Every technique has its drawbacks. Every cultivator has their weakness. -A proverb from the Pearlescent Valley

Though the visions only lasted a fraction of a second, I experienced them in full form. Each one got my full focus as I studied them for every detail, letting my mind immerse itself in the memories until I was certain I'd caught everything.

I sank into the first vision, picking up where I left off. The scream tore through the darkened night, and the muffled sound of footsteps echoed from somewhere ahead of me.

"Qi…ease our pain…our suffering!"

The voices of the void surged in strength, and my heart began to race. It was on the hunt, and its target was the same as my own. The last thing I needed was for the Spider Witch to lose her life out here in the darkness. If she died, there was a chance that I'd never find the core for the Forgotten Array. Whether I liked it or not, saving her life was now my top priority.

"Hey! Where are you?!" I shouted into the night. The footsteps I'd heard before were gone, replaced with the scrabbling sound of claws on stone, but that sound seemed to echo against the buildings in a way that rebounded back to me and confused my ears.

"Voidsent has qi…qi heals…"

"Voidsent is one with the void…we cannot take."

"Voidsent is not one…he does not listen. Does not join." It was abundantly clear who the voices were talking about. Though they'd never discussed me before, and the very title of "voidsent" made my skin crawl, I readied myself. They were anything but friendly.

I continued down the street, keeping the dilapidated buildings within the edge of my light. However, they soon fell away, making way for a wide market square. Broken stalls from long dead vendors still sported void-damaged goods, even after all this time. A fan shop here, a sachet shop there, even a little stand that sold children's toys stood still in the decrepit square.

A pulse went through the air, making me pause. It was repeated a moment later…then again. My skin crawled with void qi, even as a void spirit. Something powerful was coming. Dousing my light, I listened.

"Shouweiye comes," whispered the spirits, their voices rising without the light of my qi to protect me.

I didn't know this Shouweiye, and I really wasn't sure I wanted to meet it. Anything big enough and with enough qi to make that kind of pulse in the surrounding air was something that would be quite the fight for a Silver artist.

The pulse came again, repeating faster, this time. After just a moment of pondering, I realized they were wing beats. Whatever it was, it was flying in from above, and it was on the prowl.

I felt exposed. My chains shone in the darkness, even without my palm light. Voices of fear clamored at the edges of my thoughts, and it took every ounce of my self-control to stand firm and remain calm in the face of the danger that hunted above.

"Spider?" I called. The sooner I found her, the sooner we could leave.

It was a mistake. A shadow with teeth lunged at me from the darkness. I yanked my hand away. Rather than my flesh, its teeth closed on the chain wrapped around my right arm. With the length of glowing steel in its mouth, the rest of its body was illuminated enough to see its canine-like form in the darkness.

"Hunger…qi lessens pain…give or I take!" it growled through the connection of the void.

"This qi is mine," I answered. "I cannot let you take it."

The hound spirit dug claws of pure shadow into the stones and began to pull on my chain as if ready to play a game of tug-of-war with it. I rolled my eyes. Its physical strength was great, but not enough to force me forward. With a flick of my free wrist, a blade of blue-silver light erupted from the ground, skewering the beast cleanly. It yelped, and I took the opportunity to pull my chain free of its mouth before whipping the end around in a circle. The free end slammed into the hound's head.

"No! Pain! Greater Pain! I…it." Whatever it was going to say was cut off when its body dispersed before my eyes. Qi that once made up a creature scattered, becoming one with the shadows all around me.

"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

The shriek of something incredibly large and extremely loud rang throughout the square. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to block it out, only the sound seemed to penetrate through my hands, bypassing the usual paths of sound to drive a nail straight into my mind.

"Flee! Seek Shelter! Run and hide!" The voices of the void erupted in a chorus of fear. Wind passed me as spirits rushed past. The moths who'd come to my light abandoned my shoulder to nestle into my hair.

But, the Spider Witch didn't get the same warning. A scream filled the square a moment later. It rang clearly, even through the shadowy fog muffling every word.

I raced forward in the direction of the sound. My feet quickly found the barren dirt where grass once lived. The shadows grew darker, and I summoned a mote of voidlight to push back against the darkness. The effect was limited, but it was better than nothing.

"H-h-help!" screamed the Spider Witch.

"I'm here! I'm coming!" I shouted back. She was directly ahead, but that was also where the shadows were thickest. Death qi mingled with the void, but it was clear that she was outmatched. Without a corpse to raise, her techniques were far more limited.

A final scream, followed by the crunching of bone met my ears. On the steps of a dais that once held an armillary, the Spider Witch's body lay still, her hair falling in shambles around her head to join the blood seeping from her chest onto the steps. Her clear blue eyes stared up into nothingness, but her qi was still present. I watched in horrified curiosity as it was visibly pulled from her corpse and into the air like smoke before disappearing into the creature that stood upon the dais.

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The monster had beady red eyes which were each probably twice the size of Lin's frying pan back at the inn, and the qi from the witch's corpse seemed to be disappearing somewhere beneath them. Above the eyes, I spied large waving feelers of some kind stirring the void qi in the air.

Whatever it was, I knew immediately that I didn't want to fight it. It was huge, and I couldn't even see the full extent of its wings, or even what style of wings they really were.

Instead, I immediately counted back the minutes. It had not been long. Shattering reality wouldn't be difficult on this scale, and I was much stronger than the last time I'd used Flash Back repeatedly. Silver qi sparked on my fingertips as I began the thirteen seconds required to weave the technique.

The monster that was very likely the one called the Shouweiye, lifted its head, and a rumbling growl shook the air around me. I glanced up at it. Eight seconds was all I needed to finish the Flash Back.

"Voidspawn…greater spirit…I hunger for qi," it thundered through my connection to the void. I flinched but continued my focus. Four seconds left.

Shouweiye lunged forward, and my heart leapt into my throat. Its qi was so overwhelming. All I needed was two seconds…but it was two seconds I did not have. Cursing silently to myself, I cut off Flash Back and threw myself to the side.

Enormous lance-like legs struck from the darkness, narrowly missing me as I rolled out of the way and leapt back to my feet. In the darkness above, I spied wide wings painted with shades of black and navy, and suddenly the creature made sense.

Shouweiye was one of the moon moths that once roamed the city, except that it had probably been gorging itself on void qi for untold centuries. It was the size of a house with three times the wingspan.

It spun around, stirring the shadows with its every move, and suddenly, I realized why every other void spirit in the area had the good sense to run. Not only was it big; it was fast. It was much faster than any creature of that size had any right to be.

The glow of my chains reflected in its eyes, and I knew it was coming after me next. I just needed to hide long enough to get thirteen seconds of safety.

I ran, hurling my light ahead of me to find the nearest building with the hope that it was still intact enough to keep out the enormous void spirit that hunted my light. Shouweiye shrieked a high note that pierced my ears and my mind alike before beating its enormous wings. The wind kicked up by the motion nearly knocked me to my knees, but I kept running.

The door to the nearest building hung off the side of the wall, its connections having been eroded away from centuries of neglect and exposure to the void. I threw it aside and pushed my way in just as the building shuttered under the weight of Shouweiye's bulk. It crawled over the building, stabbing its long, furry legs into the decaying wood.

I didn't know how long the building would hold, but I prayed it would be longer than thirteen seconds. Without a second thought, I began weaving Flash Back before me. The silver circle took form at a rate that seemed painfully slow, given the creaking of the void-damaged wood all around me and the giant moth that would love nothing more than to disperse my form just as I'd done to the hound spirit before.

Eight seconds passed. A thin, void coated tongue reached through a hole in the ceiling above me. It searched for my qi before finding the beacon that was Flash Back shining like a feast before it.

Ten seconds. It was coming closer. I flinched and edged back. The circle of qi that represented Flash Back's progress was almost complete.

Twelve seconds. With a shriek, a void-coated limb stabbed through the ceiling and the wooden support beams above me turned to dust.

Finally, a crack of silver and blue spread across reality like a crack through glass. The technique was finished. As the Shouweiye finally poked its massive head through the building and fixed its beady eyes on the glow of my chains, reality shattered entirely turning my vision white.

The tally etched into my skin, and I was already running by the time the vision ended. I knew where the Spider Witch was. I just had to reach her before Shouweiye's hunt did. Only a few minutes had passed, but that was all I needed.

The voices of the void whispered their greed for my qi. I could feel the shadows converging around me as spirits took notice. They hadn't caught Shouweiye's presence on the wind yet, and their greed and desire to end their pain with my qi was palpable.

A hound spirit, possibly even the same one that had jumped me the first time latched onto my chains. However, I knew exactly how to deal with it, this time. Before its grip fully caught in the lunar steel chain links, I pulled the length back and cracked it down on the beast's skull. It yelped before dispersing into a cloud of void qi.

"Spider! Spider, answer me!" I still felt weird that I didn't know her name, but it was all I had to work with.

The first pulse of Shouweiye's wings beat down on the district. It was still far off, but I was sure it would approach quickly now that the void was stirred by my presence.

Another spirit, this one a fanged horse like the one that I'd faced during the blackout lunged at me out of the darkness. I dodged back, drawing an arrow from my quiver to fire point blank into its chest. It screamed before exploding in a cloud of voidlight.

"Spider!? Where are you?"

"Qi…rotted qi like meat…I will take it," a voice boomed in my head. I flinched as Shouweiye's attention descended on the square. "And a bright spark…filled with void and light. I will devour…snuff it out."

I raced forward, ignoring the lesser void spirits as they converged on the old dais of the armillary. Vibrant red hair bobbed behind a pink fan as she summoned the black and white qi of a death miasma around her. The void spirits were deterred only for a moment, as they had no flesh to be rotted or decayed by her qi techniques. They'd take damage to their qi, of course, like I would, but their hunger and pain drove them beyond the point of caring.

"Pain…Inflict pain!"

"Consume the qi! Mine! Mine! Mine!"

"Ease my pain…destroy it all."

The voices were many, but they all turned at once. A pulse of qi washed over the void spirits like a wave, warning them of Shouweiye's presence.

"Run! Shouweiye comes! Flee!"

A few of the fleeing void spirits tried to take bites from me as they left, but they were eliminated for their efforts. By the time they were defeated, the Witch was left alone, standing on the dais where light once protected the whole district from harm. She looked at me in surprise, as if it was taking all her mental energy to interpret my presence before her.

"Watch out! Behind you!" I shouted, already running.

I wasn't going to make it in time. I could feel Shouweiye's presence descending. She did to, turning behind her to see the source of the wind and qi that buffeted the entire square only moments ago.

Flash Forward warned me of the coming disaster. Shouweiye's landing would end with the Spider Witch skewered on its lance-like legs and her qi drained from her corpse. I had only moments, and far too much distance to travel.

"Safety…Cross the distance…save the girl." It was the quiet song within the void. Without a second thought, I listened. There wasn't time for anything else.

"Help me!" I begged mentally with all the willpower I'd mustered over the course of my practice listening. I'd never tried actually reaching out to it for help before, at least not in such a broad request.

"Disperse. Conquer distance. Isolate from harm," it answered. A feeling reached into me, like an instinct that had been long buried, now freshly uncovered by my recent training. I listened to it, having no other ideas to save her before it was too late.

Instead of reality, I felt my body shatter instead.

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