Nisha’s expression changed. Not dramatically, like the way people do in stories when they hear sothing terrible. It was smaller than that. The slight loosening of her jaw, the way her eyes went from suspicious to sothing else entirely.
"What do you an you can’t summon your spirit?"
"I an exactly what I said." My voice ca out steadier than I felt, which was a small rcy. "I tried to summon Maggie. Nothing happened. I tried to force it. Nothing. I tried to enter my soul plane and there’s..." I paused, trying to find the words. "There’s sothing between and the Nave. Like a cold and massive wall. I can feel my soul plane out there but I can’t reach it."
Nisha stared at . Then she looked at her obsidian beast, which was still flaring its tentacles about like nothing in the world was wrong.
"Try again."
"I just tried..."
"Try again, Cade."
Sothing in her tone made obey without argunt. I closed my eyes, reached inward, and pushed toward the Nave.
The barrier was still there. Vast and freezing, like pressing my consciousness against an ocean of black ice. I could feel the cathedral at the horizon, a faint pulse, warm and familiar. But between and them stretched sothing that didn’t care how hard I pushed. It absorbed every ounce of will I threw at it and gave nothing back.
I opened my eyes.
"Nothing."
Nisha’s beast circled us once, then settled beside her, its snarl reduced to a low, continuous rumble. She was quiet for longer than I was comfortable with.
"Your essence. How low is it?"
I thought about her question, and what use it was, but answer nonetheless.
"It’s low but I’ve summoned her with less before."
She shook her head slowly. "You’re right, even I have. Summoning doesn’t require that much essence, it’s maintaining them that drains you."
"Well, clearly sothing disagrees with that assessnt because I am very much not summoning right now."
She ignored my tone. Her eyes were scanning the trees around us, and for the first ti since we’d entered this woodland, I saw genuine unease on Nisha’s face. Not the professional caution she usually carried. Sothing rawer.
"Can you use your attributes? Try one. Sothing small."
I raised my hand and willed Emperor’s Presence forward. The familiar weight of authority settled over , faint but functional. I could feel it radiating outward, pressing against the air around us like a low hum.
Nisha’s beast flinched and took a step back from .
"That works," she confird, watching her summon’s reaction. "So your attributes are fine. It’s only summoning."
"And the soul plane. I can’t enter the soul plane either."
She went quiet again. I watched her think, and the silence was worse than anything she could have said, because Nisha not talking ant Nisha didn’t have an answer.
Then she asked , "What’s a soul plane? I’ve been hearing you say that over and over, what is that?"
’Huh? Is that even a question?’
"Where your spirits stay obviously, mine’s a weird ass cathedral, I’m guessing yours is like so dark forest."
Nisha gave a revolting frown.
"What? No. Dark forest? Wait, no, what? You can enter your own soul?"
I returned the sa shock, "You can’t?"
"No one can!" Nisha shouted.
Then I was silent for a few seconds, looking away like I had just unintentionally blurted out my secret.
We both were silent for a few seconds, then she exhaled and touched her forehead with stress before she threw whatever it was away to focus on the main point.
"Here’s what I don’t understand," heer voice had gone flat and clinical. "My summon works. My connection to my beast is fine. Whatever is interfering with you isn’t interfering with ."
"Maybe the forest likes you better."
She didn’t smile. "Think about it. What’s different between us?"
I knew what was different. The answer had been sitting in the back of my head since the second attempt failed, and I’d been very deliberately not looking at it because looking at it ant accepting sothing I really didn’t want to accept.
"You’re a regular summoner. I’m a Spirit Summoner."
Nisha held my gaze, and the look she gave confird that she’d already arrived at the sa conclusion.
"I want to suppose your connection runs through the soul plane," she said carefully, like she was laying bricks, one fact at a ti. "Mine doesn’t. I command, my beast obeys. There’s no interdiary, no plane. The link between and my summon is... simpler."
"Simpler. Sure. Let’s call being fundantally inferior ’simpler.’"
"Cade."
"I’m kidding." I wasn’t kidding. But the joke was easier than the alternative, which was standing in the middle of a hostile forest that had just cut off from the two most powerful beings I had access to and admitting that I was, for all intents and purposes, an F-rank summoner who couldn’t summon.
’Which makes just... an F-rank. Period.’
The thought settled in my chest like a stone dropped into still water. I could feel the ripples spreading outward, touching everything. No Kassie. No Maggie. No soul plane. No Chains of Confession, no Sanctified Immolation, none of the abilities that had pulled through every crisis since I’d been thrown into this world. All I had were my base attributes and whatever combat skills Maggie had beaten into on the deck of that ship.
Against a forest that was alive, that healed itself, that moved its own paths, that had been watching us for hours.
’I’m actually in danger.’
Not the kind of danger where I had a trump card waiting. Not the kind where Kassie could break through at the last second with her fists blazing. Real danger. The kind where I could die and there would be nothing dramatic about it. Just a forest that swallowed a boy and never let him out.
I almost laughed. The sound caught in my throat and died there.
"So," I said, and my voice sounded remarkably normal for soone who was busy realizing they might die in a woodland, "the forest is specifically blocking my soul plane connection. Which ans either this is what it does to all Spirit Summoners, or..."
I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t want to finish it.
Nisha finished it for .
"Or it’s targeting you specifically."
’Ahh, suddenly, everyone and their obsession with blocking my connection to my soul plane.’
This was a weakness of mine as a summoner of overpowered spirit, and the fact that it has been exploited twice now, was informative enough that I had to do sothing about it.
We looked at each other. The trees pressed in on all sides, and I swear the canopy was lower than it had been five minutes ago.
"Burning it down is off the table," I said.
"You think?"
"Nisha, I’m being serious."
"So am I." She straightened, and sothing shifted in her posture. Not pity, Nisha didn’t do pity. It was more like... recalibration. I watched her ntally reorganize the hierarchy between us, and to her credit she did it without making it obvious. But I noticed.
She was taking point now.
"My beast can still fight. My Cleavers can still cut. Whatever is in this forest, I can handle threats while we figure out what’s happening to you. But we need to move. Standing still in a place that’s actively trying to trap us is the worst thing we can do."
I looked at her. At the obsidian creature beside her, tentacles writhing, teeth bared at shadows that may or may not have been watching. At the woman who, not long ago, I’d been thinking about in ways that had nothing to do with survival.
Funny how quickly the brain reprioritizes when death becos a real option.
’I should be grateful. She didn’t even hesitate.’
And I was grateful. But there was sothing else underneath the gratitude, sothing uglier that I recognized imdiately because I’d felt it before: sha. The specific sha of needing soone else to protect you when you’ve been telling yourself you could handle things alone.
’I said I wanted to do this without summoning Maggie. Well, congratulations Cade. You got your wish. No Maggie. No Kassie. No nothing. Happy now?’
I wasn’t happy. And I wasn’t helpless either, sure Nisha would help but that didn’t an, I will stand around and be a bag of burden.
"Alright," I said, pushing off whatever tree I’d been leaning against. My body protested. Everything protested. "If we can’t burn it down, then we need to understand it. This forest has been doing things since we got here. Healing itself, reshaping paths, getting us lost. Now it’s cutting off my connection to my spirits. There’s a pattern here and I’d really like to figure it out before it does sothing worse."
Nisha nodded and started walking. Her beast flanked us, and I fell in beside her.
It was strange, walking through a forest that you knew was aware of you. Every rustle of leaves felt deliberate. Every shadow between the trees felt occupied. And the worst part wasn’t the fear. The worst part was the silence inside my own head, where Kassie’s presence used to sit like a warm coal at the edge of my consciousness.
That warmth was gone. Just cold. Just the freezing barrier and the cathedral, impossibly far away.
’Kassie, if you can hear on the other side of whatever this is... I’m going to figure it out. Just... stay there. Don’t do anything reckless.’
Of course there was no response.
I kept walking.
"Nisha."
"Hm?"
"The anomalies you ntioned earlier. Locked gate, variant gate. You said those were the only two known types."
"That’s right."
"Well, we can add a third to the list. A gate that thinks." I glanced at the canopy above us, at the branches that seed to lean just slightly too close. "And I’m really starting to wonder what it’s thinking about."
Nisha said nothing. But her grip on her Cleavers tightened, and her beast growled at sothing neither of us could see.
We pressed forward in the midst of a forest dedicated to making sure we stay lost.
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