THE VOID BEAST

CHAPTER 19: THE GUIDE

I stood frozen, my breath caught in my throat.

The rabbit's cloudy eyes were fixed on the darkness behind me. She wasn't afraid anymore. She was staring. At something I couldn't see.

I slowly turned around, my torchlight cutting through the shadows.

Nothing.

Just trees. Just darkness. Just the oppressive silence.

I moved the torch left, then right. The light danced across the gnarled trunks and twisted branches, but nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Nothing watched.

Or so I tried to tell myself.

For the first time since leaving the academy, I wondered whether I had made a mistake. Not a small mistake. Not the one Jace would laugh at and call reckless. The one that got people killed.

Four dead. One survivor. Those numbers suddenly felt very different when I was standing alone in a forest where I couldn't even see ten feet ahead of me.

I swallowed hard.

"What is it?" I whispered.

The rabbit didn't answer.

She hopped down from my arms, landing softly on the forest floor. I reached for her, but she was already moving—several steps forward, into the darkness ahead.

"Hey—" I started.

She stopped.

I followed her gaze, squinting into the shadows. Still nothing. But then I noticed something on the ground.

Tracks.

They were enormous—each one the size of my torso, pressed deep into the soft earth. Whatever had made them was colossal. Heavy.

But they were facing the wrong direction.

The tracks weren't leading away from me.

They were pointing toward me.

The creature hadn't been following me.

It had been waiting.

My blood turned cold. I scanned the darkness, my pulse thundering in my ears, my torchlight trembling. Whatever had made those tracks could be anywhere. Could be right behind me. Could be—

A sound.

A low, rumbling breath. Not a growl this time—just breathing. Heavy, deliberate, close.

Something moved between the trees.

I stopped breathing.

At first, I thought it was the wind. Then one of the trees bent. Something massive had pushed against it.

Then I saw fur—dark, shaggy, moving through the shadows like a wave of darkness. Then a massive paw, each claw longer than my hand, digging into the earth. Then a head—broad, its muzzle wide, its teeth protruding even when its mouth was closed.

Then its eyes.

They glowed faintly, like embers in a dying fire.

The creature emerged from the shadows like a mountain moving through the trees. It was enormous—towering above me, its body covered in dark, shaggy fur that hung in matted clumps, tangled with mud and leaves. It moved with a heavy, deliberate gait, each step shaking the ground beneath my feet.

I should have run. Every instinct screamed at me to flee.

But my legs wouldn't move. I was frozen, my breath caught in my throat, my pulse roaring in my ears.

Can I run? I thought. Can I climb a tree? Could my knife hurt it? Could the rabbit escape?

I looked at my knife. Pathetic against something this size.

I looked at the trees. Too high, too thick, too far.

I looked at the beast. It was watching me with those ancient, glowing eyes. There was no aggression in its posture. No hunger. Just... curiosity.

Then it lowered its head.

Its enormous nostrils flared, sniffing the air around me. Its breath was warm and heavy, washing over me in waves. It smelled of earth and moss and something wild—something older than the forest itself.

I didn't move. I couldn't.

The beast continued to lower its head until its muzzle was level with the rabbit. Its ears lowered slightly. Not in threat—in recognition.

I watched, frozen, as the rabbit hopped forward. She approached the massive beast without hesitation, her tiny body dwarfed by its enormous frame.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no—"

I reached for her. Too late.

She hopped onto its massive paw.

The beast slowly raised its paw. I thought it was about to crush her. I opened my mouth to scream—

Then it lowered its paw gently to the ground.

The rabbit hopped off, looked back at me, then hopped up the creature's leg, onto its back. She settled between its shoulders like she belonged there.

I stared, my mind struggling to process what I'd just witnessed. This wasn't the sickly, trembling creature I'd been carrying for weeks. This was something else entirely. Something that commanded respect from a beast that could have crushed us both without effort.

She looked back at me, her cloudy eyes unblinking. There was something in her gaze—not just stubbornness, but purpose. Like she knew something I didn't. Like she was trying to tell me something I couldn't understand.

The creature turned. Slowly, deliberately, it began to walk away.

"Wait—" I started. "Where are you going?"

But the rabbit just looked back at me, her cloudy eyes unblinking.

And I realized I had no choice.

I followed.

---

The creature moved through the forest with surprising grace for something so enormous. It didn't crash through the trees—it wove between them, its colossal body slipping through gaps that seemed too narrow for its bulk.

I stumbled after it, my torchlight bobbing, my legs burning. This wasn't the direction I'd been heading. The mountains had disappeared behind the trees, but the ground was rising again. We were climbing.

The journey stretched on. I noticed strange things in the forest—plants I'd never seen before, their leaves glowing faintly in the darkness. Unusually large trees with bark that seemed to pulse. Bones scattered on the ground, some so old they'd turned to dust. Broken branches high above my head, as if something enormous had passed through.

I kept my eyes open, my senses alert. Every sound made me jump. Every shadow made me freeze.

Then the rabbit stopped.

I halted too, listening. At first, nothing. Then—a distant roar, far away, beyond the trees.

I looked at the rabbit. She'd already started moving again, as if she'd heard it and dismissed it.

She knew before I did, I thought. She always knows before I do.

It happened again a few minutes later.

The rabbit went still on the creature's back, her ears swiveling toward a stand of trees to our left. I froze mid-step, my torchlight wavering.

Nothing. No sound. No movement.

I was about to keep walking when a crash tore through the underbrush somewhere behind that tree line—something heavy, moving fast, then gone as quickly as it had come. I never saw what made it. I didn't want to.

"How do you keep doing that?" I whispered.

She didn't answer. Of course she didn't.

We pressed on. The ground grew uneven, littered with loose stone, and my legs had gone numb with exhaustion by the time the rabbit suddenly stiffened again—this time twisting hard to the left, forcing the creature beneath her to veer off the path we'd been following.

"What now?" I muttered, stumbling after them through a thicket of low branches.

Then my torchlight caught it.

Where the path had been leading, the ground simply ended. A ravine, black and bottomless-looking, cut across the forest floor like a wound—wide enough that I wouldn't have seen it until I was already falling. I stood at its edge, my torch trembling in my hand, staring down into nothing.

I looked back at the rabbit. She was watching me, unblinking, as if waiting for me to understand.

I understood.

If I'd been walking alone, I would already be dead.

---

The river appeared without warning.

The rabbit hopped off the creature's back and landed softly on the ground. Then she bounded forward—toward the water.

I hadn't noticed it before. The water was dark and still, reflecting the faint moonlight. The rabbit reached the edge and crossed to the other side.

I gazed at her.

The moment my boots touched the water, the memory hit me.

Cold.

Darkness.

Water filling my lungs.

Darian's body sinking beneath the surface.

My chest tightened. I tried to step forward, but my body wouldn't move. The memory was too vivid, too real. I could feel the water closing over my head, could feel the weight of Darian's despair pulling me down.

I forced myself to take a breath.

Then another.

Then I stepped in.

The water was cold—cold enough to steal my breath. It reached my knees, soaking through my boots, my trousers. The current tugged at my legs, trying to pull me off balance. My foot sank into soft mud on the bottom, and I nearly fell.

I caught myself. My body wanted to run. My mind wanted to scream.

But I kept moving.

I waded across, shivering, my teeth chattering. The rabbit watched me from the other side, her cloudy eyes unblinking.

"You're lucky I'm too tired to argue," I said.

She bounded forward again, leading me deeper into the forest.

---

I looked at my map, trying to find where we were. The map said the expedition route was east. The rabbit was heading north.

Every sensible part of me said to turn back.

What if she's wrong? I thought. What if she's leading me somewhere worse? What if the academy was safer? What if Jace was right?

I halted. The rabbit paused beside me, looking back.

I gazed at her. She gazed back.

She had sensed the beast before I had. She had known the river was here before I saw it. She had detected the guard before he appeared. She had heard the roar in the distance before it reached my ears. She had steered me away from a ravine that would have killed me.

She knew things I didn't. Maybe she knew where we were going.

I followed.

---

We walked for what felt like hours.

The forest gradually changed around us. The trees grew taller, their branches thicker, their leaves darker. The ground became rockier, sloping upward.

Then the forest grew quieter. The sounds of the night—the rustling leaves, the distant calls—faded into nothing. I stopped, my senses on alert.

Something was wrong.

I looked around, scanning the darkness. The trees seemed to lean closer, their branches reaching for me like grasping fingers. The air grew still, heavy, thick with anticipation.

Then I saw it.

At first, I thought it was a rock. A massive boulder, half-buried in the earth, covered in moss and ancient markings.

Then the "rock" moved.

Slowly. Deliberately. A living thing.

It was enormous—taller than any human, taller than any beast I'd ever seen. Its shell spiraled upward, covered in moss and ancient markings that seemed to glow faintly in the darkness. Its body was massive, slow-moving, its antennae swaying gently in the night air.

The creature in the clearing wasn't merely large. It made the beast that had carried us through the forest feel small.

I gazed at the enormous creature, my pulse hammering. Then my torchlight caught something carved into its shell.

A symbol.

My blood ran cold.

I'd seen that symbol before.

It was on the expedition records.