I shove Noli away. “Run. Run!”

The ground thumps as the shopkeep rounds the corner. “I swear, if it’s you kids again…” They stop, sucking in a breath. “What in Relona’s Realm…?”

But I’m barely paying attention to them, because I can feel the predator pulling itself from Between. I can feel reality tearing as easily as paper, the black spot on the ceiling becoming a crack, then a crevice, then a yawning, black maw that swallows all the room’s light. The shopkeep lets out a strangled cry, stumbling backward, but I’m rooted in place as the predator lets loose a triumphant scream, all its malice and hunger crashing through me. The feelings are so strong I’m swept up in its tide, helpless to fight back as the waves of emotions smash me against the rocks, leaving me dazed.

“Kanin!” Noli grabs my glass. Her touch brings me back, and I struggle to shake off the petrifying horror of this moment. “We have to get out of here!”

No, no, she doesn’t understand. I can’t run from it. It’s me; I’m the crack in reality. That thing is coming through me.

But she could run. She can still get away. “Run,” I repeat, my glass feeling stuffy and numb. I stumble away from Noli. The darkness on the ceiling drops into the room, rearing up in a shifting pillar of shadows, or ink, or nothingness. It’s silent, but its presence is so loud, its instincts and emotions and desires—I can hardly hear my own thoughts over the roar of the predator’s hunger.

Noli. I have to warn her.

“In me, the predator,” I start to sign, but it’s like I called out its name, because its attention snaps around me like a vice. I freeze, unable to move or think around the icy fear that grips me. Its recognition and distaste pound against my mind as I desperately try to hold on. God, it’s so strong.

And I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared.

It’s with the smallest effort that it flicks me aside, like a child tossing away a wrapper. Agony lances through my soul at the dismissal, and I’m sent spiraling into the dark.

The shop is gone. My glass is gone. Sight and sound and touch, vacant. The predator, though—the predator I can still feel, painfully near, but now its overwhelming presence is distant enough that I can take a moment to try to catch my metaphorical breath.

It’s thrown me Between.

My mind reels, finally able to start processing everything.

Between. The predator. My ink.

The first time this happened back in Trenevalt’s cabin, he hadn’t actually summoned the predator, had he? It was me. That Void stat—somehow, that was what was causing all this. The fact that Trenevalt had been performing a spell when the predator appeared had been a coincidence—it was my fault. It was me. He died because of me.

And now it’s happening all over again.

Echo, I call. I need help.

But I’m met only with silence. Alone.

I try not to panic. How had I gotten back before? I’d followed the sensations. I’d found my tether to reality. I try to find it again now, reaching for something—anything—that is different from the empty, endless nothing that surrounds me.

And instead of finding one path back, I find two.

The first one is familiar. When I grab hold, it brings to mind stability, and fractals, and glass. It’s the spell that’s tying me back to my body. It’s quiet. Comforting. But the other…

This thread is twisted and dark, and without even reaching for it, echoes of the predator’s mind resonate down the string and into me. The swirling combination of elation and malice make me feel ill. I never want to know what sort of terrible things brings happiness to a creature like this, but it makes me all the more anxious to get back. I can’t let it hurt Noli. And the shopkeep and everyone else in town. This isn’t like Trenevalt’s cabin, remote and removed from the world. This has the potential to be much, much worse.

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It all started the first time I ended up Between, didn’t it? When I met Noli, the two of us caught in Trenevalt’s spell. That was when the predator had first appeared—and when it stabbed me, was that when this extra tether was formed? Once I fell back into reality, it was easy to brush off the encounter as a narrow escape. But I never escaped it. I’ve been pulling it along like a kite on a string this whole time.

Which means it’s up to me to fix this. That’s what heroes do, right?

Shying away from the predator’s thread, I find the tether that anchors me to my glass body, and I pull myself along its path. It’s like pressing through mud; at first, reality is slow to reach me, sights and sounds and sensations still frustratingly distant. But the more I clamber my way back into the world, the easier it gets.

Sound comes to me first: panicked screams and crashing glass. No, I can’t be too late. I have to do something! Slowly, colors and shapes also begin to form, and I can see the map shop, far away, as if I’m looking down on it from above.

And as reality starts to sharpen into focus, so does the predator’s mind.

It’s overpowering. Its sadistic glee bursts across me as if there’s no barrier between our minds at all. I have to struggle to hold onto my own thoughts, remind myself of my own fear and determination, and how I have to hurry, I have to get back—

I crash back down into my glass body once more, reality screaming into focus around me. I’m in the shop, but everything is chaos. Black ichor drips from the walls. The shopkeep is nowhere to be seen. The windows are blown out, glass and paper scattered everywhere, and outside there’s cries of alarm. Noli! Where’s Noli—

I have half a second to take all this in before the predator rounds on me.

Like a column of rippling ink, the predator curls down to look at me. Its thoughts are louder, almost a physical pressure crushing me into the ground. Puzzlement, curiosity, contempt. It wasn’t expecting me to come back. It’s irritated.

I hold onto that small nugget of encouragement—the knowledge that even like this I can provoke it—and use that to fuel my courage. Time to channel Jack Stone, cryptid hunter, and vanquish this monster once and for all. I push myself to my feet and activate the Bond Trace spell.

And the magical tether jumps into grim clarity.

Before I’d only been able to see the tether that tied my soul to my glass body. That second string that seemed to have vanished into thin air—that I’d thought was the broken bond to my human body—is now clear as day, drawing a line between myself and the predator. Connecting us. Connecting our minds and magic.

It must sense what I’m planning next, because it flares with anger.

I activate the Sever Bond spell.

And Echo says, [Insufficient mana.]

Oh, fuck.

The void collapses onto me. Everything goes black, and I lose all sense of direction as if I’m being flipped end-over-end. But this isn’t the Between. I can still feel my body. I’m still here.

Though being swallowed up by the predator is hardly an improvement.

I try not to panic. It can’t kill me. I saw the bond with my own eyes—it’s tied to me, and I’m tied to the glass. If it wants to stay in the real world, it can’t destroy me or my vessel. It needs us.

This reassurance is short-lived as something tightens around my glass, scratching over its surface. Like claws trying to find purchase and pry me open.

And to my horror, I feel my glass begin to creak.

[1 point of Crushing damage sustained.]

I flail, desperately trying to dislodge its fangs. In my mind, I’m screaming. I can feel its essence prying open the crack in my glass. Forcing black drops of ichor between the gap. And at the first drip—

The predator explodes into my mind. Or I’ve fallen into its. It’s a maelstrom of fury, of triumph, of hunger. It’s ravenous. Starving. It aches with how hungry it is. And each of these feelings smash into me, sweeping away all my other thoughts. Smothering my fear. The predator rips at my soul, stripping away bits of my sense of self with each battering swell—

No! No. I clutch at my terror. I grasp my defiance. I pull tighter in on myself, gathering every thought and feeling and memory I can scrape together, trying to insulate myself from the void’s broiling sea.

It’s like the first time I went Between all over again. A fishbowl in an ocean. But this time, the ocean is trying to drag me down.

And I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

The predator presses around me, sheering away my defenses. Contempt and greed pound against me like a storm. It’s so loud. So powerful. I buckle beneath its pressure.

My walls collapse, and the void rushes in. It extinguishes my defiance. It smothers my fear. It squeezes even tighter, until I can’t think, I can’t feel, I’m just—

—I’m drowning—

No, I have to do something, it can’t end like this, I have to fight back—

But I can’t breathe.

I’m suffocating.

It’s—

I’m—

please

I—

We open our eyes, turning our attention back to the outside world. A tiny, lifeless glass vial sits on the ground before us. Our anchor to reality. We pluck it from the floor to hide within our shadows, and our maw splits into a grin.