The second one found us.
She didn't arrive with a caravan or a rumor. She arrived in the middle of a lashing rainstorm, collapsing just inside the main gate. The guards who carried her to Miren's healing house didn't even know what she was, just that she was a child, and she was nearly dead.
Miren sent for me immediately.
When I got there, the girl was unconscious on a cot, but her marks were blazing to anyone who knew how to look. Faint, web-like patterns of corruption pulsed with a dim light under her skin. Her breathing was a shallow rasp. Even unconscious, her shadow was moving, twitching and reaching out toward me, like it sensed kinship.
"She's barely here," Miren said grimly, her hands a blur of antiseptic and bandages. "Severe malnutrition. Exposure. Multiple infected wounds, and they're old. Worse, her curse integration is dangerously unstable. It's hovering around thirty percent. Any lower, and the void would just... reclaim her."
"How did she even make it this far?" I asked, unable to look away from the girl's shadow, which was still desperately stretching toward me.
"Willpower," Miren said, her voice tight. "And desperation. She must have known—or hoped—that sanctuary was real. She just had to survive long enough to find it."
The girl woke three hours later. It wasn't a gentle process. Her eyes snapped open, wild with panic, and her shadow lashed out like a physical whip, nearly striking Kaela, who'd been standing guard by the door.
"Safe," I said, my voice loud and quick. I pushed my own shadow forward, letting it move, letting her see. "You're safe. You're in Verdwood. We're like you."
The panic didn't just vanish. Her eyes—a startling, fever-bright amber—darted around the room, assessing every corner, every shadow, for threats. But when she saw my shadow, and then saw Torren, who'd just slipped into the room behind me, something in her expression fractured.
"Really?" Her voice was a dry croak. "There are... others?"
"Three of us now," I said, moving a little closer. "Four, counting you. You're not alone anymore."
That's what broke her. She started to cry, but it wasn't a soft, relieved sound. It was a harsh, painful, tearing sound, the sobs of someone who had been holding back months of terror and isolation. Lysara moved forward with a cup of water, her voice low and reassuring, while Kaela silently repositioned herself, guarding the door, watching the world for this new, broken arrival.
Her name was Zara. She was eleven. And her story was a twisted, horrifying echo of our own.
She told us everything over the next two days, as Miren's tonics and a steady supply of food brought the color back to her face.
Her village, consumed by void corruption six months ago. She survived, her marks making her immune, making her an outcast. The cult found her shortly after. But unlike Torren, who had been terrified and ran, Zara had been captured.
"They kept me for two months," she said, her voice quiet. Her hands trembled so much she had to set the tea Miren had given her back on the table. "They... they taught me. About void philosophy. How to embrace the curse, not fight it. They said I was special. That I was the future."
"What made you leave?" Lysara asked. She was taking notes, but her usual clinical detachment was softened, her questions careful.
Zara's amber eyes went distant, seeing something we couldn't. "I saw what happens. I saw what they do to the kids who... who 'graduate.' Who fully embrace the void." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They don't become powerful. They become tools. Weapons. The cult uses them to create corruption zones. On purpose. And then... then when they're no longer useful, when they're all burned out... they're discarded. Just... consumed by the very void they were taught to worship."
Kaela's hand went to the hilt of her sword. It was a purely instinctive motion, a warrior's rage at a cold, calculated injustice.
"How did you escape?" I asked.
"They were moving me. Between camps. During the transfer, a pack of void entities attacked—real ones, wild ones. The guards were distracted. I ran." She looked down at her hands. "I've been running for four months. Just... running. Following merchant stories. Rumors of a village that accepted the 'void-touched.' I didn't know if it was real. I just... hoped."
"It's real," Torren said from the corner he'd been sitting in. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the room. "You found it."
Zara looked at him, and for the first time, the raw terror in her eyes eased. It was replaced by a profound, aching recognition. Two children who had seen the end of their world and somehow, impossibly, found this.
Master Dren entered the healing house then, his presence filling the room. He didn't offer comfort. He assessed Zara with the careful, calculating eye of a commander.
"You were inside a cult camp," he said, not as a question. "You saw their operations. Their structure."
"Yes," Zara confirmed, her small body tensing.
"We need that information," Dren said. "Everything. Their organization, their methods, their numbers, their goals. Everything you remember."
"She just arrived," Kaela protested, stepping forward. "She's barely recovered. She needs—"
"The cult knows she escaped," Dren interrupted, his voice as hard as iron. "They are hunting her. If she has strategic intelligence, we need it now, before they adapt their protocols, assuming she's already been captured and debriefed by us."
He was right. It was a brutal, cold calculation, but he was right. We were demanding this traumatized girl relive her captivity for intel, but her survival, and ours, might depend on it.
Zara, however, was stronger than any of us knew. She met Master Dren's gaze, took a steadying breath, and straightened her spine. The tremor in her hands didn't stop, but her voice was firm.
"What do you need to know?"
Zara's intelligence was a hammer blow. It shattered every illusion we had that we were fighting a fringe group of fanatics.
The cult wasn't just a movement. It was a coordinated, continental organization. They had sophisticated recruitment networks, indoctrination programs, and chillingly clear strategic objectives.
"They have camps... at least six regions that I heard of," Zara explained, her voice gaining a strange, steady rhythm as she fell into the rote repetition of her memories. She was sitting in the council chamber, Dren and Elder Stoneheart present. "Each camp specializes. Some on summoning entities. Some on... on creating corruption zones. The one I was in... it was for kids. For us. For 'indoctrination.'"
Lysara's pen was flying across her notebook. "How many? How many convergence-marked children?"
"I saw three others. But they... they talked about more. I heard numbers. At least seven. Maybe more. They're gathering us. Systematically."
"For what purpose?" Elder Stoneheart asked, his voice a low rumble.
"They want to build a bridge," Zara said, her eyes fixed on the table. "A permanent one. Between our world and the void. They believe... they believe that if they get enough of us, and turn us all... we can alter reality. Make void corruption the default. Not... not an intrusion, but the way things are."
The room was utterly silent. It was apocalyptic.
"That's their endgame," Master Dren said, his voice flat with the weight of it. "Not just spreading corruption. Rewriting the rules of existence."
"Can they do that?" Elder Ironwood, who had been listening from the back, finally spoke.
"Unknown," Lysara replied, her analytical mind clearly racing. "But if the resonance effect we've observed is as powerful as it seems... and if they can corrupt multiple marked children at once, forcing the resonance to work in reverse..." She didn't have to finish.
"Then we're not just fighting for Verdwood," I said, the words feeling heavy and strange. "We're fighting for... for everything."
Zara finally looked up, her haunted amber eyes locking on me. "They talked about you. The cult. They know all about Ren Amaki. They call you the 'First Anchor.' The one who chose integration over corruption. They see you as... as their biggest threat. And their ultimate prize."
"Prize?" Kaela's voice was sharp, dangerous.
"If they can capture you," Zara explained, her voice trembling slightly, "and... and turn you... they believe the rest of us will follow. You're the symbol. The leader of the resistance, even if you didn't know it."
So that was it. The cult wasn't just aware of me. They were targeting me. Somewhere out there, they were planning. Developing strategies to counter my abilities. To break me.
"Easthollow," Lysara breathed, her head snapping up. "That's why those entities were so coordinated. It wasn't just a test of our military. It was a test of you. They were gathering data on how you fight."
"And the attack during Torren's extraction," Dren added, his face grim. "They're not just finding kids. They're tracking them. And they're targeting anyone who gets in their way."
The war, which had always felt personal, just became something else entirely.
That night, the five of us gathered on the rooftop. It was becoming a ritual. Me, Kaela, Lysara, Torren. And now, Zara.
She was still weak, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, but she had insisted on coming. "I've been alone for four months," she'd said, her voice quiet but fierce. "I'm done being alone."
We sat, and the formation had changed. Torren and Zara were near the middle, drawn together by a shared, unspoken understanding. Kaela, Lysara, and I formed a protective ring around them.
"We're building it," Lysara said, her voice soft in the twilight, watching the kids. "A network. A resistance. A sanctuary. Whatever it is... it's real."
"The cult has more," Kaela pointed out, her pragmatic voice a necessary anchor. "Continental reach. Camps. Manpower. We have one village and a council that's half-scared of us."
"We have something they don't," I countered. "We have us. We have kids who chose this. Who chose to fight, to stay human. That's a different kind of power."
"Is it?" Zara asked, her voice small. "The cult has kids, too. Ones who... chose their path. What makes us so different?"
It was a good, uncomfortable question.
"Choice," Torren said, surprising everyone. He was looking at Zara. "They were captured. Indoctrinated. We're here because we chose to be. We're fighting for something. Not just... surrendering."
"That's idealistic," Zara whispered, but there was a spark of hope in it.
"Maybe," Torren admitted. "But it's true. I could have given up in those rocks. Let the void have me. But Ren showed me there was another way. Now you have that way, too."
Zara was quiet for a long-time. Then, slowly, she reached out and took his hand. His shadow and hers, both twitching nervously, touched. And I felt it. The click. The resonance, activating between them. Stabilizing.
Kaela saw it too. "The network's growing. Three of us. In one place. That's... unprecedented."
"And dangerous," Lysara added, ever the realist. "Three of us in one spot creates a strong resonance signature. A beacon. The cult will be able to 'feel' us now, far more easily. The void, too."
"Then we get ready," I said. "We train harder. We use the resonance. We make each other stronger, so it's a fortress, not just a beacon."
Below us, Verdwood slept, completely unaware that it was now the global center of a war for reality itself. Three kids, holding hands, their very nature a weapon and a vulnerability.
We were three. Soon, maybe more. Every one we saved was one they couldn't take. Every connection we made was a blow against their endgame.
Three days after Zara's arrival, the cult sent its reply.
It was a mark, burned into the center of the training yard overnight. A complex, spiraling void glyph that radiated a quiet, cold malice. Lysara identified it as a form of magical communication.
Master Dren translated it, his face like stone.
"We know where you are. We know what you are building. Return what was taken, or we will come and take everything."
The threat was clear. They wanted Zara back. And they were willing to burn Verdwood to the ground to get her.
The emergency council meeting was a firestorm. Ironwood and his faction argued for returning Zara, for appeasement. Dren and Stoneheart argued that the conflict was inevitable, and surrendering to a threat would only be the first of many concessions.
The vote was narrow, but it held. We would keep Zara. We would prepare for an assault.
That evening, Zara found me in the training yard, staring at the blackened glyph.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I brought this on you. If I hadn't come..."
"You'd be dead. Or one of them," I said, not looking away from the mark. "And they'd be coming for us anyway. For me. For Torren. All you did was give us a warning. You gave us intel. You made us stronger."
She studied me with those haunted, amber eyes. "The cult... they said you were naive. That you didn't understand what you were fighting for. But I don't think you're naive, Ren. I think you're brave enough to choose meaning over just... surviving."
"Sometimes they're the same thing," I said.
"And sometimes," she replied, "they're not. And you choose meaning anyway."
We stood there as the darkness fell, two kids who shouldn't have been soldiers, preparing for a war we didn't choose. The cult was coming. That was certain. The only question was when.