I feel cold. Fifteen hours, max. We’re fucked. We’re really really fucked.

“What’s the matter?” Noli asks. She pokes at my math scribbles. “What is it?”

“Time limit,” I tell her. “Ends tomorrow.”

She freezes. “When?”

“Day,” I sign, wracking my mind for the right words. “Early sun.”

“Morning?” she guesses.

“Yes.”

Noli remains silent for a moment. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it. We’ll just have to wait for Attiru to get back.”

I shift nervously from foot to foot. “You sure? That’s it?”

“Well, I don’t see that we have any other options,” Noli signs. “We can’t do the spell without a null wizard, or null arcana chalk.”

Guilt claws at me. There’s also the void. I might be able to do the spell. But she doesn’t know that.

“Attiru is our best bet,” Noli continues. “They can speak, move quickly, and have our only map. If you try to leave now, you’re likely to get lost or injured. And what happens if they come back and you’re not here?” Noli shakes her head. “No, from now on, we’re sticking together.”

She’d be right about all of that if I hadn’t lied to her. But it’s just a lie of omission, right? Using the void is dangerous. It’s part of the predator.

Besides, we can afford to wait a little longer. Attiru might come back any minute.

I wish I could believe that.

“You trust them,” I sign.

“Who, Attiru?” Noli asked. “Of course! They brought me all the way here—they won’t fail us now.”

She’s right. They’ve already done a lot, and they barely even know us. But they’re going out of their way to help Noli and I, despite the fact that it was me who nearly killed them in the first place.

“They like you,” I sign.

“Maybe,” Noli signs back. “But more than anything, I think they just want to help.”

“Why?” I ask. Why go through all this effort for relative strangers?

“Why?” Noli repeats. “Well that’s a silly question. Because they can, I suppose. Because we need help, and they can give it.”

Her words don’t make me feel any better. “But they’re hurt.”

“I suppose,” Noli signs. “But when people’s lives are on the line, sometimes you can work through the pain, I think. And I guess they think they owe me, after I saved their life, though I really wish they wouldn’t see it like that. Helping people’s just the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

Which was why she’d tried to stop the predator in the first place. Why she threw those rocks at us. Had she been trying to save Attiru from being killed, or me from doing the killing? Both at once, probably. She’s an optimist like that.

Which makes me feel even worse. Of course helping people is the right thing to do. Of course it is. I know that. But making me use the void—that’s different, isn’t it? It might not help at all. It might make everything worse. Summoning the Attuned void might risk summoning the predator—in the middle of a populated city, no less.

Except it hadn’t summoned the predator before. It had been inert. Following my intentions, just like my glass. And summoning it wouldn’t even up the Void stat either.

I pace restlessly to one end of the desk, then back again.

“Are you alright?” Noli asks.

If there’s no risk, then why am I so scared to try it? Why won’t I even consider the option? Helping people’s just the right thing to do.

Maybe I’m not a good person. Maybe I’m selfish and a coward. I tap a leg nervously against the desk, the decision tearing me in half.

“Kanin? What’s going on?” Noli asks again.

I stop. Maybe Attiru’s got it right. Maybe your motives don’t have to be selfless as long as they’re for the right reason. I’m not an optimist like Noli. I don’t nearly have her altruism. But doing this for Noli. Because I hurt her, because I abandoned her, because I feel like I owe her: Maybe that’s enough.

My ink is lead. My glass weighs a thousand pounds. Somehow, I get them to move anyway.

“I can do it,” I sign. “I have null magic.”

“What?” Noli cries. “That’s great!” Then she pauses, confused. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

I shift nervously from foot to foot. “It’s different. Dangerous. Not null chalk.”

Noli tips her head. “Like a substitute?”

“Yes.”

“But it will still work?”

I hope so. “Yes. But…”

“But what?” Even she’s starting to seem a little impatient with me dancing around the subject.

A thrill of fear flutters through me. “It’s void.”

Noli stops short at that. “You mean… like the predator?”

I shiver. “Yes. But this is…” I don’t know how to explain it. “Piece of predator.”

Noli takes a moment to digest this. “Will using it be safe?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. But every instinct of mine is screaming no, definitely not.

“Hm.” Noli considers. “Is that why you were reluctant to suggest it?”

I almost say yes. That’s the easy out. And I guess it wouldn’t be a complete lie—I don’t understand the first thing about it. It could be dangerous. It could summon the predator. It could be a lot of things. But the real reason…

“I’m scared,” I admit. “Don’t want to use it. Don’t want to be like it.”

“Be like it?” Noli repeats. “Kanin, using null magic doesn’t make you anything like the predator. Plenty of people use null magic every day. Plenty use shadow magic.”

“Different,” I argue. It’s not even comparable. This stuff is alive—or at least it was. And if it carries even a whiff of the predator’s intent, then who’s to say it won’t control me again? Who’s to say it won’t make me hurt people?

“I almost killed you.”

“But you didn’t,” Noli signs.

But I could have. I was so close to taking her soul. That I was able to influence the predator in even the smallest way, souring our interest in her, was the most I could manage—and I couldn’t even do that much for the other two lives we took. “Hard to stop,” I insist.

“But you did,” Noli signs.

She isn’t getting it. “It kills. Null magic is for killing.”

Noli swipes her limb through the air as if striking the words down. “Nonsense. Magic is just a tool. Energy. It’s not evil. Not even necromancy, or null magic, or this void stuff. Like a pocketknife, magic can be used to help or harm. The predator uses it to harm. But using it doesn’t make you anything like that creature, because you’d use it to help people. To help both of us.”

I understand what she’s saying, but it’s one thing to know something and quite another to believe it. But I’ve already gone this far, haven’t I? Now that Noli knows we have this as an option, I can’t put that knowledge back in the box.

“Okay.” I sag, fear pressing down on me. “But only if no chalk.”

“If Attiru finds something, we’ll go with that,” Noli agrees. The but that follows her words lingers unspoken in the air between us. “Do you want to practice now anyway?”

Fuck no. That’s the last thing I want. But I guess we’ve already moved way past catering to what I want. “Okay.”

I nervously step back, putting some space between Noli and I. Noli waits. A few seconds tick by, neither of us moving. I shake myself, glass tinkling quietly. Come on, come on. I can do this. I just have to will it out of my inventory. I just have to wish for it to appear. It’s that easy.

And that hard.

I feel sick and cold and heavy and afraid—very afraid. The most afraid I’ve been since the predator crushed my willpower like a bug. It’ll be fine. It was fine last time. I can just summon it for a moment, then banish it just as quick. That’s it. Like getting a shot. Worrying about it is worse than actually doing it.

Echo, I blurt before I can change my mind. Summon the Attuned void from my inventory.

[Affirmative.]

Shadows swirl into existence between us. Ink spills into the air, bleeding out into its surroundings. The pillar of black—of nothingness—drifts toward me.

My soul seizes up. I jerk back, panicked, and miss a step. I fall to the side, pain and dread lancing through me. Scrambling to my feet, my mind is blinded by an overwhelming urge to flee. I retreat another step—

But the void isn’t following. The weightless ink whorls in place, barely the size of a piece of fruit, rippling and twitching like a liquid magnet. It’s unresponsive. Waiting for my intent to shape it.

Tentatively, I reach out my mind, and shiver as I feel it connect. It’s nothing like controlling my Attuned glass. There’s no comforting stability here. But there’s also no hint of the predator.

I allow myself to relax the smallest fraction. Mentally brushing the void off to the side, I can see Noli again, who appears to be signing at me frantically.

“...you okay? Kanin! Oh stars, I never should have—Please be okay! Please be—Oh!” She pauses as the ink hovers off to our side. She looks between me and the looming cloud of void. “You did it! Great job, Kanin. I never doubted you!”

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I nervously edge back over to her, giving the void a wide berth.

“Well?” Noli asks. “Can you control it?”

I mentally probe it, and its form ripples. “Yes.”

Noli waits a moment, but I don’t offer any more insight. “Can you shape it then?”

Hesitantly, I reach into the magic. If controlling the glass is like mentally picking up each piece with an invisible hand, stacking and holding them together, this is like swirling that hand through water. I try to grasp it, but it slips through my hold, ebbing around my intent. The void coils through the air, elongating into strands and filaments, only to curl in on itself and merge back into the nothingness. I shudder, reminded all too well of the way the predator whorled and roiled.

“Well it seems to be doing something,” Noli observes.

But what, exactly? I try to wrangle it under control once more, but the shadows only swirl lazily through the air. Do I need to use Sculpt to get it to change forms? It’s responding to me, but not the same way it had last night, when it had formed a hand to reach for Saru and Tetara. I hadn’t used Sculpt then. What am I doing differently now? Reluctantly, I try to recall every detail of that encounter.

Yesterday, I hadn’t even been thinking about it. I had been desperate to grab the chalk, and it had reacted to what I wanted. Was that it? I’ve been trying to hold it, like the glass, force it to move how I’m directing, but this stuff isn’t a solid. Granted, I’m not sure it’s really a fluid, either, but that’s what it feels like, in my mind. So maybe I have to take a different approach. How does one control a liquid?

With a cup, I guess.

Great thinking, Kanin. Now I just need a magic cup. Wow, I’m totally killing this.

Although, perhaps the idea isn’t totally ridiculous. Magic cups aside, maybe the void needs some kind of direction. I’ve just been trying to control it without telling it to do anything specific. But if it reacted to my will last night, maybe it just needs to be… funneled the right way. Given a shape to fill.

If the void needs intent in order to form, that would be completely different from my glass, which requires precise, concrete instructions. Why they’d operate so differently, I have no idea. But there’s only one way to know for sure.

I scan the desk, finding Noli’s piece of chalk. Instead of focusing on the void, I focus on that. I imagine picking it up and writing with it.

I put will into the thought. I want to write. I need to pick that up—

“Woah!” Noli jerks back as the void swoops over to the chalk, wrapping around the tiny writing utensil to lift it from the table. A thrill of excitement goes through me. I did it!

Just as quickly, the triumph sours to disgust. This isn’t something to celebrate. I don’t want to be able to do this kind of magic.

As if hearing this thought, the void loses form, splashing down to the table in a black mess. The chalk falls to the desk as well, nearly rolling off the edge of the table before I grab it with my glass.

Echo, return the Attuned void to my inventory, I say.

[Affirmative.]

And with the blink of an eye, it’s gone.

I slump. I don’t know if I feel relieved or deflated. I do feel dirty. Contaminated. God, what I’d give for a shower. But at least I know I can control it, if I need to. And it doesn’t seem to pose any threat… right now.

“What happened?” Noli asks. “Was that you? Did you pick up the chalk? Then send it away?”

“Yes,” I wearily sign.

“So you can control it then?” she asks.

“Maybe.”

“It sure looked like it to me.”

I inwardly sigh. “Yes. I can control it.”

“That’s great news!” Noli signs. “Then we can do the spell, can’t we? We have a way to save ourselves.”

She’s right: This should be good news. We’re not doomed—we have a way out. We can perform the ritual to renew our spells and keep us going just a little bit longer.

But then what? That spell takes magic, and magic is exactly what’s feeding the void. Then our spell would decay and we’d need to renew it again. I’d just be delaying the inevitable.

“Wait for wizard,” I say, settling down near Noli. Even standing feels like too much mental effort right now. “Won’t use void unless we need it.”

“Alright,” Noli agrees, seeming a little more subdued. “We’ll see what Attiru finds out first.”

I hesitate, remembering how Noli had said she still hadn’t told Attiru about the connection between me and the void. “What they think?” If they saw me wield the same darkness that nearly took their life, how would they react?

Noli wrings her limbs in clear discomfort. “We don’t have to do it while they’re around. And we don’t really have to tell them, do we? If they never see it, it’s not really relevant.”

It finally clicks into place: She doesn’t want to implicate me. Noli’s a good friend, but I don’t feel like I deserve her protection. It might end up getting others hurt.

Not that I have any way to speak to Attiru anyway. I guess I’ll just have to hope it’s not relevant, like Noli said. That Attiru will just show up with a wizard or null magic and we’ll be fine.

I Check Noli’s Core Bond spell: 29 mana left. One more point evaporated since I last checked. Nothing we can do now but wait.

The night ticks away with only a few words exchanged. I occasionally go back over to reread the spell book, hoping to find something in there that tells me we don’t need the null arcanum after all. Hoping to find a different spell that’ll work just as well.

It’s just a desperate, futile wish. Even I know that.

The tension grows as the night gets longer. Attiru still hasn’t returned as the first hints of dawn begin to color the sky. I Check Noli again: 13 mana. Still 6 more hours, if my math’s right. But this is close. Way, way too close. Where’s Attiru?

“Something’s wrong,” Noli finally signs.

My soul sinks. She’s not supposed to say that. She’s supposed to be the optimist.

“Maybe,” I acknowledge. Or maybe they are on their way back right now. Maybe they found help, and it’s just taking some extra time to navigate back. Sure, it’s pre-dawn and there are no crowds, so they should be moving faster, not slower, but there’s tons of reasonable explanations.

Noli shakes her head. “It’s time, Kanin. We have to do it now.”

“Wait longer,” I sign, distant panic starting to nibble at my mind. I try to shove it away. We still have time.

“No,” Noli sharply signs. “We’re not putting this off to the last second. Do we even know that you’ll be able to do magic if we cut it too close? What if our dissolving spell results in us being too weak to help ourselves?”

I hadn’t thought about that. That’s probably not likely, but… can we risk it?

A big part of me wants to.

“Kanin,” Noli repeats. “We have to do it. You know we do. You’re just postponing the inevitable.”

Dammit. I hate it when she’s right—which seems to be most of the time. But I do know it: It’s now or never.

“Okay.” I stand up, looking down at the chalk circle sketched over the floor, and nervousness flutters through me. “Let’s do it.”