AuthorSME

  The air felt heavier as they stepped away from Jelira’s grove, the quiet press of the ancient trees closing in behind them. Aelion remained behind, possibly sensing this was a personal matter and respecting their space.

  Kari’s ears flicked at the shift in atmosphere—subtle, but noticeable. The moment they left the Spirit’s presence, the warmth of her domain faded, repced by a weightier stillness.

  The nd beyond was older in a different way, not the ancient, knowing kind that pulsed with quiet wisdom, but something fractured. The trees weren’t just tall, they were twisted, branches reaching too far, casting shadows that never quite settled in the right direction. The ground beneath her feet was solid, but it carried a sensation—like walking on something that had been disturbed, not by footsteps, but by time itself.

  I wasn’t sure before but now… This isn’t Avalon territory. It’s a piece of Mom’s realm that was carried with Tiri here. No wonder it feels so familiar, but…wrong.

  Kari inhaled through her nose, the crisp, damp scent of moss and leaves curling against something colder, something that didn’t belong. A Fenris Wolf’s scent, twisted by whatever magic had attempted to pull Tiri into the depths of this world.

  The Darkness wasn’t here, but the further they walked, the more she felt the creeping remnants of it. Not like before but lingering with Fenris energy. The kind of thing that left a scar, unseen but was never fully gone.

  Sora didn’t seem to notice.

  Is she…smiling?

  The fox trotted beside her, tail flicking absently, green eyes bright with some mix of nerves and anticipation. The poofy-tailed girl kept gncing at her, like she was waiting for her to say something. Kari had nothing to say.

  Her mind was too full, cwing through everything at once.

  Tiri. Three years. Alone. In a world like this. It was too much.

  No wonder Eric was searching the entire damn pnet! He knew she’d made it out with us. Her hands curled into fists. And he didn’t tell me. No one tells me anything, as if I’m a helpless pup!

  A sharp gust of wind swept through the trees, making them creak, their groaning echoing in the near silence. Kari’s body tensed instinctively, though nothing moved beyond the sway of thick canopies above. Still, she sensed the danger. Not real, tangible danger…but what her sister must have felt when crashing into this realm.

  Her shoulders stayed rigid even as the wind passed, leaving only the sound of Sora’s shoes lightly crunching the underbrush. She moved with more care, more caution.

  “Okay, I know you’re thinking about something,” the fox finally blurted, slowing her steps. “I can hear your tail snapping at the air like it’s personally offended you! Don’t bottle it up. Tell me straight.”

  Kari barely spared her a gnce. “Not in the mood.”

  “When are you ever in a good mood? C’mon!”

  Kari exhaled sharply through her nose, not quite a sigh, but close. Sora wasn’t going to drop it. She never did.

  “You’re excited.” Kari didn’t phrase it as a question. “Aren’t you?”

  Sora slowed for half a second, then shrugged. “Yeah? I mean—of course I’m excited! And I know this isn’t about that. You mentioned my mom, but, Kari, this means she’s alive. Your sister—”

  “That’s not what this means,” Kari snapped, her own voice sharper than she meant for it to be. “It means she was alive. Three years ago. And we have no idea what happened to her after that. None. Three years…of me pying pack leader at school while she was… While she was here.”

  Sora didn’t immediately respond. The silence stretched just long enough that Kari gnced at her, expecting irritation or defensiveness. Instead, Sora’s ears had tilted slightly, her expression softer than it had any right to be.

  Damn it! Don’t… Don’t, Sora!

  “Kari,” she said, her tone gentler now. “She was alive three years ago, yes. But she escaped. And we have a direction. That’s still something. She made it out of The Darkness to the north.”

  Kari’s jaw clenched, her gaze snapping forward again.

  Something. Yeah. Something like knowing my baby sister got thrown into a foreign world with no warning. No protection. Eight years old, Sora! she wanted to scream. Alone. Yeah, that’s something! If she did escape to a northern ke, what then?

  Does your precious High Queen have her locked away somewhere? Did they feed her to The Darkness? What about that shit with your fairy friend who changed overnight? How did she survive? How long had she been alone before finding help—if she had found help at all? Who found her? What has she become in order to keep living? Why…didn’t your mom save her with everyone else she brought back to life because of Jenny?!

  The wind shifted again, carrying a scent that made the fur along Kari’s arms prickle—something distant, something familiar, but too faint to grasp.

  “She shouldn’t have been alone,” she finally muttered, almost to herself and unable to express the va boiling beneath her skin. “She shouldn’t have had to survive.”

  Sora gnced at her again, her arms crossing and voice quieter. “I know.”

  Kari’s muscles tensed. “Do you?”

  Sora hummed, her tone lighter, but not dismissive. “No. You’re right, Kari. I don’t. Not like you do… I didn’t have a sister. Well, until Wendy. But I can still be angry for her. And for you, as your friend. Can’t I?”

  The words struck something deep, somewhere Kari didn’t want them to reach. She bit the inside of her cheek.

  Sora kept walking, kept talking, like she couldn’t stop herself.

  “I do want to know why Mom didn’t tell me. I know it’s eating you up inside. I see it. Maybe she didn’t know, but that almost feels stupid to think… She had to know. I want to ask her. I will ask her. But we just learned this, Kari. We don’t even know the full story yet. You want to bme her? Fine. Maybe she deserves it. But we should find out first.”

  Kari’s hands twitched, barely stopping herself from baring her teeth.

  How can you be like this? How can you be so—so understanding? You really are okay with me bming your mom…but also want me to wait and see? Dammit! I don’t…know who to bme…but I know I wasn’t there for her.

  Kari fought back tears. Weakness. Hated it. She hated how easy it was for Sora to say things like that. How she rarely pushed back, never bit back, just accepted that she was mad and let it settle… Like her emotions weren’t a burden. Like she was about to break. Like she wasn’t just some angry mutt snapping at nothing.

  Kari felt her teeth grinding, fissures forming from the pressure, only to heal milliseconds ter as she tried to swallow the frustration, but it wouldn’t sit right.

  “I don’t need you to tell me I have the right to be mad,” she finally snarled.

  “I know that,” Sora replied, exasperation now touching her tone and ears twitching a little. “I get that you’re mad. You should be! But I’m saying—”

  “I don’t want you to say anything!” Kari loudly snapped, stopping abruptly. “I don’t want you to try to fix it! To fix me this time! I just…agh!”

  Sora stopped too, blinking. For the first time, her tail stilled. “Fix you? I’m…I’m not trying to fix it. I’m just…trying to be here.”

  Kari breathed heavily, trying to wrangle her own emotions back into pce. Her chest burned. She hadn’t even realized she’d stopped moving.

  Sora watched her carefully. Then, after a long moment, she exhaled. “Okay,” she simply ended.

  Kari blinked. “Okay?”

  Sora shrugged. “Yeah. Okay. I won’t say anything else about it.” She started walking again, past Kari, toward the direction the mushrooms were taking them. “But I’m still going with you. You can’t tell me what to do. Okay, fleabag?”

  Kari let out a slow, steady breath, her own anger settling, not gone, but not eating her alive anymore. She flexed her fingers, exhaled again, then followed.

  Better…I guess.

  They walked in silence after that, the trees bending inward, the ground dipping slightly as the terrain shifted.

  The Shadow Pit was close. Kari could feel it. She didn’t know if she was ready, but it didn’t matter. Because she needed to know.

  Trees thinned as the shadows deepened, their skeletal branches twisting into unnatural angles, like something had grasped them in a death grip long ago and they’d never recovered. The ground, once solid and moss-covered, gave way to coarse earth, patches of bckened soil cracking apart like old wounds. Even the air felt different here, thick and static, clinging to her fur with an uncomfortable charge.

  Kari’s tail flicked, her ears pulling back.

  It’s gotten worse in just a week… Is it because it sensed I was nearby before? Is it reaching out for me?

  The scent hit her next.

  It wasn’t like the subtle, ever-present magic of Avalon, nor was it the overpowering rot of The Darkness. It was something else. Something that smelled wrong, like an open field of corpses right after a storm, the scent of lightning-scorched earth and something struggling to breathe. She ground her teeth.

  No wonder the damn fae locked this pce down. It’s Fenris Force… Our unique power that’s somehow been corrupted. How is that even possible? Even Sora’s Desire Magic is all but useless against me…and Tiri was twice the wolf I was, even at her young age.

  Sora slowed beside her, ears twitching, a frown tugging at her lips as she gnced around. “Okay, I do feel it now,” she muttered, voice quieter than before. “It’s…like a Fae version of you? That can’t be good. It got worse since we stumbled upon it.”

  “No shit,” Kari muttered, her gaze locked ahead.

  The pit hadn’t even come into view yet, but its grasp was like teeth hanging just out of reach, waiting to snatch them.

  “So…you think the dean wanted to lock this pce off because close interaction stimutes it?”

  “I’m not here to specute or study it,” Kari growled, taking the lead. “I thought you were shutting up?”

  “Humph… A little humor is good for your brain rot.”

  At least she’s getting more of her bite back and cutting out the sympathy BS…

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, the weight of the nd pressing down on them. The dirt sloped downward, the path narrowing between jagged rock formations that shouldn’t be here—not in Avalon. Kari’s pulse ticked up. This nd was foreign…yet familiar.

  It didn’t belong to Mia’s realm. It didn’t belong to anyone. It had been carried here.

  She swallowed hard.

  Tiri brought it.

  The Shadow Pit twisted it.

  And then, suddenly, the ground just—ended.

  The pit yawned before them, a massive, gaping rupture in the earth, its edges cracked like shattered gss. It wasn’t a hole as it had been before. It wasn’t a void. It was a wound, something torn open and festering.

  Kari’s lungs squeezed, her cws hooking out to penetrate her soles.

  The pit wasn’t bck—not like shadows. Not even like The Darkness.

  It was like her stomach—a Fenris Wolf’s stomach—a hungry void.

  A deep hum rumbled from somewhere below, distant but alive, like something massive breathing beneath the surface. The swirling mass within the depths didn’t stay still, shifting in unnatural ways, warping the space around it like a mirage in heat.

  Her stomach twisted.

  Am I…scared?

  Sora sucked in a breath beside her. “Holy… This thing feels different from the others. It’s—”

  “Not just a Shadow Pit,” Kari finished, voice tight.

  Sora’s hands clenched into fists. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

  Neither of them spoke for a long moment, just staring.

  Say it… I know you want to… This isn’t what you looked into. It’s not the same thing… It’s a Founder Shadow Pit. You don’t know if your magic will even work on it… We should go back. Say it… I want to tell you no…because I can’t move my feet. Move!

  Her feet wouldn’t.

  Sora exhaled hard, seemingly snapping herself out of it first and causing something sharp to rip at Kari’s heart that she wasn’t the one to speak first. Guilt? Shame?

  “Alright,” she muttered, shaking her hands out like she was steadying herself. “I promised you we’d get to the bottom of this. That’s what we’re going to do! Let’s be smart, though. I’ve talked to Se about this, and she gave me some thoughts. Let’s get this set up before we both start overthinking things.”

  She crouched down and pressed her palm against the ground, potent magic gathering without a word, shaped by her desires. Light fred between the fox’s fingers, thin, glowing threads slithering into the dirt before sprouting, twisting together until a thick vine rope coiled beside her, pulled from the nearby brush, its length pulsing faintly with magic.

  Move! Kari internally screamed, only being able to quell her quakes as she tried not to stare into the abyss; it felt like there were eyes there, globes rger than universes, observing her like honey to p up. Can you really not feel him… That energy? Or…are you just that much braver than me? she wanted to shout.

  Sora grabbed one end and walked to the nearest tree. All Kari could do was force herself to breath and watch as she wound it around the thick trunk securing it with a complex series of knots. Yet, after a short battle within herself, and the fox’s distracting actions, she managed to squeak out a few words.

  “You’re…making a rope?”

  “Not mad and giving me the silent treatment anymore? Also, it’s a tether,” Sora corrected, gncing up briefly with a short chuckle. “My idea, Se’s guidance. Knots are markers. If you grip the red knot, it tells me to pull you up. The green one means ‘give me more time.’ The middle knot will shift from green to red—a time based one in case you can’t grip it—so you know how much time you have left before I force you up.”

  The redhead puffed out her chest. “Smart, huh? C’mon, tell me it’s smart! The vines are partially corrupted, the light I’ve infused helps combat them from fraying, and it should be reinforced strong enough to pull you out of anything! Well, I hope it can, at least. I used 50% of my magic to do it so give me some credit for safety measures!”

  Kari frowned, feeling a bit of the pressure ease and wanting to punch herself for being so pathetic. She hesitantly reached down and picked up the end of the rope that slithered toward her from Sora’s continual work, still extending the length. Running her fingernails along the woven vines, she held back a smile.

  I hate that you care about me so much… How the hell did you ever become my only friend? Wendy’s right. You should have had your mom skin me alive and make a rug out of my fur… It’s what I probably would have done if I had your tail… How can you make me feel useless, vulnerable, and weak…while lifting me up and giving me courage? You make it impossible to compliment you…because then it feels like I lost.

  “Why…can’t you just do a clock?”

  Sora’s nose scrunched. “Well, excuse me, Princess! Because we didn’t bring a clock! Geez. ‘Thanks, Sora, you’re just the best! Always saving my tail and thinking ahead. Nice pn. No! It only took me all week to work out the right magical combination of desires to cut down the price by seventy-three percent.’

  “Noooo. It’s all, ‘why do you suck, Sora? Knots? Why not a flippin’ clock like a real genius, dumbass?’ For your information, transfiguring one is stupid expensive for my magic. But no rest for the vulpes. Nope. Why don’t you just knot your own tail?” She brandished the vines with a light scowl. “Weaving already made things together, FYI, is way easier than creating a complex machine out of thin air! Unbelievable.”

  Kari grunted, rolling the rope in her palm with a small smirk. There’s the tirade I was looking for… Hmm. Solid work, Sora… Thanks. Sorry I can’t say it… I can’t even jump in, Tiri… No wonder Eric thought I was useless… Why he didn’t tell me. I am weak.

  Her heart thumped harder, too hard, her breathing uneven.

  Why am I hesitating? Tiri’s experience… What she went through is right here. Jump! But…what if it isn’t Tiri? What if this is the moment Mom’s realm colpsed? What if it’s…him?

  Her cws dug into her palms, breaths coming faster now.

  Sora was staring at her, the fox’s usual bright energy dimmed, quiet. She was practically bleeding the words: Let me help… This hurts to watch.

  Or…maybe that was just her paranoia. Kari stared at the pit, rope in her hands.

  “Kari?”

  “…Push me in.”

  Sora blinked. “What?”

  Why is my voice shaking? I should be strong for Tiri… I need to be a big sister!

  Kari swallowed, voice hoarse. “Just push—”

  Sora didn’t even hesitate.

  One hard shove ter—Kari barely processed the sensation of hands hitting her back or the rope slithering through her limp grip to tie around her waist. She was falling, wind tearing past her ears. Sora’s voice echoed after her.

  “I have faith in you, buddy…because you’re strong!”

  And then—

  Darkness swallowed her whole.

  There was no impact.

  No ground.

  No sky.

  Only a rush of leaves, the scent of damp bark, the sensation of running.

  Kari didn’t see herself, but she saw the gray fur on her front legs—this was through Tiri’s eyes. The world stretched impossibly wide, trees taller than Avalon’s Realm Tree, their trunks extending endlessly in every direction, forming a maze of colossal pilrs.

  Tiri was running, small paws barely keeping bance as she chased something.

  A giant deer.

  Far too big for her. Too strong. She had no business hunting it.

  But she was chasing anyway…because that was her little sister.

  If I just get its leg—one bite—and Kari will py with me! She promised! It’s fast…but I’m faster! I just…huh?!

  A streak of bck-furred and gray stripes blurred into focus, devouring it whole. Tiri skidded to a stop, paws digging into the bark before tripping and stumbling across the mossy bark. And then she looked up.

  Massive blue eyes stared down at her.

  Kari—Tiri—froze. Her ears fttened against her skull.

  She hadn’t sensed him before, but now that she did—

  It was overwhelming…like Mother.

  Hati.

  Tiri was totally blindsided, though. The wolf was huge, incomprehensibly vast—the dimensional trees themselves were dwarfed by his scale—yet, at the same time, he appeared only to be the size of a giant building to her. It didn’t make sense. But Mom didn’t either.

  He leaned down, breath sweeping over her fur like a hurricane, mist curling at his nostrils. Then, a voice. Deep. Ancient. Unshakable.

  “My, my…what a deceitful wolf your mother is…to have hidden her perfect little pup from her big brother.”

  Tiri’s heart stopped.

  The world stilled.

  Her paws twitched beneath her, the instinct to run screaming through her small frame, but her body wouldn’t obey. She couldn’t move.

  Hati’s massive blue eyes pierced through her, a force beyond comprehension, his gaze pressing into her very soul. She had never felt fear like this before—not this kind. Not the kind that made her stomach drop into an endless pit, not the kind that paralyzed her completely…that robbed all hope of resistance.

  She had been scared before. When Kari left. When she pyed too rough with her siblings and got scolded. When she wrestled a bear too rge for her…but won. The look on Kari’s face.

  This?

  This was doom.

  The air around her trembled, folding under the sheer presence of the wolf before her. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t lunged, hadn’t done anything yet, and yet she felt trapped, caught in his gravity like a star being pulled into oblivion. Yet, something deep within her snarled. A primal voice.

  “Reject that reality, kid. He’s weak.”

  Tiri’s body jolted to the left, and Kari’s heart skipped a beat at the words—their grandfather’s words—passing through her little sister’s veins. A soul shard of Grandpa Fenrir himself within her.

  His nostrils fred as Tiri tried to dart into the nearby brush, a slow exhale curling mist around her fur. It was as if he were testing her scent, confirming something he already knew.

  “He speaks within you… I knew Alva had the ability, the cheeky girl.”

  And then…his mouth opened.

  Tiri gasped, scrambling to find a way to find a weak point—she was going to fight—cws digging into the moss-covered bark. Her paws slipped. Her body shook.

  Darkness.

  A pit of endless darkness swallowed the very sky, lined with fangs rger than comprehension, each one gleaming like carved universes against the abyss. The sound of his breath, his hunger, was deafening.

  No. I can still win!

  Kari’s mine was screaming something different.

  No, no, no, no, no! Tiri, NO!

  She ran into the void.

  Her little sister barely made it two steps before the air rushed away, vacuumed into the chasm of his maw, her small frame ripped backward, weightless, helpless, the forest vanishing in a blink. The world was gone.

  There was only the bck.

  It closed around her, crushing, an abyss deeper than any in Existence, deeper than anything she had ever known. For the first time in her life, Tiri felt death—Kari felt true death—yet she had no fear. And that feeling resonated within her.

  Tiri roared.

  Light.

  Blinding light.

  A force so powerful it shook the fabric of space-time, colliding with her from the side, a shockwave that shattered the bck, splitting the void apart with a force too strong, too fast, too sudden—she flew.

  Her body catapulted sideways, her fur standing on end, her small form sent tumbling through the impossible gap in Hati’s monstrous teeth.

  And as she fell, spinning through open space, her eyes caught a streak of gray. A shape smming into Hati’s side as if she were falling in reverse through time, a force strong enough to make even the great wolf stagger.

  Amber eyes caught her.

  Tiri’s world slowed.

  Their mother.

  She looked right at her.

  A pained smile.

  Her mouth opened, voice wrapping around Tiri like a whisper on the wind—around Kari.

  “I’m sorry, Tiri… But, Kari, my pain is unbearable to what I must do to you.”

  Her tail whipped out, striking Tiri midair, unching her.

  “Please, find and protect your little sister. Our family needs you to be strong now.”

  Then, the sky ripped apart.

  Tiri’s body twisted as she was flung through a rupture in dimensional yers, her mother’s shape vanishing behind the colpsing void, Hati’s form expanding, consuming, devouring—

  Kari wanted to scream.

  She couldn’t.

  She had no mouth.

  She wasn’t here.

  She was just a ghost in the memory of her sister’s st moments before being sent to Vulpes Territory…yet her mother had sent her a message in this. Now, fear, anger, and confusion rippled through her—Tiri’s emotions, sharp and visceral.

  The vision cracked.

  Darkness.

  The kind that moved, crawled, the kind that sank its cws into her chest.

  It saw her.

  It knew her.

  It wanted her.

  Kari felt her own breath catch now, no longer Tiri’s. The past and present blended together, her own panic twisting with her sister’s, the terror tching onto her mind, her body, her soul. The pit wanted her. The moment she knew, it lunged.

  I’m not for consumption, you baste—

  A jerk.

  The world lurched.

  A pull.

  Hard. Forceful.

  Sora.

  Light snapped through the dark, the rope around Kari’s waist yanking her up, magic cutting through the cloying bck, wrenching her out of the pit like a hooked fish.

  The darkness screeched, an ear-splitting, rage-filled howl that wasn’t Tiri, wasn’t her mother—wasn’t Hati. It was a blend of everything…and something else.

  Kari’s body shot up, ripped from the abyss, the world returning, blinding, too bright—

  And then she was on the ground, gasping, shaking, gripping the vines like they were the only thing keeping her from slipping back down.

  Tiri’s raw emotions still burned in her chest. Her hands were shaking. Her breath came fast, too fast. Sora was there, crouched beside her, hands gripping her arms, eyes wide, frantic, alive.

  “Hey! Hey, you’re back!” Sora breathed, relief pouring off her, as if she had held her own breath the entire time. “It’s okay! I’ve got you.”

  Kari’s vision swam, the pit still there, still breathing behind her, still watching.

  But her mother’s voice still echoed in her soul.

  “Please, find and protect your little sister. Our family needs you to be strong now. Be strong… Be strong.”

  Tiri was out there.

  Her mother had saved her.

  Hati knew everything and had conspired with Jenny to retrieve them… To retrieve Tiri and her. Kari felt something inside her shift, something primal, something raging.

  Tiri needs me… My little sister needs me. I have to find the truth. And if I can’t be stronger than her…then I’ll never be able to look Mom in the eyes again… I know what I have to do.

  “Kari, what’s wrong? What did you see?”

  Pulling away from Sora, she showed a strained smile while wiping away the sweat that clung to her brow. Kari looked northward, where the Forest Spirit said Tiri had been taken, but she knew her sister wouldn’t be there. If she wanted to really find her sister, then she had some growing to do because Tiri had three years on her.

  “Sora…”

  “Mhm?”

  Forcing herself up, Kari’s fingernails sunk into her palms, drawing blood as she stared at the pit, fire igniting in her belly.

  “I’m going to be taking Jin’s css… I want to come back here during the st weekend before the semester is over.”

  “Okay?” Sora slowly rose to her feet, focusing on Kari’s agitated tail. “That tells me nothing. I mean, sure. I guess. But…are you saying you want to get stronger…or are we looking for Tiri or what?”

  Kari turned and led the way out of the forest, snorting at her self-insertion.

  “Wha—Kari?! Use your words! I can’t read your aura or mind, like I can do to other people! What is it we’re training for?”

  She paused at the edge of the clearing and gnced back at the festering hole she would conquer. “I’m going to eat that hole…then, we’re taking a vacation back to your home.”

  Brushing out her long copper hair, Sora sighed and scratched her neck. “You know that after the month here, we have two weeks in Fae society before we go home, right?”

  Kari showed her a small smirk, life sparking back in her eyes. “I’m sure you can figure something out.”

  “Is this to confront my mom?” Sora questioned, falling in line with her as she continued the path. “I can probably send a letter for her to come here or something like that?”

  Her teeth gleamed, anger and pent-up rage boiling out of her cut and bleeding heart. “Good. On second thought, that’s even better. Get in contact with Diane… I want the Foundation to bring Eric to me. I’m going to kick his ass.”

  Sora’s confusion flickered for half a second before twisting into a devilish grin, her tail beating rather strongly now. “Say less! I like that look, Ms. Alpha Bully. Can I sell tickets?”

  Kari chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Do whatever you want. Just don’t slow me down.”

  The fox winked and held up her fist for her to bump. “Do you know me?”

  Staring at it for a second, Kari met Sora’s knuckles and shook her head. “Whatever.”

  AuthorSME