Ryan's body was already dusted over when Kate got there. She fell to her knees, and a sob escaped her. Her hand pulled at the Royal Emblem, hit his cold body, cursed and cried. He was a good guy, he didn't deserve to die.

Memories of them training together in secret, stealing blood cookies from the kitchen and sneaking through the palace to get a glimpse of the new weapons load flashed through Kate's mind. His wicked smile with his crooked teeth that made him feared by the other soldiers.

Rumors of his so-called ruthlessness had always circulated, ever since he had joined the royal military. Rumors about how wicked and wrong he was, of how he had gained those scars by mutilating his own face. Kate used to laugh at those idiots that believed those stories. If they had only taken the time to get to know Ryan, they would've known he was but a feather instead of a thorn. The corner's of the princess's lips curled up at the memory of him telling her the awkward story of how he had really gotten his scars. He had stumbled over his words, covered his face to hide his blush and he had mumbled through his hands the story of how he had fallen from a tree into a rosebush, simply because he wanted to see his neighbor again. A girl he had loved for many years from afar, too scared to ever talk to her. There hadn't been anything spectacular about his scars, simply a reminder of his idiocy. Next day he walked up to her and asked her out, even though his face was still red from the fresh wounds. 

Kate suppressed another sob. She let her head fall onto his still body.

"Why did you have to kill him?" She mumbled against the black of Ryan's clothes. 

There was still an unnatural pressure surrounding the city. And if she hadn't been distracted by the hole in her heart, she might've realized that it was the same feeling the night Jason had rescued her from the Hunter camp. 

"Why did you have to attack when you clearly didn't stand a chance? Why didn't you just run, you stupid asshole?" She hit Ryan's chest once more, while she kept crying. 

The emptiness in her chest grew. Her head started spinning like it had the night of the ritual. So much so, that Kate squeezed her eyes shut and held on to anything solid. With short breaths and a pounding heart.

Minutes passed, all while Kate's breaths became shorter and the hole in her heart grew. It was only when someone sat next to her that she shifted her head. 

White hair and gray eyes surrounded by popped blood vessels crowded her vision. Brianna didn't look much better than Kate felt. Yet she looked more awake than she had seen the teenager in days. Her eyes were wide open and her heart raced as if she had run for miles, or as if she was worried about a dear one dying. Kate's heart squeezed painfully at the thought of Ryan. She gripped his vest a little tighter so she was still holding him. She would not forget about him the way vampires seemed to forget all their lost ones. At least, the older they got, the less they remembered or cared about the first names of their long list of lost loved ones.

"Where is Sky?"

Anger rushed through her mind like a thick cloud.

"How should I know?" She replied through her teeth. Her gums were aching. So were her muscles, aching to move or to punch something. Preferably blonde, blue eyes and a foot taller than herself.

"Doesn't matter, you can tell her later." Brianna grabbed Kate's shoulders, pulled her away from Ryan's body and made her look her in the eyes. "Will you listen?"

Kate heard the urgency in her tone and the pumping of her heart, but her head swam with emotions. Mainly anger, but she also couldn't stop the worry. Where was Sky indeed? Did she run off? Had she been scared or afraid of what Kate might do? What was she going to do once she faced Sky? Her hands pressed to her ears, trying to quieten everything. Yet outside there wasn't much noise, so it didn't do much.

In frustration, she jumped up and started pacing through the street. She hadn't noticed so many people arriving. The town council, Sky's weird new friend and a few people she hadn't seen before but were clearly citizens of Tech Duinn all stood there, waiting for something.

"What?" She asked, too loud and too aggressive. It's not like they had done something. No, they hid.

Kate walked through the ring of people, who moved out of the way like she was contagious. Perhaps she was, people around her certainly seemed to die like mayflies.

"Princess!" Brianna called after her.

"Don't call me that," she snapped.

The deadtalker didn't back down.

"I don't care how you want to be called. You need to listen because this is important!"

Kate's hands started rubbing her thighs, like they were itching. And perhaps they were in some sort of way.

"I need ... I just need ..."

"You need to listen. That dust that you brought me-"

"I don't care about that dust anymore!" The princess yelled. For a second, she was shocked at her own response.

"Well, you're going to have to care because The Shibaura are back!"

Kate froze. Her hands stilled, her heart stopped beating for a second and her blood cooled down to freezing temperatures. When her eyes lifted and looked back into bloodshot gray eyes, the world seemed to stop turning.

The Shibaura were back?

"H-How?"

"They're not identical, and they're not stable, but someone is getting very close to bringing them back."

"They're experiments?"

Brianna nodded.

"Who would want to bring back those monsters? They killed half the population."

"The Book of Knowledge has warned me that a darkness is coming, one like the Shibaura War, only bigger. Now, I am certain the book was talking about this. It can not be otherwise. It cannot be a coincidence that the Book showed me the two people that brought that dust to this town. It is a sign. You are connected to this fate." The broad, tall man that Kate had considered being Sky's friend - which she now wasn't so sure about - had walked forward from the crowd.

Kate looked at him with pressed eyebrows. "You were talking to Sky about it. You're the one that made her nervous. Before the ritual, she asked me if I believed in fate. You were talking to her about this? What else do you know? Where is she and who the hell are you to know all of this?"

The princess, almost half the size of this man, walked up to him so close he had to take a step back to remain in eye contact.

"Do you know anything about these unnatural experiments? These Arbrofi?" Brianna asked.

"My name is Kai, princess. I am the Keeper of Gates, I guard the gates between the two realms. I do not speak to the Otherworld like the Ahr a Donn, but I am at the service of the Moon Goddess and her lover Donn himself. This is a real threat against the world. Not just humans, not just Hunters or Vampires. This darkness will destroy-"

"It will create an imbalance." Kate interrupted.

She sighed when she remembered Heather's words. Magic needs to be paid. If not, nature finds a way to do it for you. It always finds a way to balance things out. Were these things connected or was she simply connecting two dots together without there being any correlation between them? Both Heather and Kate had noticed the similar timing between the Hunter Ritual and the appearances of what Brianna now called the Arbrofi. Could it be? And what did it mean for Sky if it were? If the same witch from the ritual was creating these Arbrofi, was Sky one of them?

"Yes, but what for? Why would you want to create an imbalance that would break the veil between the two worlds? That's creating a war that will be impossible to win. Why would anyone want that?"

The question resonated through Kate's head. She was right about one thing: this was a bigger threat than Sky. This was bigger than anything else she ever dared to imagine.

How was she going to stop this before it was too late?

Without wanting to, her answer was a three letter word: Sky. She shook it off her. She hadn't forgotten about Ryan. She promised she wouldn't forget. But where the hell was the Hunter?

Her chest felt hollow, and a deep sadness was clawing on the inside of her chest, ripping something open that she didn't know she had.

You two are connected, whether you want it to or not. The longer you ignore them, the harder they will scream. Heather's warning echoed through her head. Was this what the screaming Heather meant?

"We need to find whoever is responsible, and we need to stop them before the balance tips too far." Brianna spoke with a voice so confident and mature, Kate almost felt ready to follow her into battle. "You," she pointed at Kate, "are going to help me. And so are you." She pointed at Kai, the gatekeeper.

"We'll need the Hunter as well."

"She's not here."

"Then where is she?"

"I don't know." And for the first time since the moment they met, Kate realized she felt alone. Like there was a loose end to the thread that kept them connected. "Not here."

Everyone fell quiet and looked at the princess who was staring at the ground, looking lost and confused.