Chapter 7: Hunting

The forest whispered with unseen things. The kind that did not belong in the world men knew. The kind that did not speak in words but in absences—missing sounds, broken silences, the weight of something just beyond perception.

Vorynxis moved forward, his steps quiet, his breath slow. The night stretched ahead, vast and endless, yet the trees loomed like watching figures, twisted shapes against the dark. There was something in the air. Not merely cold, not merely stillness. A presence.

Something was waiting.

The night-stalker padded beside him, its breathing shallow but steady. It no longer hesitated, no longer questioned. The beast was wounded, but its eyes held recognition. Not of a master, but of something that should not exist.

Vorynxis did not care for its thoughts.

Only its usefulness.

His fingers twitched, an unconscious movement, as though expecting the weight of something long lost. Flames should have burned at his fingertips, but they did not. He had nothing but embers now, coiling within, buried beneath the wreckage of what he had been.

He needed more.

And so, he hunted.

The air shifted. Not with wind, not with motion, but with a quietness that rang in the bones. The scent of burning. Not fire. Not heat. Something else entirely.

Vorynxis slowed.

The feeling was subtle at first, like a misplaced breath, a heartbeat out of sync. But then—the world twisted.

He stepped forward—

And suddenly, the earth was ash.

Not burned. Not scorched. Erased.

It stretched in all directions, an endless plain of nothing, where the sky bled colors that did not belong, where sound itself seemed stolen away. A desert, but not of sand.

His eyes narrowed.

This was not real.

And yet—

The moment he realized it, the moment the thought took shape—

The illusion shattered.

He was back in the forest. The trees stood as they had before, the earth solid beneath him. Yet the air still carried the scent of something that should not be.

Something had noticed him.

A pair of ember-like eyes opened in the darkness, flickering, smoldering, watching. Not with curiosity. With judgment.

It was not testing him.

It was waiting to see if he would be worthy.

Vorynxis smiled.

The hunt had begun.

But fire was not enough.

Power alone was meaningless without control.

The weak believed fire and ice were opposites. They were fools. Opposites repelled one another, but fire and ice did not reject each other. They devoured.

One consumed through destruction.

The other consumed through absence.

Ice was not simply cold. It did not merely freeze.

It took.

It stole motion.

It stole existence.

And it was just as hungry as fire.

Vorynxis turned his gaze northward.

Something was waiting there.

Something that was not part of this world, something that had no right to exist.

And yet—it did.

He would take it for himself.

Even knowing this, even knowing he was the hunter, the feeling in his chest was wrong.

Not hesitation. Not weakness.

Something deeper.

A taste in the air, a quiet shift in reality itself.

Not danger.

Not pain.

But something else.

Something that whispered in the back of the mind, something that made the world feel untrustworthy.

Vorynxis had felt fear before.

But this—

This was not fear.

This was something without a name.

And that meant it was worth pursuing.

He did not rush.

He moved with purpose, with certainty.

There was no doubt in his steps, no hesitation in his path.

Because he knew.

What lay at the end of this hunt was not just power.

It was something more.

Something that would take him beyond the reach of gods, beyond the limitations of existence itself.

And if he had to face the unknown to claim it—

Then so be it.