The World shouts. The Path whispers. -Ancient Saying from the Daran Region

* * *

This was no time for half measures. I was at a grave disadvantage. Flash Forward and Flash Back were both moon techniques and would be blocked by the array. Even at my darkest moments, pretending to be a void artist in Saikan, rarely had I ever fought without them. Now, fighting a Silver, I was without my secret weapons.

You’ve done this before, Yoru, I reminded myself. The first time you fought Shen Yaoxan, it was without your blooded techniques. He was an advancement higher, and he had five allies. You survived that. You’ll survive this, too.

Shen Tori slashed at me with a void-coated dagger. I pulled back, letting the attack slice the air just in front of my nose. Before the attack was even through, the void artist was gone, disappeared into a cloud of black smoke.

I pulled an arrow from my quiver and fitted it to my bowstring. I couldn’t bring myself to unsheathe Eclipse, not inside the array. It was forged from purest moonlight infused into the horn of a dragon and wrapped in the highest-grade lunar steel you’ll ever find. Within the array, none of that would matter. It would be little more than a regular sword. I’d already shattered it once. If I did so now, it would never be whole again. I couldn’t allow that.

My enemy did not strike immediately. Instead, he lurked in the shadows that gathered under the tinted dome. I kept my eyes peeled, summoning forth the aura of the Chain-Bound Fury while I waited. The packed earth sizzled under my feet as the void ate away at it, and though I didn’t expect that the aura would affect my enemy quite so well, I anticipated becoming desperate for every bit of damage I could deal to Shen Tori.

I watched, waiting patiently for the telltale shift in void qi that would herald Shen Tori’s reappearance. A bit of the qi brushed against my left cheek, and I whipped around, drawing back my string to fire on the man from point-blank range. He appeared. I loosed the arrow, but then he was gone.

A dagger sank into my right shoulder blade. The length of the blade burned with void qi, eating a hole in my robes, the edges of which were immediately soaked in black blood. Shen Tori tried to drag the blade up my shoulder, no doubt to reach around and clip my throat, but even he couldn’t penetrate the chains that clung to me. The blade was halted.

“Don’t you hear them?” Shen Tori growled in my ear. “The voices of the void that come with my every attack?”

I did hear them, but they still weren’t as loud, nor as persistent as the voices I’d been contending with for a thousand thousand moons. The eerie silence was quick to return as soon as I pressed my will on them.

“Is that what they are?” I mocked. “My mistake. They have all the bite of a mid-summer’s breeze!” I slammed my elbow back into the void artist’s chest. The attack was followed by a chain that was whipped around with all the speed I could muster from my right arm. Shen Tori grunted as the chain slammed into his head, but he disappeared a moment later, leaving behind more void shadows in his wake.

Without any warning, void qi swirled around me in a vortex. My skin tingled painfully, and I spotted blisters forming on the backs of my hands. I stumbled forward, desperate to get out of the attack.

Qi shifted in front of me, this time. Rather than wait to draw an arrow, I simply infused the length of my bow with the all-consuming essence of the void and thrust it forward. Shen Tori caught the blow, deflecting it to the side.

“Face the facts, Tsuyuki,” he said. “You can’t beat me. You are nothing without your moonlight, and I am far more familiar with the nature of the void than you are. You are a pup who understands nothing of the void and its voices. My bloodline lets me hear their whispers, lets me understand more than any other void artist ever will.”

“If those are the voices you’re listening to, then your understanding is full of holes,” I answered. “No wonder you’ve only advanced to Silver. Without true comprehension, you’ll never go further.”

Even as I said it, I knew the words applied just as much to me as to him. For all my posturing, could I really say that I understood the void? The silence left in my head without the voices was eerie and unnatural, and the relief I’d initially felt was rapidly being replaced by a wish for normalcy. It was almost distracting to have so much quiet inside my own head. My thoughts were so loud without the void whispering in the background.

Shen Tori’s face twisted into a hideous mask of fury. Insulting the cultivation of another artist was always a sure-fire way to aggravate them, and I’d done it almost without thinking. In an instant, he was gone again. He could strike from anywhere.

I just need to find him…just like last time. It’s just…just…I just need to find the disturbance. Disturbance…

The disturbance came and went, and a dagger clipped my side before he disappeared again. The voices from Shen Tori’s attack surged in my thoughts, and I shoved them back down, just in time to deflect the next dagger off my arm chains before it could pierce my skin.

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There! Just like that! Strike him down, then pull your bow, and…wait, no...pull bow, then strike? Everything was getting muddled as my mind darted from thought to thought quicker than I could keep up. The silence gave it speed, like a cart on a clear road, there was nothing to slow its progress, and so it careened forward without any control.

A hand grabbed the back of my collar. Before I could react, I was yanked off my feet and thrown into the array. It was like slamming into a solid wall. I groaned as I tried to stand.

“What’s wrong with him?” I heard Lian ask. “Does he rely on Flash Forward that much?”

Lin’s voice answered. “No, he’s fought without Flash Forward before. This is different. Something’s wrong.”

“Could it be the moon? He is the Avatar, after all, even if he is Iron.” Lin didn’t answer, for even I was vaguely surprised by how distracting the silence was.

Where is the Evil Shi Reili when you need her? I thought, hoping that she would mysteriously appear, like she always did…even when I thought about her only in passing. Yet, no additional voices rang through my head.

But it didn’t make any sense! Why did severing my connection with the moon of all things lessen the voices in my head? Unless the array was really cutting off my connection to everything around me, but the kind of artist that would be required to build such an array would have to be at least a Salt, if not stronger. It wouldn’t be wasted on a backwater nation like the Moon-Soaked Shore.

Shen Tori crouched next to me. “Ready to give up, little Iron?”

“In your dreams!” In one swift motion, I yanked an arrow from my quiver, infused it with the strongest void qi I could muster, and slammed it into his leg. He hissed in pain, stumbling backwards before snapping off the shaft of the arrow and tossing it aside.

“I’ll admit, your void is potent, if lacking in will,” he grunted. I pushed myself back to my feet. That was the most damaging attack I’d made in the fight so far. If I could just ride that success, focus my mind, and finish him, I might be able to break the array and get my head back on straight. Even Shen Tori’s voices would be better than the awful silence.

His voices? The thought darted around my head like sound in an echo chamber before I finally wrangled it and considered it further.

For whatever reason, the voices I’d lived with for millennia were being blocked alongside my moon qi, but no array would be strong enough to eliminate them entirely. If that were true, then I’d never have fallen to them as an Ascendent. The voices were still out there, just as the moon still shone in the sky overhead. If I could reach them…if I could grasp a thread of a connection to the void and use it to draw even the tiniest bit of moon qi into the array, I’d already stand better odds than I did at present.

“Is that all you’ve got?” I asked. “Some Silver you are. No wonder you summoned the Tide Serpent. You need a garden snake to fight your battles for you.”

Shen Tori huffed in irritation. A vortex of qi swirled around me, but I didn’t try to dodge. I gritted my teeth, took a stance I’d seen Lin use a dozen times before, and let the void burn and blister against my skin. The void artist suddenly appeared next to me, sending a kick into my shoulder that made my bones ache and protest. I stumbled to the side, nearly falling, but never moving to dodge away from Shen Tori’s attacks.

“Yoru!” Lin shouted. “Have you lost your mind?! Dodge, you idiot!”

In truth, I did feel like an idiot. Instincts born over millennia of training screamed to get out of the way. Shen Tori’s attacks hurt. A normal Iron cultivator would have certainly had their entire body disintegrated by the strength of his Silver void qi. Even as a Void-touched, my normally perfect skin was bleeding and blistered, and my clothes were stained with my blood. It caked my skin and welled up in the back of my throat, but I could only smile.

The voices were chaotic. They didn’t say much. They didn’t urge violence nor destruction, but they were loud in my head.

Shen Tori grabbed me by the collar once more, this time throwing me onto my stomach and pinning me to the ground. His hand grabbed my ponytail and pulled me up.

“Any last words for your disciple before you tell me what I want?” he growled. But I could only bring myself to laugh.

It was crazed, unhinged even. But it was deep and real.

“What’s so funny?” he asked. I coughed, spitting the blood from my mouth. In my mind, I focused on the voices. They were loud, but somewhere they had to have a purpose. Shen Tori said they had will, even if they were less potent than my own, which meant there must be something beyond them. The qi swirled, and I followed it back with my own.

Void is the domain of distance. By conquering the distance, we can communicate.

The thread solidified, and I pulled with all my willpower. Shen Tori stiffened above me.

“What are you…?” He never finished the thought. I pulled on the void, calling out through him. It danced and wavered. His connection reached deep into the earth before shooting into the heavens, beyond the moon and to the void beyond.

“I’m listening, now!” I shouted out loud. “Reili! I’m listening. You said to trust in myself, but I trust in you. Please…I’m listening, now.”

Before my eyes, I saw Xinya just outside the array. She was being held back by Taihua, who’d knelt and wrapped her in his arms. She stared back at me with worry in her violet eyes, and even Taihua looked nervous. But, behind them both, a ghostly figure stepped from the darkness.

Void shadows gathered into two slithering serpents as she walked silently forward until she was standing just behind the two cultivators. Her hair was pulled back in a smart, practical knot that trailed down to her shoulders, framing an ashen face with gleaming silver eyes. Void-touched horns poked from her hair, and her hands were each tipped with well-maintained claws. She said no words, and no one seemed to notice the appearance of the ghostly beauty, but her eyes met mine.

“I’m listening. I’m sorry it took me so long,” I bowed my head. She smiled.

Whispers began to trickle into my thoughts, and I listened. Some of them craved destruction, as they always did, but behind them, the quieter voices whispered of sanctuary and peace. I focused on those, pushing aside the violence until it was the usual dull roar. The sweeter voices grew louder and louder in my thoughts, and I felt the back of my neck tingling as qi began to surge through me.

“What are you…that’s impossible!?” Shen Tori shouted.

I could see what he was afraid of. Where it fell in ragged, blood-soaked threads around my head, my hair was shining with voidlight.