Zaspa's unit moved with uniform efficiency.

Death to the drone. Death to anyone who dared intrude upon her families home.

For nearly two days, they’d tracked this drone, an eerie invader too dead yet moving. It had lurked around their village for almost a week, watching for weaknesses no doubt.

Now, it was heading straight toward the Alchemist’s base—a place that brought a sick twist to Zaspa’s gut.

They couldn't allow it to escape, to carry back whatever information it had collected. Had it seen Vestia's condition? Or her son's disappearance?

The huntress ground her teeth. Both excellent targets if someone aimed to harm their village.

When they’d first set out, Vestiya’s boy had still been missing.

She pushed the thought down hard. This was her husband's problem to solve.

Groll might not be the best tracker, but he would dive the Hungry Ocean if it was necessary to find the boy.

Ahead, the drone jerked to the left, trying to break their line of sight.

It was fast, with an unsettling mechanical way of moving, its stiff limbs propelling it in sudden, unprediactable bursts.

It's arms left wagging behind it while it ran. She caught a glimpse of the strange, rusted helmet it wore.

Strips of fabric coming from the thing swayed behind it like tendrils, ready to grab onto everything it deemed useful.

Behind her, Gaer moved with the strange grace of his sloth-like Heartshape, his claws digging into the earth for grip, just for his arms to contract and shoot him forwards until he landed to repeat the process.

Though his form seemed at odds with a hunter’s need for speed and agility, Gaer made it work.

He was young and new to a heart, but he had learned to control it very fast. Zaspa would be proud if he wasn't her husband's student instead of hers.

Beside Gaer, Dalvil darted through the trees, his Iron-Hedgehog Heartshape giving him powerful, fluid leaps, his metallic quills glinting faintly in the lights of the wildfires.

With each bound, his heavy tail arched as he tried to aim his spear like quills at their target, just for it to take a quick roll and run in another direction.

The thrill of the chase quickened Zaspa’s pulse.

She tightened her grip on her weapon—a spear with a broad, curved blade, equally suited for slashing and thrusting.

Groll had given it to her as a wedding gift, and the weight of the thick, wrapped shaft in her hand was a constant, reassuring presence, like grasping her husband’s hand.

Ahead, the drone stumbled in an attempt to avoid another of Dalvil's attacks, and for a moment, she caught a glimpse of how its metal-helmeted head lolled on its neck.

A low, guttural noise came from Gaer. Clear shot.

Zaspa responded with a quick, sharp click of her tongue. Do it!

Gaer, swung his arms back, using them like a powerful sling. In a swift, fluid motion, he shot through the air, his claws striking at the creature, ready to slice it in two.

But the drone reacted in time. It leaped high, feet snapping together mid-air to form a sharp triangle, its limbs pulling in like some grotesque marionette.

Gaer sailed under it, his claws slicing empty air as the drone twisted above him, surely celebrating another successful doge.

But now it had nowhere to go.

Zaspa raised her hand, electricity crackling along her fingertips as she drew power from her Heartshape, feeling the sharp heat of lightning coiling beneath her skin.

To her it was a gentle tickle, but to others it meant death.

With a sudden flick of her wrist, she unleashed a blinding bolt that split the darkness, ripping through the air with a violent hiss.

The drone tried to escape, wrapping its tattered fabric tendrils around a nearby tree, pulling itself desperately to the side.

But lightning was faster than flesh or fabric, and thus the ball of light connected, burning a fist-sized hole into both.

The tendrils flared panicly, trying to grab onto something that could save them, while the organic part of its body had already accepted it's end.

The hunt was over.

They came to a sudden stop near the dying drone, their clothes flickering as they lost all momentum.

"Area," she commanded, and without as much as a nod, Dalvil jumped and vanished into the canopy.

Zaspa kept her gaze fixed on the drone, waiting, watching the faint arcs of leftover electricity dancing through its tendrils as they fizzled out.

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She could see the last traces of energy flicker and die—a confirmation that it was well and truly dead.

But the creature puzzled her.

She crouched beside it, fingers reaching for the thick, oversized metal helmet that seemed welded to its skull.

With a grunt, she tore it off, revealing a head that was almost human—pale, lifeless, with strands of brittle blond hair still clinging to the scalp.

The crown of the skull was missing, replaced by a thick metal plate pressing directly onto the exposed brain, like some grotesque hat.

Gaer leaned closer, peering at the face with a mixture of curiosity and horror.

“One of ours?” he asked, voice low.

Zaspa shook her head, the corners of her mouth slightly trembling, as she gave her best not to grimace in disgust.

"No." She tilted the head from side to side, studying it.

The skin was white, nearly bloodless, with a strange waxiness, as though it had been preserved rather than truly living.

This was no Shapeless. It was missing any sign of beastly traits that came with a Heartshape, but it's skin was to colorful to be one with no heart, let alone the hair.

As she stood up to bring distance between her and this gruesome sight. She was used to seeing burnt and molten flesh, perks of her Heartshape after all, but she rarely saw a living being so thoroughly hollowed out.

Just another reason to hate the Alchemist, as if there weren't enough already. If she ever found one of her loved ones looking like this, she didn't know what she would do.

Not that she would ever let that happen to begin with.

"Aparently the Alchemist is fighting other layers now," she said, her voice betraying none of her inner turmoil.

Gaer nodded. "Looks a bit like a fourth-dweller if you ask me."

"I say let them butcher each other," she said, completely apathetic. Not like she had any reason to like fifth-dwellers either.

Zaspa’s eyes were still on the drone’s lifeless face when something fell out of the sky on top of her and landed behind her with a soft tud.

She turned, expecting Davil to have returned from his position too early, which she would scold him for.

Instead of standing, she found the man laying sprawed on the ground. He was dead.

Burnt lines crisscrossed his skin like thin, blackened veins that traced his entire body.

His eyes were replaced with a similar black vein.

Zaspa grabbed her spear, filling it with energy.

“Run!” Her voice was a whip-crack through the silence, her spear raised as she scanned the treetops. “Run!”

Without a second’s hesitation, Gaer launched himself, his powerful arms snapping forward in his typical slingshto fashion.

No questions or buts. Just a command that resulted in action.

Zaspa's respect for the man grew. Groll had trained him really well. He had the traits of someone who survived.

Though she would've said the same about Dalvil until a second ago.

Now alone, she stared up the sky into the cantropy, which was roughly fifteen meters over her head.

It was nowhere near lighttime, thus she relied on the wildlights to grant her vision as well as her Heartshape.

Her sight was better than most, and she was able to see the thin streams of electricity most living beings had.

Twice she thought she saw something, but both times it was just her mind playing tricks on her.

“Show yourself!” she shouted, growing impatiently into the treetops, her words cutting through the nightlight her lightning would soon enought.

If whatever was there wouldn't come down, she would come up. Of course that was risky, but Zaspa had confidence in her own strength.

With no one around that she was afraid to hurt, she was hard to overcome.

Finally, after another agonizing second motion swept up in the leaves of the treetop.

A faint shimmer appeared high in the canopy, a series of nearly invisible threads stretching between the branches.

Zaspa narrowed her eyes, focusing on the thin lines of light as they coalesced into a pattern, each one blinking in and out of existence as if the darkness itself were afraid to let them linger.

Descending along these strings with an unhurried, almost causal pace, was a man.

He wore dark, tailored clothing that fit snugly over his frame, with a long, straight coat and a shirt buttoned to his collar.

The cloth looked sturdy but worn, showing scuffs and smudges from long use, and the edges of his sleeves were frayed, as though he’d worn them without care for many days.

Golden symbols marked his attire where there were signs of wear—simple, circular shapes with two lines extending out, looking like a child's attempt at drawing an eye.

His face was framed by locks of silver-streaked hair, bound with small golden rings, and the slightest hint of a beart on his jaw, as if he hadn’t tended to himself in days.

His scarred hands were clasped calmly before him as he walked down, supported by the strands of light that appeared just long enough to catch his step before vanishing.

There was nothing grand or hurried about his descent.

Each step was precise, the thin lines of light emerging and dissolving as he used them one after another like an unsteady staircase descending from the high branches.

It took Zaspa only the splitter of a second to realise what he was. A fourth-dweller, someone form a layer above theirs.

He opened his mouth lazily, but before he could get a word out, Zaspa launched herself at him, her body shooting at him like an arrow coated by lighting, the ground smoldering she had cut upward.

A net of thin golden threads appeared between them like an uninished barrier.

It wasn’t thought that told her to pull back, but sheer instinct.

Her muscles tensed as she rolled midair, so instead of her face, her feet met the golden lines first, bouncing her off them to land on the trunk of a nearby tree.

Pain shot through her soles, and she could feel the imprint of the thin line she had touched burning into her skin.

Now she knew what killed Dalvil.

Her naked feet clung to the bark, electricity glueing her onto the vertical surface, crouched and ready to strike again. She ignored the pain that the pressure on her soles brought.

Her eyes narrowed. Should she go Fullshape?

No, that was too dangerous. Without her husband the risk of loosing herself or inquring Gaer was to high.

She took a long breath.

Her opponent hovered effortlessly a few meters away, suspended in midair as if the strings of light beneath him were solid ground.

His voice came calm and almost soothing. “A shame, really, that you wild ones always reach for violence first.”

Zaspa considered ignoring him, every instinct screaming to close the distance and strike.

But every second that crept by, Gaer had more time to get farther away from her. She clenched her jaw and spoke.

"You killed one of us." She said. That seemed to amuse the man. His body shook in a soft giggle.

"He also chose violence first."

Lair, she thought, knowing full well if Dalvil had spotted the man, he would've informed her with an animal like sign so they could strike as a group.

She had taugth him that after all. Something inside her wanted to slump upon losing another student.

The primal part of her, the one that had fused with her heart, wanted nothing more than to tear this person's throat out with her teeth, but she kept herself steady. Kept herself sane.

The weapon in her hand helped. It was a reminder of who she had to return to. Who she would return to.

"What do you want here?" she demanded, her voice laced with enough spite to wound on its own.

The man brought one of his hands out from behind his back and pointed a scarred finger downwards.

"A Lightsend from these woods has slain and defiled one of ours," he declared, his tone shaking as if he were about to cry.

"He was a devoted servant of the light. I have come to reclaim him, to put lay him to rest on our holy ground, as is his due."

He sighed, shaking his head.

"Yet lately, the light brings us more adversaries than followers. Is it testing our faith?" His voice dropped, muttering as if only to himself.

Zaspa barely listened to him, already knowing everything she had to.

Almost a decade ago, fourth-dwellers just as this had invaded the fifth layer and laid siege to the Shapeless in an attempt to snuff them out.

They had fought them off then just as she would fight him off now.

Lightsend, she remembered, was what she would refer to as a foreigner.

She grinded her teeth. Her earlier theory had been right.

The Alchemist had provoked the fourth-dwellers, and now they were all caught in the crossfire.

That was funny enough to get a dry laugh out of her, earning her a questioning look from the man.

"One would think that after the last time you fourth-dwellers would have learned to keep your noses out of our realm."

With a fervent, nearly wild glint in his eye that betrayed his otherwise calm demeanor, the man reached into the air, fingers curling around quickly growing threads of light.

With a swift but casual motion, he yanked the threads toward her.

Zaspa answered in kind. She parted her mouth, tearing it's edges of it as she let more and more of her Heartshape seep into her very being.

Her teeth sharpened to jagged points, and her long light-blue hair grew even longer, extending way behind her knees, like a furry cape.

She took a deep breath, gathering lighting inside her that grew brighter and hotter with every heartbeat, the precursor of a coming storm.

Just as the man's fingers swung the golden threads, Zaspa exhaled pure, cracking energy.

For a short moment, their powers surged forward, each attack racing to kill the other first and leave nothing but destruction in its wake.

They clashed in total silence, the sound needing a moment to catch up. As it did, it thundered loud and wide enough, even for Moran to hear.