Then he continued, “Use your spirit. Draw in the mana and form a thin barrier around yourselves. It will reduce the pressure. Everyone—do it now. Then stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”

Kai waited a few seconds, allowing them time to adjust. Then he moved.

Wind gathered around him, pushing against the dense mana as he forced his way through the void. Without sight, he relied entirely on his senses—feeling the disturbances in mana, tracking the presence of each individual.

The first thing he touched was solid armour.

“Killian,” Kai said immediately. “Hold my hand. Don’t let go.”

A second later, Killian’s grip tightened around his arm. “Yes, Lord Arzan,” he replied, his voice thinner than usual under the pressure.

Kai didn’t stop. He moved again, dragging Killian along as he navigated through the darkness.

One by one, he located the others. Each time, he gave the same instruction. Hold on. Don’t let go. Slowly, a chain formed as hands linked together in the void.

The ritual had ensured that all of them appeared in the same place.

Otherwise, finding each other in this void before the mana crushed them to death would have been nearly impossible.

Once Kai confirmed that everyone was linked together, he spoke again.

“Stay close to me,” he said. “No matter what happens, don’t make any noise. We’ll reach the gate to the Earth Plane soon.”

There was a brief pause. Then Elias’s voice came, low and strained.

“Why can’t we—”

He didn’t get to finish.

A sharp, piercing cry echoed through the darkness. It cut through the void like something alive.

Elias immediately fell silent. Then more cries followed, they were all different tones from different distances, and all of them were unnatural.

Before panic could spread, Kai spoke.

“They’re voidlings,” he said. “One of the few creatures that live here.”

A moment later, Veridia’s voice came. “How strong are they?”

“Strong enough that I don’t want any of us dealing with them,” Kai said. “Especially not in the dark.”

That was enough to silence any further questions. Then Kai began to move—it felt like pushing through an ocean. The dense mana resisted every motion, clinging to his body and slowing him down no matter how much wind mana he forced into his legs.

Still, he didn’t focus on speed. That wasn’t what mattered here, direction did.

Kai didn’t have a map of the space between realms. No one did, but this place was filled with all kinds of mana. So he focused on one thing—earth aspected mana.

He reached out with his senses, searching for it, filtering through everything else. And then he moved toward it. The stronger it became, the closer he knew they were to a passage.

Unfortunately, the path wasn’t empty. Even in the darkness, Kai could feel the obstacles. There were massive boulders around simply drifting through the void.

Some of them blocked their path entirely, forcing Kai to shift direction and guide the group around them. Others brushed dangerously close, scraping past shoulders and arms.

Each contact drew out suppressed cries from his party. And every sound increased the risk of being noticed.

At the same time, focusing on earth-aspected mana proved harder than he had expected. The space between realms was chaotic, currents of different elemental signatures pulling at his senses from all directions.

More than once, he drifted off course. Each time, he had to stop, recalibrate, and redirect.

It slowed them down and made every second heavier. He counted every second in his mind.

Even though most of them were powerful Mages, staying in this place for more than half an hour would turn fatal. Their bodies wouldn’t be able to endure the pressure for long.

That knowledge pressed down on him just as much as the mana. But he had chosen this path, which meant he had to see it through.

And as he kept moving, something changed.

Before he fully understood it, there was a pull of earth aspected mana. He felt the heavy, dense mana wrapping around him the further he moved in the north.

He adjusted instantly and pushed forward.

From behind, Elias’s voice came in a whisper. “Why is there so much earth-aspected mana here?”

Kai answered without slowing. “Mana flows from realms here,” he said. “Same with the Earth Plane.”

There was no time to elaborate. Instead, he increased his pace until the pressure grew stronger and denser, but suddenly he stopped. Something blocked the path ahead, and that something felt like a wall.

Kai raised his hand and pressed his palm against it.

The moment he made contact, a strange sensation crawled up his skin—like static, like something alive brushing against him from the other side.

A slow smile spread across his face.

“We’re here,” he said. “The door to the Earth Plane.”

“I don’t see anything,” Veridia said from behind him.

Kai didn’t turn. “That’s because it’s hidden.”

He pressed his palm against the invisible barrier one last time before stepping back.

“You can all let go now,” he added. “Just don’t wander off. If something pulls at you, scream. I need to break this door. Once it opens, we move immediately.”

With that, he released his grip and created some distance between himself and the unseen wall.

Then, in the very next second, he moved. Fire mana surged into his fist. It wrapped around his arm, coiling tightly before igniting into a blazing aura. For a brief moment, the darkness retreated.

The space between realms flickered with dim light.

Claire gasped from the side, but the void reacted instantly.

The darkness surged back, swallowing the light as if it were alive, consuming it faster than Kai could produce it.

He didn’t hesitate and pushed more mana into his fist. Then he struck. His fist slammed into the invisible wall.

A cracking sound echoed unnaturally through the void, but the barrier didn’t break.

Kai struck again. And again, making sure that the next blow was heavier than the last. There was an impact every time he hit it.

From behind, Elias called out, “Kid, need help?”

Kai didn’t stop. “No,” he said. “Just watch the surroundings. Any light draws the voidlings attention. If anything comes close, hold them back.”

Killian’s voice followed. “How strong are they?”

Kai answered without slowing. “Strong enough that you won’t be killing any of them. That’s why I said to just hold them back.”

After that, he stopped speaking. Every bit of his focus went into his fists.

He pushed more mana, and kept punching until cracks appeared on the surface. He could have used larger spells, but they would attract too much attention, so he simply targeted those weakened points again and again.

In the next few seconds, the pressure built and the cracks widened. But before he could open up a hole, there was a sound.

Not distant this time. It was awfully close.

“Fuck.”

He immediately stepped back from the fractured barrier.

“The voidlings are here, I’m going to use higher circle spells now. Hold them off! Just give me a minute.”

Before anyone could respond, mana surged through him. Two spell structures formed almost instantly in his hands. One burned bright with fire. The other sharpened into slicing currents of wind. Kai released both at once.

A blazing beam of fire erupted forward, colliding with the invisible wall, while a storm of compressed wind blades followed, striking the same fractured points again and again.

The barrier trembled. Cracks spread faster now. But behind him, the cries multiplied. He heard Elias’ shout and glanced back for a split second.

Three voidlings had emerged from the darkness.

In the dim, flickering light of his spells, their forms became visible, and they were wrong in a way that made the mind recoil. Their bodies stretched long like serpents, but there was no true shape to them. They weren’t made of flesh. They were made of darkness itself.

So absolute that even the faint light struggled to cling to their surfaces. Their outlines wavered unnaturally, as if they weren’t fully present in reality.

Their size alone made them terrifying. They were massive, easily large enough to coil around multiple men. The one at the front moved first.

Its head lifted slightly, and then its mouth split open.

Rows of sharp fangs revealed themselves within that void-like body.

Elias reacted instantly.

A wall of earth surged up in front of them, thick and reinforced with mana.

The voidling crashed into it, and bit through it, making the stone shatter between its jaws like brittle glass.

Kai didn’t look any longer. They could hold them even if it was for a few seconds, and that was all he needed—A few fucking seconds.

He turned back and poured even more mana into his spells. The fire intensified at once, and the wind blades sharpened.

The cracks in the dimensional barrier widened rapidly now, splintering outward like a shattered mirror. Fragments of darkness peeled away.

Kai could feel the Earth Plane beyond the breaking point.

The fractures expanded until there was finally enough space for a person to pass through.

The opening twisted unnaturally, revealing more darkness within, but Kai knew what lay beyond it. He turned back, ready to call the others forward.

And then he heard it.

There was a sharp cry above him. His head snapped up.

One of the voidlings was already there, diving straight at him.

Kai reacted instantly.

The moment the voidling dropped toward him, he forced his body sideways, wind mana bursting beneath his feet and pushing him out of its path.

The creature tore through the space he had occupied a heartbeat ago.

For a fraction of a second, it overshot and then twisted. Its entire body coiled mid-air and snapped back toward him with terrifying speed.

It came again. Kai didn’t have to think twice. The fire beam in his hand shifted, angling upward, and he unleashed it directly into the voidling’s face.

The beam struck true. Flames roared against its head, but the creature didn’t slow. It pushed through the attack as if the fire meant nothing.

Kai’s eyes narrowed. Of course, there was no killing something like this here.

At the last second, he shifted left, narrowly avoiding its jaws as it lunged past him, its presence dragging cold along his skin.

“Everyone, move!” Kai shouted the next second. “We can’t kill these things!”

His voice cut through the chaos. He glanced back. Elias, Veridia, Killian, Claire, and Elder Caelith were already locked in battle.

Spells flashed through the darkness. Earth spikes, shadow constructs, lightning arcs.

The two Magus—Elias and Veridia—handled the worst of it, their spells intercepting the voidlings again and again.

Expectedly, the attacks weren’t landing the way they should. They deflected, distorted, and slid off the creatures’ forms like they weren’t fully real. Not a single strike seemed to truly harm them.

At best, they delayed them. At worst, they annoyed them.

Moreover, Killian wasn’t even able to move properly under the pressure of the space. Lightning crackled across his body, ready to react at any moment, but he wasn’t advancing.

He couldn’t do that here.

Kai knew that he needed to get everyone out of here, hence he moved.

Wind surged around him as he shot forward—but before he could reach them—something slammed into him from the side.

It was a voidling; it struck his wind armour head-on.

The impact ripped through the outer layers instantly, tearing chunks of the construct away like it was nothing more than cloth.

Kai gritted his teeth, seeing the voidling’s jaws snapped toward him, and he reacted on instinct.

A concentrated burst of wind exploded from his palm. The blast struck the creature’s head and forced it back just enough.

Kai didn’t waste the opening.

Claire was the closest to him, a lightning arc ran wildly around her as she drew on the Storm Sovereign’s power, striking at anything that came near.

The moment she saw Kai, she turned without hesitation.

He grabbed her shoulder. Then reached for Killian and pulled him in as well.

“Let’s go!” Kai shouted.

Wind gathered beneath them as he forced himself upward, dragging both of them along as he accelerated toward the fractured dimensional opening.

“We’re leaving!”

He didn’t look back. He trusted the others to follow. All his focus went into movement.

Every time a voidling came too close, Kai lashed out with bursts of wind and fire, not trying to kill, just forcing space between them. Holding them back, buying seconds, knowing that in this place seconds were everything.

One of the voidlings lunged low.

It was too fast and too close for him to dodge at once. Its jaws snapped toward Killian’s legs, the darkness around its mouth distorting as it opened wider than it should have.

For a split second, it looked like it would tear straight through him, but Killian reacted on time. His sword came down in a brutal arc, lightning flaring along the blade as he drove it straight into the creature’s head.

The impact didn’t injure it. But it slowed it just enough. Kai didn’t waste the moment.

They were already at the fractured opening.

“Go!” he shouted.

With a sharp push of wind, he forced both Killian and Claire forward, shoving them straight into the dimensional crack. Their forms vanished instantly into the darkness beyond.

Kai turned back and looked at the remaining group, Elias, Veridia and Caelith. All three were already moving toward him. But behind them, there was a swarm. They were way more voidlings than before.

At least a dozen of them surged through the darkness, their bodies weaving and coiling as they closed in.

“Keep moving!” Kai called out. “I’ll cover you!”

Mana flared in both his hands.

Fire gathered in one. Wind sharpened in the other.

He unleashed them at once, tearing through the space between realms, striking the advancing voidlings again and again.

The creatures barely reacted. The attacks didn’t harm them or slow them much. But each strike disrupted them just enough to get the three more seconds.

And that was enough.

They pushed forward, gaining distance with every heartbeat. But the voidlings adapted.

They surged harder, closing the gap.

The more they closed the distance, the more Kai felt how little time they had left. He just knew that even a moment’s delay could cost them everything. Not wanting to take that risk, he immediately altered the spell structure in his left hand.

The flow of mana shifted, reshaping itself, before condensing into several thick ropes of wind that shot forward toward the three of them.

Elias, Veridia, and Caelith didn’t hesitate. Each of them grabbed onto the wind ropes the moment they reached them, wrapping them tightly around their hands. The instant Kai felt their grip, he pulled with everything he had.

The sudden force gave them the burst they needed, pulling them out of the voidlings’ immediate reach.

Their bodies were carried forward uncontrollably, crashing straight into the fractured dimensional door before vanishing through it one after another.

Kai turned immediately after, intending to follow right behind them, but the voidlings let out sharp, piercing cries as they finally closed the remaining distance.

Their presence loomed right behind him now, far too close for him to safely prepare another spell.

There was no time.

Kai abandoned the idea entirely and instead rushed toward the dimensional door, trusting his wind armour to hold for just a moment longer. He pushed forward, forcing his body through the thick resistance of mana, until his hands finally reached the crack in space.

And then, something tore through his armour.

The protective wind shattered, and in the next instant, he felt a crushing bite clamp down onto his leg.

“Fuckkk!”

Pain exploded through him, dragging a cry from his throat. But Kai didn’t stop.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his hand forward, pushing himself deeper into the opening despite the pain, despite the force trying to hold him back. As he did, he felt something else take hold of him from the other side—a pull, strong and absolute, grabbing onto him and dragging him through.

The pressure shifted in an instant.

And in the very next second, Kai was through.

***

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