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Only the darkness could transgress flawlessly beneath the veil of T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n.
Midnight flowed across the Snowtrail, her movements seamless and soundless, a ripple of nothingness stretching and contracting along the myriad of mountains that comprised the frozen expanse. The rough terrain, fractured by ice and carved by millennia of howling winds, posed no challenge to her essence. She surged forward, covering distances that would break mortal endurance: entire mountain ranges passed beneath her in minutes, hundreds of kilometres vanished in less than an hour. She applied the influence of T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n to its fullest, pushing her boundaries farther and faster than ever before.
Focused on her sharpened perception and relentless pace, Midnight barely acknowledged the sparse travellers or wandering beasts she passed. Yet, as she approached a flock of slender avians nesting in a fissure carved into the sheer mountainside, a memory surged unbidden to her awareness. The hunt for the fiator. Her failure was vivid, disruptive, a flaw in her flow that she could not ignore. Midnight halted the stream of her movement. Her pride pulled her back.
The avians, larger than those she had encountered before, clung to the narrow cracks in the cliff face, some two hundred meters below the Snowtrail. Their perch was a sanctuary carved into the steep rock, impossible to reach for any common beast but a daringly exceptional climber.
Instinct urged her to maintain compact, a single, focused form. But reason dictated otherwise. Midnight allowed her essence to uncoil, a slow and deliberate unravelling. She had not forgotten how the fiator had sensed her — how she had failed to remain unnoticed. She understood she needed to refine her approach; stealth was not merely concealment but integration. She needed to become imperceptible. Midnight avoided the directness that had betrayed her presence to the fiator before. Instead of reaching out with a tendril of darkness, she let her essence seep into the surrounding darkness. Her essence wove itself into T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n’s shroud, diffusing like mist settling into the veil. She felt that the darkness welcomed her. With infinite care, she closed her presence around a lone male perched slightly apart from the others. He seemed unaware of her approach, his movements calm, his essence steady. Midnight crept closer, until she encircled him from all sides. It was an act of precision that gave her a sense of satisfaction: not in the outcome, but in the perfect execution of her approach.
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The male remained still. Midnight’s essence reached for his, yet there was no contact between them. As with the fiator, she simply passed through him, her presence slipping into and through his essence without touching. This phenomenon continued to startle her. He was there, undeniably present, and so was she — yet they existed on separate planes, divided by the immutable boundaries of dimension. He was a material being, tethered to the world of the living, a creature of flesh, warmth, and breath. She, by contrast, was nothing. They shared the same space, yet their coexistence was one of proximity but never touch. Even under Teharun’s veil, with her senses sharpened to their utmost, Midnight failed to bridge the chasm between herself and the Material Dimension. She could not reproduce what she had experienced with the beast wizard’s essence.
The avian remained oblivious to her, his essence unperturbed, while hers churned with frustration. The sharpness of her failure struck her deeply; the dissonance between what she could perceive and what she could affect; the stark contrast between how she had bested a predator as mighty as the shadebeast in a battle for life and death, and now found herself repeatedly exhausted by the most meagre of prey. Midnight withdrew, her essence pulling back from the avian as she coiled herself into a more compact form. Her movement became measured and purposeful, as she resumed her journey along the Snowtrail. Even amidst the immense clarity T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n afforded her, this overwhelming sensory precision, she felt no closer to the answers she sought.
She did, however, quickly get closer to the Albweiss Mountain Guild. It took her another twenty minutes after T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n receded. As the first traces of daylight began to stir far off in the east, the guild came into reach.-
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