---
They weren't light; they were void motes, tiny wounds in space that inhaled every stray photon. Kai could see only a few steps ahead.
"Forward now, ten, no more," the voice instructed.
He counted exactly ten strides. On the ninth, something huge brushed his aura field— the outline of a jagged column rising from unseen depths. He halted, toes balanced on the edge of that invisible cliff, heart beating with feral calm. One more step and he would have slammed into stone so dense the system flagged it as exotic ore, hazard rank: indestructible.
"The voice really is guiding me," he admitted. "Or guiding me to something worse." The doubt flickered; the discipline smothered it.
