Chapter 83 Between Worlds
The ritual chamber was deep beneath the stronghold, in tunnels so old their original purpose had been forgotten.
Maren had spent the day preparing it, inscribing symbols on the stone floor with mixtures of ash, blood, and powdered silver. Each mark was precise, each line perfectly rendered from the memory of texts she had studied decades ago but never expected to use.
“The ancients called this the Walking Between,” Maren explained as she worked, her voice echoing in the confined space. “A method of separating consciousness from flesh to traverse the spaces where reality thins. Shamans used it to commune with spirits. Seers used it to glimpse possible futures.”
“And what did the First Flame bloodline use it for?” Elara asked, watching the patterns take shape.
“To speak with the Void directly,” Maren said quietly. “To understand the enemy they fought. Some returned with knowledge. Others returned changed, corrupted. Many did not return at all.”
Elara absorbed that in silence.
Rowan stood at the chamber entrance, his expression troubled. “There has to be another way.”
“If there is, I cannot see it,” Elara replied.
The bonded wolves had gathered in the corridor outside, their presence a comfort even though they could not help with what was coming. Through the bonds, Elara felt their concern, their fear for her, their desperate hope that she would find answers.
As night fell fully, Maren completed the final symbol.
“It is ready,” she announced. “But understand what you are attempting. Your consciousness will separate from your body, leaving your flesh vulnerable and unconscious. The bonds will remain, but dormant, inaccessible until you return.”
“How long do I have?” Elara asked.
“Hours in this world translate unpredictably in that space. You might experience minutes or years. But your body can sustain separation for perhaps six hours before damage becomes permanent.”
“And if I am not back by then?”
Maren’s expression was grave. “Then someone must decide whether to pull you back by force, which might shatter your mind, or let you go and hope you find your own way.”
“I will make that decision,” Rowan said immediately. “When the time comes, the choice will be mine.”
Elara nodded, grateful despite the weight it placed on him.
She moved to the centre of the ritual circle, settling into a seated position.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Close your eyes,” Maren instructed. “Reach for the bonds, but do not activate them. Instead, follow them inward, to the source where your power originates. The place where First Flame meets your essence.”
Elara obeyed, her breathing slowing, awareness turning inward.
“When you find that core,” Maren continued, her voice seeming to come from far away now, “step through it. Like walking through a doorway. Your consciousness will separate. Do not fight it. Do not resist. Let go.”
Elara descended into herself, past conscious thought, past learned control, into the furnace where her power burned eternally.
The Flame was there, waiting, a presence as familiar now as her own heartbeat.
But beyond it, she sensed something else.
A threshold. A boundary between what was and what existed outside the definition.
She approached it cautiously.
Then, gathering her courage, she stepped through.
The world inverted.
Colour became sound became sensation became concept. Her body fell away like a discarded coat. Consciousness expanded in directions that had no names, perceiving dimensions that mortal minds were not designed to comprehend.
For a moment, there was only chaos, overwhelming and absolute.
Then orientation returned, though in a form completely unlike physical existence.
She stood, though standing had no meaning here, in a space of endless grey. Not empty, but neutral. The canvas upon which existence was painted before the painting began.
And she was not alone.
Her ancestor stood before her, or perhaps had always been standing there, waiting.
“You return sooner than I anticipated,” the ancient wolf said. Her form was more solid here than it had been during Elara’s near-death, though still translucent, wavering like heat shimmer.
“The Void is building a gate,” Elara said, the words forming without sound, pure communication of meaning. “We cannot stop it with the methods you taught me. I need to understand more. I need to know how to truly fight it, not just delay it.”
The ancestor’s expression was sad. “You ask for knowledge I hoped you would never need.”
“But you have it.”
“Yes,” the ancient wolf admitted. “I have it. And giving it to you will change you in ways that cannot be undone.”
“I am already changed,” Elara replied. “I have died and returned. I have bonded sixty-four wolves to my power. I have fought manifestations of oblivion itself. Whatever this knowledge costs, I will pay it.”
The ancestor studied her for a long moment, seeing not just who Elara was but who she might become.
“Very well,” she said finally. “But first, you must understand what the Void truly is. Not the mythology, not the simplified version I gave you before. The complete truth.”
The space around them shifted, and Elara saw.
The Void was not an enemy in any conventional sense. It was not evil or malicious. It simply was. The natural state of unexistence that preceded creation and would follow it eventually.
The universe, all of reality, was an aberration. A temporary fluctuation in the infinite nothing. And the Void was simply the nothing reasserting itself, returning everything to the default state.
“You cannot destroy it,” the ancestor explained, “because destroying nothing is a logical impossibility. You can only push against it, create spaces where existence is maintained despite its pressure.”
“The wards,” Elara said.
“Yes. Declarations of reality so forceful they hold even against the Void’s eternal patience. But they require constant maintenance, constant renewal. Eventually, they weaken. Eventually, they fail.”
“Then how do we win?” Elara demanded. “If the Void is inevitable, if it simply has to wait long enough, how can we possibly survive?”
The ancestor’s form seemed to solidify slightly, becoming more present.
“You change the equation,” she said. “You make existence itself self-sustaining. Not dependent on wards or bloodlines or individual wolves holding back the tide.”
She gestured, and the grey space filled with images.
Worlds upon worlds, realities stacked like pages in a book, each one a different expression of existence.
“The Void exists between all realities,” the ancestor explained. “It is the space that separates one universe from another. When it pushes into our world, it creates a wound, a place where the boundary thins.”
“The gate is being built.”
“Exactly. But wounds can be healed. Boundaries can be strengthened. Not through force, but through integration.”
The images shifted, showing something Elara had never considered.
The Void and existence were not opposites. They were compliments.
“Nothing and something define each other,” the ancestor said. “Without the Void, existence has no meaning. Without existence, the Void has no reference. They are locked in eternal dance, neither able to exist without the other.”
Understanding began to dawn, terrible and beautiful simultaneously.
“You are saying we should not fight the Void,” Elara said slowly. “We should accept it. Integrate it.”
“In a manner of speaking,” the ancestor replied. “The Void cannot be destroyed because it is necessary. But it can be balanced. Existence and nonexistence in equilibrium, neither overwhelming the other.”
“How?”
The ancestor moved closer, her form now nearly solid.
“By becoming the balance yourself. The bonds you created are the beginning. Power is shared between many rather than concentrated in one. But you must go further. You must create a permanent structure, a living ward that sustains itself through the collective will of all who participate.”
She placed a translucent hand over where Elara’s heart would be if she had a physical form here.
“You must become not just a conduit for power, but a foundation. The living anchor point where existence declares itself absolute. And the bonded wolves must become extensions of that declaration, each one a pillar supporting reality itself.”
Elara felt the weight of what was being suggested.
“That would require more than sixty-four bonds. More than six hundred. It would require the entire pack, perhaps multiple packs, all connected to a central source.”
“Yes,” the ancestor confirmed. “And more than that. It would require you to remain that source permanently. To anchor yourself so completely to existence that you become inseparable from it. Immortal, perhaps, but also trapped. Unable to die, unable to rest, eternally maintaining the balance.”
The cost was staggering.
“There has to be another way,” Elara protested.
“There are always other ways,” the ancestor said gently. “You could flee to other territories, abandon this land to the Void. You could build conventional defences, delay the inevitable for generations. You could even sacrifice yourself in a final desperate assault, buying time for others to escape.”
She paused. “But if you want to truly save this place, this pack, this world, then this is the only path I know. Become the living ward. The permanent declaration of existence. The balance between something and nothing.”
Elara felt herself fragmenting under the magnitude of the choice.
“I need time to think,” she said.
“You have no time,” the ancestor replied. “The gate will be completed in three days. You must decide now what you are willing to become.”
“How do I even accomplish this? I barely understand the bonds I have already created.”
The ancestor’s form began to fade, her presence thinning.
“I will show you. But once I do, once you possess this knowledge, it cannot be unlearned. You will carry it always, the temptation and the burden of what you could become.”
She held out her hand, translucent and fading but still present.
“Take my hand. Receive the knowledge. Accept the cost. And decide what you will do with it.”
Elara stared at the offered hand, at the choice it represented.
Remain as she was, powerful but limited, fighting a holding action against inevitable defeat.
Or transform into something unprecedented, anchor herself permanently to reality itself, and become the living foundation upon which existence stood firm.
A choice between dying as herself or living forever as something other.
Between accepting mortality or transcending it at a cost too great to measure.
She thought of the bonded wolves waiting above. Of Rowan standing vigil. Of the pack divided and desperate. Of the Void building its terrible gate.
Of everything that would be lost if she did nothing.
Elara reached out and took her ancestor’s hand.
Knowledge flooded into her like a river breaking through a dam.
Techniques for expanding bonds to unprecedented numbers. Methods for anchoring consciousness to physical locations. Rituals for merging essence with the fabric of reality itself.
And the terrible understanding of what it would mean.
To become the ward.
To become immortal.
To become something that was Elara but also more than Elara.
To sacrifice everything she was for everything she could protect.
When the knowledge transfer was completed, the ancestor smiled sadly.
“You have it now. What you do with it is your choice and yours alone. But choose quickly. Your body calls you back. Your time here runs short.”
The grey space began to fade.
“Wait,” Elara called. “Will I see you again?”
“Always,” the ancestor replied, her voice growing distant. “I am part of you now, as you will be part of those you bond with. We are never truly alone. Never truly separate.”
“Was it worth it?” Elara asked desperately. “For you? The cost you pay?”
The ancestor’s last words reached her as the space collapsed entirely.
“Ask me again when you have made your choice.”
Then Elara was falling, rushing back through dimensions, through the threshold, through the Flame, into flesh and bone and mortality.
She gasped, eyes flying open, back in her body in the ritual chamber.
Maren and Rowan were immediately beside her, relief evident on their faces.
“How long?” Elara managed.
“Five hours,” Rowan said. “We were about to pull you back.”
Elara sat up slowly, her physical body feeling strange after the formless existence between worlds.
“Did you find what you needed?” Maren asked.
Elara looked at them both, at the bonded wolves gathering anxiously in the corridor, at the world she had been given the power to save.
At the terrible price that salvation would demand.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I found it.”
“And?” Rowan prompted.
Elara stood on shaking legs, steadying herself against the stone wall.
“And we have three days to decide if the cost is worth paying.”
She moved toward the chamber exit, toward the wolves waiting for guidance, toward the choice that would define not just her future but the future of everyone connected to her.
Three days.
Three days to save the world.
Or condemn it to a slower death.
The decision was hers alone.
And she had never felt more terrified.