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Xavier’s grip tightened. His eyes blazed with something between fury and fear. It was rare that he’d show me the god half of his persona, but I had a heartbeat to wonder if he planned to smite me right there.

Then Nox materialized out of thin air, latching onto my shoulder with a hiss that was all dragon disguised as kitten. He snarled at Xavier, tiny body bristling. Magic poured from him, in hot waves that snapped and growled in warning, claws digging into my shoulder.

I opened my mouth to respond, and the world went white.

My vision shifted. Showed me Jude, curled up on a floor. In pain.

It lasted a single clipped breath, then it was gone.

I shifted.

My senses exploded outward, the world sharpening into a tapestry of scent and sound. The sour tang of Xavier’s worry and rage. The crisp, ozone-tinged signature of the kitsune twins.

But it wasn’t my leopard that answered the shift. It was the Bastion, that half shadow monster meant to protect the Weaver, that arose, wild and ready to fight.

I ripped out of Xavier’s hold, all claws and teeth. Massive paws hit the floor, nails scraping wood. I launched past the trio and into the hall, searching for a thread to follow. The need to get to my mate driving me forward.

No hint of Jude had ever touched this building, not in his living skin. Ghosts had no scent. But I could trace Ivan. Similar to Jude in the way siblings carried echoes of each other, but distinct with the edge of his youth.

The trace was faint. Barely there. A ghost of a trail that should have faded hours ago.

I followed it anyway, racing down the hall, leaping to the bottom of the stairs and bursting free of the main doors to arrive in the darkened streets. The Bastion’s stride ate up ground, muscle and shadow. I raced past the shifters patrolling the streets, Xavier’s search party, and ignored their startled shouts. Xavier and the twins tried to catch up as I let the scent lead me to a long overgrown park at the end of the street.

Trees rose in the darkness, skeletal and still. The fog had receded, but the air still lingered with weight, like the world was holding its breath.

Ivan’s scent was a ghost of itself, thin and stretched, little more than a memory woven into the air itself. It didn’t lead deeper into the park. It stopped, cleanly and impossibly, three paces from where I now stood.

Beneath it all, something green, deep and rooted pressed in on all sides. A low hum vibrated through the earth, alive and electric, like the Veil itself, only more. Like the trees themselves had remembered how to walk and were waiting for the right moment to take the first step.

This was nothing I’d ever encountered. Not shadow, not Veil tear, not any variant signature I could name. Just ancient, pulsing energy.

I lowered my nose to the ground, trying to find another hint of his scent. People didn’t just vanish from one step to the next. Only, Ivan had.

I snarled and let the scents circulate in my mouth as I tried to parse each one, sorting out Ivan’s, and unknown others.

The ache in my paw throbbed with a cold I couldn’t shake.

I dropped low, nose to the ground, following that smell of earth, not at all unlike a freshly dug grave after the rain. The air chilled my fur as I slunk through the park, letting the smell lead me under a thorned bush. The noise from the disgruntled shifters behind me fading away because buried beneath the rot and root and ancient, patient hum, was Ivan.

I wedged myself between the stalks, ignoring the scrape of bark and the snag of thorns. Deeper.

When I pushed through the brush, I expected the park’s edge, or even an abandoned playground taken over by fairies of some kind.

Instead, the world had changed.

Ferns towered overhead. Vines thick as my arm coiled around trunks that belonged in an ancient forest. The canopy stretched so high I couldn’t see the sky, just layers of green and shadow.

Somewhere else entirely.

Then I caught a strong whiff of Ivan’s scent. And beneath it, faint but unmistakable, Jude.

The trail curled upward around a trunk wider than my apartment building. I circled it, searching for handholds. The scent taunted me from above, growing no closer with each pass.

I remembered the vision. Jude’s pain.

The Bastion snarled, needing to get to our mate and Weaver, driving my mind to chaos.

I launched myself at the trunk, claws digging deep. The tree shuddered, trying to cast me off, but I clung on with three mostly mobile paws, and inched upward, toward the faint smell of mate.