CHAPTER 205
### Northeast
They moved fast.
Not the urgency pace of the faction's approach or the three-day sprint to the generating sections before the timeline closed. A different kind of fast. The pace of people who understood something was developing and wanted to be present when it arrived at its next form.
The domain read the hollow continuously as they moved.
The vertical deepening was still happening.
Slowly.
Not dramatically.
The way the hollow had deepened during Rong Yan's visit — four percent over three hours. This was similar in character. A sustained deepening that did not require external input.
The hollow was doing this independently.
On the second day Bing Xi said: "The Frostbite Edge is reading something at range."
"The hollow," he said.
"Yes," she said. "The frequency character. It is different from the standard between quality propagation."
"The vertical direction," he said.
"Yes," she said. "And something else. Something below the standard frequency that the Frostbite reading cannot fully identify."
"The thread," he said. "When I reestablished contact — there was something below the continuous frequency. Responding to the contact."
"What was it," she said.
"I do not know," he said. "The thread reached twenty-one breaths. What I felt at the outer edge of twenty-one was — not the between quality specifically. Something the between quality was pointing toward."
"Like the named color was pointing toward the between quality's full incorporation," she said.
He looked at her.
"Yes," he said.
She was quiet.
"The grey blade disappeared when the between quality fully incorporated," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The between quality is pointing toward something the way the color was pointing toward full incorporation," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"What happens when the between quality fully incorporates into the next thing," she said.
He looked at the grey blade.
He thought about the color between black and silver.
Gone because it was everything.
He thought about the between quality.
What happened when the between quality became everything.
"I do not know," he said.
"The archive does not document it," she said.
"No," he said.
"Because it has not happened before," she said.
"No," he said.
"We are going to find out," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She sheathed the Frostbite Edge.
She walked northeast.
He walked beside her.
Lin Mei was at his left.
The grey blade at his hip.
Eighteen breaths.
Nineteen.
Twenty.
He counted and kept going and did not stop at any number and the hollow was ahead and something was there that had no name yet.
He committed.
He walked.
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