Chapter 43: Chapter 33: Whisper from the Void
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The sky was still, almost too still.
Ren stood atop a jagged cliff, his sharp eyes scanning the horizon. The wind that usually carried whispers from the spirits had gone eerily silent. A silence that pressed against his chest like a warning.
He closed his eyes.
The void… it pulsed.
A disturbance—faint, but undeniable. Like a heartbeat that didn't belong. Something had stirred in the dark, ancient and wrong.
Ren's fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade. "No," he muttered. "It's too soon."
Far below, nestled in the heart of the forest, Himari froze mid-step. She dropped the charm she had been holding, her aura flaring to life in a surge of instinct. Her gaze lifted to the sky.
She had felt it too.
A tear in the veil. A ripple. And beneath it, something she had prayed would stay asleep for a while longer.
"It's awakening…"
Her breath caught as an image—blurry and fragmented—flashed in her mind. A massive presence, cloaked in void and shadow, its form impossible to define. Not Nogitsune. Not Yuki.
Something… else.
She turned, racing back toward the shrine where Yuki was meditating. "Ren needs to know," she whispered, heart pounding.
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