"How are we going to get there?" Lila asked as the two made their way toward the edge of campus.
Luke thought for a moment, but had no means of quick transportation. "I guess we'll have to go on foot. The Estate is thirty miles from here. It'll take some time, but we have to go," Luke said, his eyes pleading.
"Of course we have to go," Lila said. "If that's the only way, then that's what we'll do. We already discovered that this campus is protected for some reason, but the trip to your family's home will not be. The mana will have acted immediately on the environment. Right now we have no way of scanning for tears in the veil, so we won't know if we're walking right into an area overrun with things just chomping at the bit to eat us."
"This Aetherion Universe is sounding more and more like a place I want nothing to do with," Luke muttered.
"It has its pros and its cons, just like this universe," Lila replied. "I'm with you, Luke. Lead the way and let's go save your family."
Luke nodded, resolute in his task. Resigned to making the trip on foot, he picked up the pace, taking off at a run. He'd never run, or even walked, that many miles, but he seemed to have no other choice at that moment.
They'd barely covered a mile before Luke's lungs burned. Even with adrenaline pushing him forward, his body wasn't made for this kind of sustained sprint.
"You're slowing down," Lila observed.
"No—" Luke gasped, "I'm—fine." He wasn't, but he was surprised that he'd managed to sprint so far without stopping.
Lila sighed and placed a glowing hand on his shoulder. "Hold still," she said, a soft glow emitting from her palm.
"What are you doing?"
She closed her eyes and the glow intensified. Warmth flooded Luke's body. "I'm helping."
A weight lifted from him. Suddenly, his next step didn't crash down—it glided forward effortlessly.
She opened her eyes and smiled softly. "Now you'll be able to keep up with me. Probably."
"Wow, okay. Thank you, Lila."
"Don't mention it."
Luke sped up now, leading the way toward the Hale Estate. Since he had travelled this way home quite frequently over the last couple of years, he knew it by heart.
Luke pushed off the ground powerfully and found himself soaring forward through the air a few feet off the ground. A couple of seconds later his feet hit the ground once more.
The weight of getting to and protecting his family bore heavily on him, but he couldn't help but laugh aloud as he continued to push himself forward, flying dozens of feet with every kick off the ground.
"This is amazing!" Luke yelled as Lila soared beside him.
"Yes, it is," she yelled back, laughing aloud. "We should make it to your family's home in about two-and-a-half hours at this pace!"
Luke bounded forward again, enjoying the feel of the wind on his face. Though he was moving fast, with relatively little effort, he couldn't get rid of the anxiety in his chest. It was an odd mix of exhilaration and fear that he had not felt before. Exhilaration because he was running like he was on the moon, and fear because he knew his family was in peril.
The pair followed the main road leading from Everhearth toward the nearest highway, which would take them very near to the Hale Estate.
He wished he'd brought his Harley-Davidson with him to college. He never had time to ride, not with classes consuming his days. Now, it felt like a wasted opportunity.
His thoughts continued like this as he bounded forward, some tinged with nostalgia, some with regret, some with gratitude, and all with fear.
Suddenly, something seemed off. Luke was drawn from his thoughts as he realized that the birds had stopped singing.
No wind stirred the leaves.
The air held something—a pulse, too deep to hear, too heavy to ignore.
"LUKE! STOP!"
Lila's sudden, ear-piercing scream caused Luke to miss his next step. He hit the pavement, hard. He groaned as he skidded to a halt, road rash now stinging his arms.
"What the crap, Lila?" he muttered, forcing himself back to his feet.
Silence.
No impact. No monster. Just the slow pulse of something unseen pressing against his skin.
Then—BOOM.
The forest exploded.
Luke's eyes widened in fear as another sound just as loud as the first followed quickly after. Lila rushed forward toward Luke, grabbing his hand and yanking him back the way they had come.
"Lila! What is happening?" Luke yelled, fear and anger now warring inside him. He did not like being grabbed.
"It's a Voidback Colossus!" she yelled back over the nearing booms. "We need to get out of the way!"
Luke didn't know what a Voidback Colossus was, but it sounded like something he did not want to stop in front of. The pair came to a stop about fifty feet from where Luke had fallen.
Lila turned to Luke with a wide grin, "Check this out," she said, pointing the way they had come.
The ground trembled beneath his feet, a low, resonant thrum that rattled his bones. He froze, his breath catching in his throat. Birds erupted from the treetops, shrieking in panic, their silhouettes scattering against the dull gray sky. For a moment, all was still again—the calm before a storm.
Then, with a deafening crack, the first tree splintered, its trunk exploding into shards of bark and wood. Another tree followed, and another, each crashing to the earth like toppled towers. The canopy swayed and groaned, giving way to something massive, something ancient.
Just then, the tree line near where they'd been erupted outward toward the road. A massive, hulking beast slowly crawled from the towering trees, each step it took causing a reverberating BOOM. Luke's mouth dropped open in awe as the beast emerged.
A mountainous shell, mottled with shades of deep emerald and slate gray, pushed through the broken tree line. Jagged crystalline formations protruded from its back, shimmering like distant stars trapped in stone. The creature's head, broad and craggy, swung slowly to the side, its eyes like smoldering voids—deep and fathomless, radiating a quiet power that seemed to drain the air itself.
The sheer scale of it was staggering. Easily sixty feet tall, the beast moved with ponderous grace, each step sending tremors through the earth. Its legs, thick and gnarled like ancient pillars, sank into the ground, leaving behind craters of churned soil. A low, resonant hum pulsed from its body, a sound that seemed to drink the energy from the air around them.
As the Voidback Colossus lumbered forward, the crystals on its back glowed faintly, absorbing ambient mana. The air shimmered, the once vibrant mana threads Luke had grown accustomed to dimming, thinning, as if retreating from the creature's presence. The forest around it seemed to wilt, leaves curling and turning brittle, as though starved of life itself.
Luke felt a cold sweat trickle down his spine. His fingers twitched, instinct whispering for him to run, but awe held him rooted to the spot.
The Colossus paused, lifting its massive head. A deep, reverberating exhale gusted from its nostrils, carrying the scent of ancient stone and withered earth. Then, as if deciding the world beyond the trees held no interest, it began to turn, each movement accompanied by the groaning of its immense joints.
With every step, the trees bowed and snapped, powerless against its bulk. It disappeared back into the forest, leaving behind a trail of shattered trunks and cratered earth—a path that whispered of inevitability, of forces too grand and old to comprehend.
Luke finally let out a shaky breath, his heart pounding in his ears.
"That...was real?" he murmured, the words barely audible.
Lila drifted beside him, her eyes wide with her own quiet wonder. "Yes," she whispered. "It's a Voidback Colossus. It must have been sucked here into these wilds through one of the rifts in the veil."
Luke swallowed, the enormity of the situation pressing down on him like a weight he hadn't fully grasped until now. "It must have been a huge rift," he muttered. If creatures like this existed here now... what else was waiting in the shadows? "How could it have happened so quickly, though?"
"Simple," Lila began, "when the APA exploded, it didn't just tear rifts—it let mana flood into this world like a broken dam. And now? It's going to keep pouring in. It won't stop until Earth is drowning in it."
"Okay, so how does that relate to this giant tortoise thing?"
"Well, what happens to a log floating on a river when the dam breaks?" she asked in return.
Luke furrowed his brow. "Ah, I see. Just as the log gets sucked over the dam and down river, this Voidback Colossus was sucked through a rift, to Earth."
Lila nodded. "Not just the Voidback, though. There's going to be many more mana beasts here in the Riftwilds now."
Luke exhaled. "Yeah, I figured."
Lila hesitated. "And, Luke… this one ignored us."
He blinked. "What?"
"It didn't care that we were here. Whatever else comes through… might."
A shiver ran down Luke's spine. Then, his attention caught on something Lila said. "Riftwilds? What's that?"
Lila motioned to the forests one either side of the road. "This," she said. "Unless you can think of a better name? No? Okay, then I'll be calling the Ozarks the Riftwilds from now on. I'm a fan of calling things what they actually are. In this case, there are rifts, and these forests are wild. Hence: Riftwilds."
Luke shook his head. "Okay, whatever you say. Let's just get to my family."
Lila nodded and the pair started off once more toward the Hale Estate.
Luke forced his legs to move, but his mind stayed behind—stuck in the imprint the Colossus left on the earth.
"If that was just one," he muttered, "what else is out there?"
Lila didn't answer right away. Then, quietly: "We'll find out soon enough."