The Screaming Woods were a sensory hell, but Aryan's grey sphere of [Neutrality] held, a fragile pocket of sanity. Inside, the air was still and cold. Outside, the world was a blizzard of maddening sensation—colors that felt like screams, sounds that smelled of rot.
Aryan was breaking. He knelt in the center, trembling, his knuckles white. Holding the void as a shield was like trying to contain a star with his bare hands. "I can't... much longer..." he gasped, blood trickling from his nose.
"I'm sorry Aryan but you are the only way for us to survive this onslaught" Jaya said, her voice sharp. She wasn't looking at him. She was staring at her scanner, which was frantically mapping the psychic storm. "I found a pattern. The chaos isn't random. It's a current. It's flowing around something. Something solid. If we can get there then we can take cover"
"Another waystation?" Elian asked, his voice frail with hope.
"No. Bigger. The psychic equivalent of a mountain. A structure that doesn't just resist the chaos—it repels it." She showed them the slate. The swirling, frantic energy of the Woods parted around a single, massive, geometrically perfect form. "It's a fortress. And it's our only chance."
The decision was made. They had a destination.
"Aryan, you can do this, just hang on for a while" Rohan commanded from the sled, his voice a low rumble of pain and impatience. "Let's go."
The order was a lifeline. A purpose. Aryan gritted his teeth, and with a monumental effort of will, he began to push the sphere forward. It was like wading through conceptual tar. Every inch was a battle against the screaming static.
They hadn't moved fifty feet when the Woods' defense changed. The formless sensations coalesced, not into a narrative, but into a predator.
It emerged from an egg shaped membrane of shrieking violet light. It was a Thought-Weaver, a creature spun from pure, aggressive cognition. Its body was a shifting lattice of solidified fear and razor-sharp intention, with too many jointed limbs that moved with a mathematician's cruel precision. It didn't have eyes; only a gaping maw that seemed to have a sadistic smile telling them that there was no way to run.
It scuttled towards their bubble, and the moment it touched the grey sphere, Aryan screamed. It wasn't trying to break the shield. It was analyzing it. He could feel its alien mind picking at the edges of his [Neutrality] concept, learning its structure, searching for a flaw.
"Jaya!" Elian yelled.
She was already moving. A mend-blade, glowing with the absorbed suffering and agony of Rohan, flew from her hand. It struck the Weaver's lattice-body. The creature shrieked—a sound of pure cognitive dissonance—as the stored physical trauma disrupted its conceptual form. A section of its body dissolved into chaotic, harmless static.
But two more Weavers dropped from the canopy of screaming light above.
Aryan's shield flickered violently under the assault. "They're learning! They'll break through!"
"Then we break them first!" Rohan roared. With a gut-wrenching heave, the big man stood. His leg, freshly and brutally mended, screamed in protest, but he ignored it. He snatched his maul from the sled. "Drop the shield, Aryan. Now."
"It will kill us!" Elian cried.
"It's killing him!" Rohan snarled, pointing at Aryan, who was shuddering uncontrollably. "We fight, or we die cowering. Your choice."
Jaya met Rohan's gaze, then gave a sharp nod. She gripped her remaining blades. "Do it."
Aryan, his mind at its limit, released his hold.
The grey sphere vanished.
The full, unfiltered scream of the Woods hit them like a physical wall. Elian cried out, clutching his head. But Rohan and Jaya were already moving.
Rohan was a force of nature. He limped, but his swings were unstoppable. His maul didn't just crush the Weavers; it shattered their conceptual forms, exploding them into bursts of meaningless spectrals. Jaya was his scalpel, her blades flying, each one injecting a different stored agony into the creatures, overloading their cognitive processes.
It was a brutal, desperate melee in the heart of a psychic storm. Aryan, freed from the strain of holding the shield, collapsed, but his mind was still clear enough to see the truth. "The big one!" he shouted over the din, pointing. A larger Weaver, a nexus of the attacking thoughts, was hanging back, directing the others. "It's the commander!"
Rohan saw it. He began bulldozing a path towards it, a one-man army. But a Ravoda—one of the worm-like predators from the earlier tunnels—burst from the ground, drawn by the psychic violence. Its circular maw lined with teeth lunged for Rohan's injured leg.
It was a perfect, lethal ambush.
Time seemed to slow. Aryan saw it all: the Ravoda's strike, Rohan's moment of vulnerability, Jaya too far away to help.
He didn't think. He didn't calculate.
He reacted.
His deep-seated fear for Rohan—the man who had become his anchor—ignited something. The Null-Shard didn't awaken with a cold, logical hum. It erupted with a silent, protective roar.
His eyes flooded with void-black. The familiar, terrifying ethereal tendrils of nothingness burst from his shoulders, not as a uncontrolled manifestation, but as focused whips. They lashed out, not at the Ravoda, but at the space between the Ravoda and Rohan's leg.
He imposed a new law on that tiny slice of reality: [Exclusion].
The Ravoda's teeth hit the small, absolute barrier of nothingness and shattered. The creature recoiled with a gurgling shriek of confusion and pain, its primary weapon annihilated.
In the same instant, the lead Thought-Weaver, sensing the surge of immense, hostile power, flinched. Its coordinated attack faltered.
It was all the opening Rohan needed. He ignored the maimed Ravoda, took one more lurching step, and brought his maul down on the central Weaver. The creature exploded in a silent flash of dissolving light.
With its nexus destroyed, the remaining Weavers lost cohesion, dissolving back into the chaotic background noise of the Woods.
The sudden silence was staggering. The fight was over.
The void-tendrils retracted, and Aryan slumped, unconscious. But he had done it again. He had triggered the power not out of despair, but to protect someone. The void had answered, not as a master, but as a tool.
Rohan stood over him, breathing heavily, leaning on his maul. He looked from Aryan's unconscious form to the shattered teeth of the Ravoda, then to Jaya.
"He's learning," Rohan grunted. "The right way."
Jaya nodded, her expression unreadable. "The fortress is close. Let's move. Before the Woods send something worse."
They had a destination. They had a fighter back on his feet. And Aryan had, for the second time, wielded the abyss without losing himself to it. The path to the fortress was now a race, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, they were running towards something.