The training room had been a granary once. Yuna could still smell the ghost of wheat in the stones, a dry sweetness buried beneath lamp oil and sweat. Someone had cleared the space and laid down practice mats, but the walls still bore marks of their former purpose: iron hooks for hanging grain sacks, a rusted pulley system in the rafters, faded chalk tallies from harvests decades past.
Korvain sat in the center of the room, his ward-collar dimmed to a faint glow. Around him, at carefully measured intervals, Chen Wei had placed five anchor stones. They were larger than the one Yuna had been given when she first arrived, rougher, pulsing with stored resonance.
"The stones will amplify your reach," Korvain explained. His voice had grown stronger over the past days, losing some of its rasp. "When you extend the Bridge, you'll sense further than your natural range allows. But there's a cost."
"There's always a cost." Yuna settled onto the mat across from him, crossing her legs and letting her hands rest on her knees. The position had become familiar, almost comfortable. "What is it this time?"
"Distance requires energy. The further you reach, the more of yourself you spend." Korvain's silver-streaked eyes held hers. "Push too far, too fast, and you'll burn out before you find what you're looking for."
"Burn out how?"
"Headaches, at first. Nosebleeds. Then exhaustion, the kind that sleep doesn't fix." He paused. "If you push past that, the damage becomes permanent. I've seen Seers who reached too far and never came back. Their bodies survived, but their minds..." He didn't finish.
Yuna absorbed that. The prospect should have frightened her more than it did. But fear had become something she walked alongside now, a companion rather than an obstacle. She'd stopped waiting for it to pass before acting.
"How do I know when I'm reaching too far?"
"You'll feel it. A pulling sensation, like something inside you is being stretched thin." Korvain leaned forward slightly. "The first few times, stop the moment you feel it. Learn your limits before you try to exceed them."
"And if I need to exceed them?" Her voice was steady. "If Sera, if whoever I'm reaching for, is beyond my safe range?"
"Then you'll have a choice to make." His voice softened. "The same choice every healer faces eventually. How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice for someone else?"
The question settled into the space between them. Yuna thought about her mother in the hospital bed, about the ten steps she hadn't been able to take, about all the choices she'd failed to make when they mattered most.
"Let's start small," she said. "Show me how it works."
* * *
The first hour was frustrating.
Yuna could feel the anchor stones around her, their resonance humming against her consciousness like distant bells. She could sense Korvain's spark, brighter and more stable than it had been weeks ago, a warm presence at the center of her awareness. But when she tried to push beyond him, to extend the Bridge into the space outside the training room, she hit something. A resistance. Like trying to see through fog that thickened the further she pushed until her consciousness simply stopped, unable to perceive anything beyond a certain radius.
"You're forcing it," Korvain observed. He'd been watching her with the patient attention of someone who understood exactly what she was experiencing. "The Bridge isn't a tool you wield. It's a relationship you extend. You can't demand that it reach further. You have to invite the distance to come to you."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Most magic doesn't, until you stop trying to make it make sense." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Your world, the one you came from, it runs on rules, yes? Cause and effect. Predictable systems."
"Physics. Chemistry. Biology." Yuna exhaled slowly, trying to release the tension in her shoulders. "Everything can be measured, explained, replicated."
"Valdris isn't like that. The CHORD doesn't follow your kind of logic. It responds to intention, to emotion, to the shape of your wanting." Korvain gestured at the anchor stones. "These aren't batteries storing power. They're amplifiers for desire. The stronger your need to reach someone, the further the Bridge can extend. But only if you stop trying to force the connection and start letting yourself want it."
Yuna thought about that. About the difference between forcing and wanting. She'd spent years learning to suppress her emotions, to be practical, to solve problems through analysis rather than feeling.
And yet, since arriving in Valdris, every breakthrough she'd made had come through feeling, not thinking.
"Okay," she said. "Let me try again."
This time, instead of pushing outward, she closed her eyes and thought about Sera.
A twelve-year-old girl. Brown hair, according to Daven's description, and her mother's eyes. She'd liked to draw, had been talented at it, filling sketchbooks with pictures of the refuge and its people. She'd been afraid of storms but loved the rain. She'd wanted to be a healer when she grew up.
Yuna let herself feel the weight of that lost future. The sketchbooks that would never be filled. The healing arts that would never be learned. The girl who'd been swallowed by emptiness before she'd had a chance to become whoever she was meant to be.
She reached.
The fog didn't clear, exactly, but it thinned. Yuna felt her consciousness extend past the walls of the training room, past the refuge's wards, out into the wastes beyond. The world opened up around her. Threads of existence, some bright and tangled with emotion, others dim and fading.
And in the distance, far beyond her normal range, she felt something else.
Cold. Empty. Hungry.
The Hollowed.
There were dozens of them. Hundreds. Scattered across the wastes in loose formations. Some wandered alone, their consciousness reduced to nothing but the Maw's hunger. Others moved in packs, drawn together by some instinct Yuna couldn't understand. All of them radiated the same terrible absence, the same void where humanity should have been.
She pushed further, searching for anything that felt different. A spark. A fragment. Any sign that something remained beneath the emptiness.
The pulling sensation hit without warning.
It started in her chest, a tightness like something was being drawn out of her. Then it spread to her head, pressure building behind her eyes, and she tasted copper on her tongue.
Stop. Korvain's thought cut through the fog. You've gone far enough. Pull back.
She didn't want to. She was so close. She could feel something out there, something that might be more than just emptiness.
Yuna. Now.
The command carried weight, an echo of the authority he'd wielded as Herald. She flinched, and the flinch broke her concentration. The Bridge snapped back like a released bowstring, and she slammed into her own body hard enough to knock her sideways.
For a long moment, she just lay on the mat, breathing.
"You felt it," Korvain said. He'd moved to kneel beside her. "The pull."
"Yeah." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. It came away bloody. "That wasn't fun."
"It's not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be a warning." He helped her sit up, his hands surprisingly gentle. "You reached further than I expected for a first attempt. Much further. But you also ignored the warning signs until I had to force you back."
"I felt something out there. Something that wasn't just emptiness."
Korvain went still. "What did you feel?"
"I don't know. It was buried. Deep. Like the spark in you, but smaller. Weaker." Yuna pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to ease the headache building there. "It could have been Sera. Or it could have been nothing. I couldn't tell."
"Where?"
"East. I think. Far." She lowered her hands. "I'm sorry. I know I should have pulled back sooner, but—"
"Don't apologize for wanting to help." Korvain's voice was quiet. "That's the whole point of what we're doing here. The desire to reach someone, to save them, that's what powers the Bridge. You just need to learn how to channel it without destroying yourself in the process."
"How long did it take you? To learn your limits?"
"I never did." His expression darkened. "I was Hollowed before I had the chance. The Maw doesn't care about limits. It takes what it wants and leaves nothing behind."
Yuna studied his face. The lines carved by decades of emptiness. The silver streaking through hair that had probably been dark once. The eyes that still held shadows even as the spark within them grew stronger.
"Tell me about the Maw," she said. "Not the myths. Not what the stories say. Tell me what you actually know."
* * *
Korvain was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was different. Older, somehow. Carrying the weight of forty-three years of terrible knowledge.
"The Maw isn't a creature. It's not even really a thing, in the way you'd understand things. It's more like a wound in the world. A place where reality got torn open, and something from outside started leaking through."
"Something from outside?"
"The emptiness. The hunger. Whatever you want to call it, it's not from Valdris. It's not from anywhere that has a name." He stared at the floor, his hands clasped between his knees. "When the Maw opened, it started pulling people in. Not physically, but spiritually. It hollowed them out, consumed everything that made them human, and left behind shells that could only spread the emptiness further."
"Like a virus."
"Like a hunger that can never be satisfied." Korvain looked up. "The Hollowed aren't evil. They're not choosing to destroy. They're incapable of choosing anything. They're just empty. And emptiness spreads. It's what emptiness does."
Yuna thought about that. About the countless Hollowed she'd felt during her reach, scattered across the wastes like drops of darkness in an ocean of fading light. All of them had been people once. Farmers, healers, children. Parents who'd loved their families. Friends who'd laughed together. All of them hollowed out and left as nothing but hunger.
"Can it be closed?" she asked. "The Maw. If it's a wound, can it be healed?"
"I don't know." The admission seemed to cost him something. "I spent forty-three years as the Herald, the Maw's voice, its instrument in the world. I knew more about it than anyone alive. But I never understood what it actually was, or where it came from, or how to stop it." He met her eyes. "What I do know is that it's getting stronger. Every person it Hollows, every piece of humanity it consumes, it grows. And if it grows enough..."
"What happens?"
"The wound gets bigger. The emptiness spreads further. Eventually, there won't be anything left to spread to." Korvain's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "That's what the Maw wants. Not to conquer Valdris. Not to rule it. Just to make it empty. To turn everything that exists into nothing."
Silence settled between them. Yuna sat with the weight of it, feeling the implications sink into her bones.
"Then we have to stop it," she said finally. "Not just push it back. Stop it. Close the wound."
"That would require finding the Maw itself. Getting past the army of Hollowed that guards it. Reaching the heart of the emptiness and somehow healing it." Korvain shook his head. "No one's ever tried. No one's ever gotten close enough to try."
"But you know where it is."
"I do."
"And you know how to get there."
"I know the paths the Hollowed use. The routes that are guarded and the ones that aren't." His eyes searched her face. "Why are you asking?"
"Because eventually, that's where I'll need to go." Yuna's voice was steady, surprising even herself. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday. If the Bridge can really reverse the Hollowing, then it should be able to close the wound that causes it in the first place."
"That's... ambitious."
"It's necessary." She held his gaze. "You said the Maw is getting stronger. That means we're on a timer. The 120 days everyone keeps talking about, that's not just about me getting home. It's about whether there's still a world worth saving by the time I figure out how to save it."
Korvain stared at her for a long moment. Then something shifted in his expression. Recognition, maybe. Or respect.
"You're not what I expected," he said. "When I first felt you through the CHORD, I thought you were just another Otherworlder. Confused, overwhelmed, temporary. But you're not temporary, are you? You're going to change things."
"I don't know what I'm going to do." Yuna pushed herself to her feet, swaying slightly as the headache pulsed behind her eyes. "But I know I can't do nothing. Not anymore. Not after everything I've seen."
Korvain rose as well, steadier than she was, and reached out to grip her shoulder.
"Then let me help you. Not because I owe you, though I do. Because for the first time in forty-three years, I believe there might be a future worth fighting for." His hand tightened briefly. "Let me show you how to reach further without destroying yourself. Let me teach you everything I know about the Maw and its weaknesses. And when you're ready to go to the heart of it..."
"You'll come with me?"
"I'll lead the way." His smile was thin but genuine. "It's the least a monster can do for the person who reminded him he used to be a man."
* * *
Evening found Yuna on the refuge's walls, watching the moons rise.
She wasn't alone this time. David sat beside her, and Sora, finally recovered enough to walk, had joined them, her leg still bandaged but her eyes bright. Even Aria had appeared, claiming she needed the fresh air but staying close enough to listen.
"So you reached hundreds of leagues on your first try," Sora said, "and almost burned out your brain doing it. Classic Yuna."
"I pulled back before anything permanent happened."
"Barely. According to Korvain." Sora shook her head. "You know, when I said I wanted you to be more assertive, I didn't mean 'risk permanent brain damage reaching for Hollowed in the wastes.'"
"Noted for next time."
David hadn't said much since they'd gathered, but his presence was steady and warm beside her. Now he spoke, his voice quiet.
"Did you really feel something out there? Something that might still be human?"
"I don't know." Yuna pulled her knees to her chest, watching the stars emerge one by one. "It felt like something. A spark, buried deep. But it could have been wishful thinking. I've never reached that far before. I don't know what to trust."
"You trusted Korvain," Aria said. It wasn't quite an accusation. "When everyone said you were crazy, you trusted that there was something worth saving in him. And you were right."
"So far."
"So far." Aria moved closer, settling against the wall with her usual grace. "I'm not saying I believe you can save every Hollowed in the wastes. I'm not even saying I believe you can save Sera. But I'm starting to believe you'll try. And that might be enough."
"Enough for what?"
"Enough to matter." Aria's eyes found hers in the moonlight. "This war has been going on for four decades. We've been losing for so long, we've forgotten what winning looks like. But you came from nowhere, with no power and no knowledge and no reason to care about any of us, and you started changing things. The Herald. The council. The way people talk about the Hollowed." She paused. "That's not nothing."
Yuna wanted to argue, to point out all the things she hadn't done, all the ways she'd failed, all the people she hadn't been able to help. But she could feel the weight of Aria's words, and Sora's watchful pride, and David's quiet faith.
They believed in her. Despite everything. Because of everything.
"I don't know how this ends," she said finally. "I don't know if I can really close the Maw, or save Sera, or do any of the things people are starting to expect from me. But I know I have to try." She looked at each of them in turn. "And I know I can't do it alone."
"Good thing you're not alone, then." David's shoulder pressed against hers. "Whatever comes next, we face it together."
"Together," Sora echoed.
"Even the suicidal Bridge experiments," Aria added.
Yuna laughed. A real laugh, surprised out of her by the absurdity of it all. Here she was, twenty-three years old, trapped in another world, surrounded by people who'd become family without her noticing, planning to take on an existential threat that had been destroying this land for generations.
It was ridiculous. And impossible. And she wouldn't have it any other way.
"Sixty-four days," she said. "That's what we have. Sixty-four days to learn enough, grow enough, become enough to make a difference."
"Then we better get started," David said. "Tomorrow, you train again. Push a little further. Learn a little more."
"And don't forget to eat," Sora added. "You skipped dinner. I noticed."
"I'll eat."
"You'll eat now." Sora grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the stairs. "Come on. There's leftover stew in the kitchens, and I'm not watching you pass out from hunger during tomorrow's training."
Yuna let herself be led, Aria and David falling into step behind them. The moons lit their path, silver and bright, and for a moment, everything felt almost normal. Almost safe.
But in the distance, past the refuge's walls, past the wards and the watchtowers, the wastes stretched on forever. And somewhere out there, in the darkness, a little girl was waiting.
I'm coming, Yuna thought. I don't know how yet, but I'm coming.
The thought carried across the Bridge, out into the night.
She could have sworn she felt something answer.