"The Toll of the Void."

  Brother Six lunged for the portal, a blur of reckless speed.

  But Aryan, who had demanded the safety check, was faster than his words implied. As Six crossed the threshold, Aryan didn't step back—he lunged forward. His hand cmped around the edge of Brother Six’s combat harness with a vice-like grip.

  "Grab! Hold!" Aryan roared, his muscles straining against the dimensional pull.

  Sister One reacted instantly. Her eyes fshed silver.

  “Skill: Temporal Stasis - Freeze”

  A ripple of grey energy exploded from her, freezing the chaotic motion for a heartbeat. The swirling colors of the portal slowed to a sludge. Brother Six hung suspended in mid-air, anchored only by Aryan’s grip.

  Seeing the window of opportunity, Amara moved. She dodged past the frozen air particles and locked her hand around Aryan’s free wrist.

  "Good! You paused time!" Amara shouted, her voice cutting through the silence. "Now! No time to waste! Let's go!"

  The command broke the trance. The remaining seven siblings took a collective breath, their discipline overriding their shock. Without a fraction of a second lost, they surged forward, grabbing shoulders, belts, and hands, forming a living chain.

  ZWOOP.

  The stasis broke. The chain of twenty entities plunged into the rainbow vortex.

  Inside the wormhole, reality dissolved.

  It wasn't a tunnel; it was a storm of fire and starlight. The floor beneath them felt like the soft, unstable clouds of a nebu, bck and bruised with violet lightning.

  But for the Hunters, it was just transport. For Aryan and Amara, it was an extraction.

  "Argh!"

  Sweat poured from the two like rivers. Their knees buckled, hitting the nebulous floor hard. They weren't just traveling; they were, their bodies, flesh and blood, and even their consciousness is fueling the travel.

  Sister Eight looked down at them, her expression ft and unpitying, though her brow furrowed slightly.

  "This is the cost to travel to a destination that doesn't exist on maps," she said, her voice echoing in the void. "The portal is burning your life expectancy, your only remaining 44 days as coal. Bear with it."

  In the System Interface, arms were screaming.

  "The portal is devouring your glucose levels to compensate for the life energy drain!" Nine shouted, her usual calm fracturing. "If you run out of energy, it starts eating organs!"

  She waved her hands, pulling massive crates of supplies from the inventory.

  "You two! Start eating! Eat as much as you can!" She turned to Sam. "Brother Sam! Drag the food to the System Space Main Hall! We need to move the consumption to the mental pne!"

  "And you two," Nine commanded the two. "Amara! Aryan! Shut your eyes! Project your consciousness and your physical sensation directly into the System Space!"

  "Why?" Aryan gasped, his vision blurring.

  "The Greed Vessel inside you doesn't want to die!. So it can't let you die." Nine expined rapidly. "It will dey the time perception inside your mind to slow the drain. Hold your body tight and shift! Move fast!"

  Aryan and Amara looked at each other, their faces pale and gaunt. They knitted their brows, tightened their grip on each other’s shoulders to maintain a physical anchor, and nodded.

  They smmed their eyes shut.

  Inside their system space.

  A fraction of a second ter, they snapped their eyes open.

  They were no longer in the rainbow void. They were in the System Space—their shared sanctuary. But it was no longer the serene forest they knew.

  The golden Autumn season was withering before their eyes. The leaves turned bck and crumbled into ash. The trees groaned and splintered. The sky was a bruised purple. It looked like a graveyard.

  "Our System Space is dying faster..." Aryan whispered, looking at the decaying world. "Markus said only two or three days from our remaining 44 days life expectancy would be lost. So why does it feel like we are dying right now?"

  He looked frantically at Sam and Nine, who were working with terrified speed.

  "Because this space is connected to your biology!" Sam shouted.

  He wasn't serving ptes. He was throwing raw ingredients—fruits, dried meat, energy bars—into a massive digital blender. He pressed a button, turning it all into a thick, nutrient-dense sludge.

  "The portal is running through the Dark Matter and blood of your physical bodies, even your very soul," Sam expined, pouring the sludge into rge beakers. "Even here, the drain exists, since the system space is connected to your whole being. But here, we can refuel faster than you can digest in the real world."

  He shoved a beaker into Aryan’s hand and another into Amara’s.

  "Drink!" Sam ordered. "Fast! Don't taste it, just swallow! We need to bance the energy running out with calories coming in. If the scale tips, you colpse. And if you colpse in the void, you are lost forever."

  Aryan looked at the sludge, then at the rotting trees. He tipped the gss back and drank.

  Aryan gagged, smming the empty bucket down. He had drank enough calories to feed a pnet, but before he could even compin, Amara shoved another bucket against his lips.

  "Drink," she ordered, with a force that brooked no argument.

  Aryan choked it down, his eyes watering. The moment the bucket was empty, he grabbed a container twice the size, filled it with the nutrient sludge, and shoved it toward Amara.

  "Your turn, Sister," he wheezed, forcing the rim against her mouth. "We share everything, remember?"

  Amara gred at him but drank it without hesitation.

  "This is too much!" Aryan shouted, wiping the grime from his mouth. "That Markus guy... I swear, if we survive this, I will force-feed him this garbage! What kind of psychopath mixes dried meat, fruit, and energy bars into a smoothie? It tastes like liquid of despair!"

  Sam and Nine, who had been darting back and forth like manic blurred lines, suddenly stopped.

  They didn't stop normally. They slowed down in jagged, glitching frames, like a video buffering. Then, facing the two, the two System Avatars slowly colpsed onto the digital floor, their golden and blue glows dimming to a faint hum.

  "Good..." Sam wheezed, his voice sounding static-filled. "You two... are finally... not sweating."

  "Seriously," Nine added, her avatar flickering. "We almost calcuted a 99% probability that this was a disposal chute. We thought Markus pnned to get rid of all of us, including those Eight Siblings, by throwing us into deep space."

  Sam and Nine looked at each other, nodded tiredly, and remained on the floor.

  "Wait."

  Amara, who had been wiping the sludge from her chin, suddenly froze. She looked at her hands. She looked at Aryan’s forehead.

  "We aren't sweating?" she repeated softly.

  Her eyes widened as the realization hit.

  "The metabolic burn," Amara whispered. "It stopped. The portal isn't eating our energy anymore."

  Aryan looked at Sam. "That means...?"