Kenzo could sense hearts within the fog.
Not the way he usually sensed a lone creature or a small group moving through the forest. This was different. A concentration. An accumulation. A density so unnatural that, for a moment, his mind struggled to accept what his body was telling him. He closed his eyes briefly and tried to make sense of it, but the harder he focused, the clearer the truth became.
There were many of them.
And they were powerful.
Far more powerful than anything he had encountered in this forest so far.
Not even during their days of hunting, when several Young Shoots had gathered close together, or when he had sensed Treacherous Traitors before they had fully awakened, had he ever felt anything like this. Beyond that pale wall of mist, something seemed to breathe. Something vast, silent, and waiting to swallow everything in its path.
Kenzo stepped back without realizing it.
His instincts were screaming a message too simple to misunderstand.
Danger.
Immediate danger.
Something beyond comprehension.
And yet… fear was not the only thought that crossed his mind.
There was also confusion.
I should be the only one who knows something is there.
He alone possessed this strange sensitivity to hearts. He alone could "hear" those invisible presences.
So why had Ophelia recoiled as though she had just seen death itself?
Naty's eyes had widened too, her throat tense and her grip tightening around her weapon as she watched Ophelia's reaction. The realization struck Kenzo with brutal force: if Ophelia was afraid for a reason entirely different from his own, then she had perceived something he could not.
And that terrified him even more than the hearts inside the fog.
Ophelia suddenly snapped out of it, as though tearing herself free from a vision. Her voice cracked through the air.
— « Run. »
No one needed to hear it twice.
The word struck like a whip. Kenzo and Naty turned at once. Lucian had already climbed onto Madame's back by instinct, his face pale, his fingers locked around the hilt of his sword. Kenzo followed, then Naty, then Ophelia. Before they were even properly settled, Lucian gave the order.
Madame leapt forward.
And they fled.
The journey back to the eighty-meter trunk was not long, yet to Kenzo it felt endless. Even as they raced away, he could still sense that mass of hearts behind them, like a tide that had no need to follow.
He did not need to look.
He did not need to see.
The pressure remained, dense and suffocating, and the more he tried to ignore it, the more it pressed itself into his mind. Every second they spent fleeing, he felt as though something was chasing them without needing to run.
Something that did not need speed.
Because sooner or later, everything entered the fog.
When the trunk finally appeared ahead of them, Lucian did not even need to speak. Madame began climbing at once.
She scaled the vertical surface as though she had been born for it, as though gravity were merely a rule she followed when it suited her. Kenzo could not help remembering his first ascent. His bare hands. His muscles tearing under the strain. The certainty that he would die if his fingers slipped.
Now he was being carried.
Protected.
And yet he had never been more afraid.
They reached the top.
The severed surface of the trunk had not changed. At its center, the Minor Tree Watcher's ruined camp still stood, a frozen memory of something that had been dead for far too long. Near the opposite edge, the corpse remained where Kenzo remembered it. The sight of green armor wrapped around bleached bones filled him with a brief unease.
There had once been people here.
People who had climbed these trees, watched over the forest, lived out their final days in silent camps… then died without anyone left to bury them.
Naty approached the skeleton and studied the armor before the group gathered together, still breathless from their escape.
— « So… what did you see or feel? » Kenzo asked, his voice tense. « If you have some ability that lets you see things too, you could've told me, couldn't you? »
The anger in his voice was not entirely genuine. It came more from fear than resentment, more from disappointment than accusation.
He had never truly wanted to force the girls to reveal their abilities. He knew that. He had secrets of his own, and far more dangerous ones at that. But he doubted that what Ophelia had seen or felt was merely another "power."
Kenzo could sense hearts even though his Status listed no such ability. It was not a technique he had chosen. It was simply there.
A consequence.
Which meant Ophelia's reaction had not been some whim.
Kenzo decided to answer first, if only to give them something concrete.
— « I sensed a lot of Void Creatures… and they felt far stronger than anything we've fought so far. I think they were Unstable rank. »
The word dropped between them like a stone.
Naty went slightly pale, then answered in a voice far too calm to be sincere.
— « Unstable? We've only fought Unconscious Void Creatures until now. They were Infected, even Condemned, but still Unconscious rank. We can't fight something at the Unstable rank. Even an Unstable Stain could kill any one of us without much difficulty. »
Lucian swallowed, trembling as he listened.
— « And you're saying there were a lot of them? »
Kenzo nodded slowly.
He had no desire to exaggerate. He did not need to. Simply admitting it was enough to make the situation unbearable.
— « I'm saying that because when I sense Void Creatures of the same rank, even if their stage is different, the intensity feels similar… like their heart is the size of a large stone. The lower the stage, the more cracks and flaws the stone seems to have. But what I felt in the fog… those hearts felt more like boulders. At least, that's the closest comparison I have. »
He had no better way to explain it.
He could have said they crushed him. That they burned. That they made it hard to breathe.
But he did not want his voice to shake. He did not want to give Lucian another reason to panic.
Deep down, however, Kenzo knew that his explanation was not the true heart of the problem.
The true problem was Ophelia.
She had not spoken a single word since they fled.
Night slowly settled over the forest. The sky had taken on that dirty gray color that always announced the rise of the fog somewhere below, even if they were safe from it atop the trunk. Wind swept across the severed surface and sent a shiver through Kenzo that had little to do with the cold.
The four teenagers remained tense. At times, they barely moved, as though the slightest motion might awaken something.
Ophelia stood frozen, her eyes fixed in a direction she was not truly seeing. She seemed to be listening to a thought or reliving an image.
Kenzo did not like it.
Neither did Naty.
Lucian barely dared to speak.
Then, without warning, Ophelia broke the silence.
— « I have a passive ability that's similar to yours, Kenzo… »
Everyone went still.
Naty offered her a small, reassuring smile, encouraging her to continue without pressuring her. Kenzo said nothing. He waited, his heart beating faster than he wanted it to.
— « I can see people's flames… »
The silence became absolute.
For a moment, even the wind seemed to fade.
Ophelia continued, calmer now, as though speaking forced her to give shape to something she would rather have kept buried.
— « Unlike yours, it has nothing to do with the strength of a Void Creature or an Awakened. I think… at least, from what I've seen… that it reflects a person's will. »
Lucian seemed to be holding his breath. Naty nodded slowly, listening closely.
— « The flames have different colors and burn with different intensity. I still don't know what the colors mean, but I quickly understood that the larger the flame, the stronger the will behind it. »
Kenzo was beginning to understand her reaction near the fog.
But something was wrong.
And that contradiction chilled him to the bone.
If Ophelia could see flames, then she should have seen those belonging to the Unstable creatures he had sensed. Or at least some trace of them. Some presence. Something.
Yet she had fled as though they were not merely powerful creatures.
As though what she had seen went far beyond any ordinary threat.
Ophelia tightened her grip around her daggers, not because she intended to fight, but as though she needed something solid to hold on to, something to keep her anchored in the present.
— « But when we reached the fog… I didn't see any flames belonging to the Unstable creatures you sensed, Kenzo. »
Kenzo felt his stomach drop.
Naty went completely still.
Lucian recoiled slightly, as though the words themselves had struck him.
Ophelia drew in a breath, then spoke the sentence that explained everything…
and somehow made it all worse.
— « I saw something else. To me… the fog looked like a sea of red fire moving toward us. »
For one brief moment, the top of the trunk felt far too small to contain what they had just heard.
Kenzo did not answer.
He did not even know what he could say.
He had sensed hearts like boulders.
She had seen an ocean of red flame.
Two different perceptions.
Two warnings.
And between them, only one certainty remained:
if they entered that fog without understanding it, they would never return.