We all have our demons, disciple. It is the brave cultivator who knows their own and faces them bravely. However, doing so before you're ready is not bravery, but foolishness. Only when you feel that you are not ready will it be that you are. -Lao Akura of the Mist Cat Mountain Sect, speaking to her disciple Lao Zixian

I reached out, trying to grab her wrist before she stepped fully through the veil, but my fingertips only managed to brush against her stitched skin before she was gone, fully consumed by the darkness.

With a sigh, I stepped back. The void was thick, even on this side of the armillary's protection. That protection fell like a blue-silver veil, against which pressed the shifting shadows of the void beyond. Even though she'd only stepped through moments ago, the Witch of Heimian was completely consumed by the darkness beyond.

"Yoru!" Lin called from down the street. I watched him pick his way through the carnage, followed quickly by Xinya, Shion, and Crescent.

"She escaped into the void," I explained when they arrived.

"Damn that wretch!" Crescent shouted, stamping her translucent foot in anger. "I will see her corpse hang from the gates of the Forgotten House!"

Shion rolled his eyes. "Unless you want to lose your mind, you can't follow her, so what's the point in moaning about it? Besides, I'm waiting."

"Waiting for what, you sniveling brat?"

Shion's eye twitched, and the temperature rose around us. He crossed his arms and glared pointedly at the shade.

"For you to kowtow and apologize!" he growled. "Clearly, the Chikara are not to blame for your faction's pathetic security. You've been howling for hours about how we were responsible, but, in case you didn't notice, she raised our dead just as surely as she twisted your shade."

"Oh, so the first time the Chikara are not responsible for a tragedy in the district, and you want a medal for it?" Crescent hissed. "How irritating can you be? There are lives at stake!"

"Actually, there aren't," the oni countered. "Your defense core was to power your protections against void corruption, no? No living person would have been protected by such a thing because the living aren't as vulnerable to the void's twisting."

Crescent flushed with anger. "How dare you!"

"Benefits of having flesh and blood," he answered. "Now, we don't have all day. Between the innkeeper's tea party and your stubbornness, much of our time has already been wasted. Could you kindly move your apology along?"

I flinched at the not-so-subtle reminder of my diplomatic failings just a few minutes ago. It was salt thrown in the wounds of my past because Crescent was right. I wasn't the Lunar Prince anymore. He died the day the Darkened Moon usurped his throne and threw his kingdom into chaos.

So…what did that make me, now?

"Yoru?" Lin asked as Shion and Crescent continued to bicker. "What's wrong?"

I just looked at him helplessly. I wanted to tell him, but how could I without revealing my secrets to all present? In the end, I just had to shake my head. The time for that would be later.

For now, there was only one thing I could do, and only I could do it. If we wanted to get the Forgotten and the Chikara to get along enough to stabilize the situation in the fourteenth district, we needed the power core for the Forgotten Array. Only the Witch of Heimian knew anything about it, but no shade, yokai, nor human could tread beyond the edge of the armillary's protection.

But I could.

I took a step towards the barrier, but Lin caught my hand. His touch was pleasantly warm. I smiled in spite of the heavy thoughts weighing on my heart.

"I'll go with you," he said, but I shook my head.

"There's no telling how dense the void is out there," I answered, putting my hand on his. "Even your adaptability might not be enough."

Lin lowered his voice and leaned in so the others wouldn't hear. "And what of the voices of the void? What if they overwhelm you?"

"I'll be fine," I insisted, looking away from him. It didn't help. Lin covered my hand with his.

"Don't lie, I can feel you shaking."

It was one thing to listen to the void from the safety of the armillary's glow. It was one thing to fight through it during the blackout. It was another entirely to willingly plunge myself into the darkness without a lifeline. How loud would the voices be beyond the Veil? Would I be able to resist their maddening pull? Or would the Darkened Moon rise once more?

Xinya tugged on my sleeve. "Uncle Yoru? You shouldn't worry so much. I'll come get you if you don't come back."

She smiled, but…something about the confidence with which she spoke had me slightly on edge. Within her, lightning still sparked with the bright lavender of her normal qi, but I couldn't shake the memory of the darker colors she'd shown earlier. Adding to that her confidence regarding stepping out into the void... Xinya was a child, but she'd never been one to speak with naïve optimism.

Stolen novel; please report.

I put a hand on her head. "Nah. No need for that, Xinya. I'll be just fine." After exchanging a look with Lin, I was certain that he was just as worried about her as I was. After giving the little lightning artist a tight squeeze, I stood and approached the veil between the districts.

If my inner map was still correct after all these years, the twenty-first district was beyond that border, thanks to a convoluted numbering system that aligned created by Shi Reili in an age long past. Supposedly, the numbers were inspired by a complex series of interactions between celestial bodies and the void. Even at the height of my power, I didn't understand it, choosing instead to memorize the numbers.

Here goes nothing, I thought. With a deep breath, I calmed my mind, clearing away all my fears as best as I was able, even going so far as to cycle my qi twice just to reassure myself that I was all right.

Then, I stepped across the barrier, and into the darkness beyond.

Potent void qi tingled with a pleasant coolness against my skin. Though I was only a handful of steps beyond the busy marketplace, I could hear nothing. Silence pressed inward against my skull, making my ears pop from the pressure.

I summoned a palm light to my hand. The blue-silver glow of voidlight didn't pierce far into the darkness, but it was better than nothing. I could see the ground beneath my feet, and the vague shapes of dilapidated buildings just outside the light's meager glow.

"Hey!" I shouted into the dark. "Hey, uh…Spider?" I realized suddenly that I never even got her name. Was it rude not to know the name of someone I'd fought on three separate occasions? It had been so long since I'd had a recurring enemy who hadn't immediately introduced themselves with enough arrogance to choke a horse.

My words were muffled by the void all around me, and suddenly, the entire venture seemed like an exercise in futility. How was I supposed to find the Spider Witch if I was already so far behind her? Even if she could hear me, why would she reveal herself?

"It doesn't matter, Yoru," I said aloud, though no one else could have possibly heard me. "You have to try. If I was a Spider Witch in a district filled with the void, where would I go first?"

Thinking back to her last words, she seemed to have her own protections against the void, meaning that she probably wasn't restricted to the areas nearest the border. However, since the twenty-first district had been abandoned, possibly for centuries, she would have no need to hide deep in the district burrows. If I was a betting man, and I most definitely was thanks to my ability to manipulate the odds, I'd bet that I'd find her in a comfortable building off one of the main roads or squares.

Besides, if she wasn't, that's what Flash Back was for. I had all the time in the world to search.

I walked further down the street, holding my light ahead to see the cobblestone street. It would be quite consistent with my current streak of luck to step on a loose stone and fall in just the wrong way to split my head open on the cobbles. Head trauma was the last thing I needed if the void decided to lift the silence and speak.

"Silence…Silence in the ears…chaos in the heart…"

Even knowing that the voice was in my head, I spun around, instinctively searching for the source of the whisper. There was no one there. I quickly chided myself. Of course I would see nothing. I'd lived with the voices for so long that I knew they were only in my mind.

"Lived with us…but not become one with us…"

"So, hesitant…so fearful…so resistant to join with the voices of your kin."

"Join us…listen to our pain…"

The voices began to rise from their usual background noise, but I took a deep breath. Stilling my heart, I turned and continued to walk. Voices of destruction were not worth listening to.

"There was once a time you listened, Yoru. Remember? It was the last time you walked these streets."

My heart leapt into my throat as I recognized the voice of Shi Reili. My feet faltered, and I found myself stopped on the dark street.

"Remember the destruction we caused? You left from this place to Fuyao. You were powerful, that day, Yoru. Don't you want that again?"

My mind flashed back to what Chouko had said. The real Reili was a shade on the Shore. She said I would be the victim of 'unforeseen voices and hallucinations.' These were among those: the voices that impersonated a friend to try and win my trust.

"You…you're not real. The real Reili was my friend, and she…she never…she didn't want the fate I earned for myself." My voice cracked, even as I tried to keep calm.

"Of course I did, Yoru. You were always a source of incredible power, but I made you something special. I made you what you are today."

"No," I insisted. "Whomever you are, you made me into a madman. I won't fall for it again!"

"I am the will of the Void." The tone of the voice changed, growing upset by my resistance. "I am everything that the void is, the infinite nothingness beyond this pitiful little world!"

"You lie! My path is my own! I control my qi, it does not control me! Not anymore."

"You foolishly deny us? You deny the only will of the void?"

That wasn't true. I knew enough to know that. When I listened to the void before, it sang of destruction, yes. But, beneath the clamor, it whispered of sanctuary and peace. The quieter song was a sweeter one, one that I chose to listen to instead.

I held my light before me, pouring qi into it as I fought to push back the chorus that craved destruction. Beneath it all, as always, there was a quieter tone.

"Safety…Come…this way…Sanctuary…Freedom from the pain…"

I focused on it. In my mind's eye, I grasped the tail of that voice and threaded it into my qi. That was the void that would become voidlight. That was the purpose I would use it for. Destruction had its place, but only in service of others.

"My path is one of light. I am the light in the darkness, the beacon in the night," I whispered, remembering the creed that I built my life upon as the Lunar Prince. Though that life was gone, that part of me had not changed. I was still Avatar of the Moon, even if I'd become a spirit of the void.

"Do you think you can be free of me?" the hateful voice seethed. "Your light was darkened from the moment you accepted my power into you."

It was in that moment that I felt something soft brush against my cheek. I looked at my left shoulder where a voidlight moth just like the ones back at Half-Moon Harbor was perched on one of my chains. It waved its fluffy feelers at me. I smiled and stroked its glowing wings. Nearby, another glowing moth flitted through the darkness towards my light.

The lunar moths of Half-Moon Hearth were no more, just as the Lunar Prince had long since vanished. Yet, those moths had persisted in a new form, adapting with the void to become something just as beautiful.

Ha, adaptation, I thought with a smile. I sound like a wood artist. I wonder who I got that from.

I forged ahead, shining my light through the darkness. The void cursed and spit, but I ignored it, pushing the destructive voices further and further back until they were a dull roar once more. After all, I was here with a purpose, and they were only distracting me from that cause.

"Ahead…in the darkness…pain flows like water…"

Picking up my pace, I searched the darkness before me. The shadows shifted, revealing other void spirits, the very same kind that had invaded the fourteenth during the blackout.

Then, a muffled scream pierced the darkness, and a pain lashed across my wrist as several bloody tally marks began to form.

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