**Interlude

  Dixie vs. the Ink?Walker

  The forest convulsed behind them.

  Deadwood trees buckled inward, cracking like brittle bone. The Hollow King’s presence roared through the Shrine in a silent tsunami of pressure that made Trixie scream and made Nolan’s bones feel like they were vibrating.

  They ran.

  Branches slapped their faces. Roots clawed at their boots. The air thinned into a cold haze that tasted like memory decay.

  Trixie stumbled.

  Nolan caught her arm just in time. “Stay with me—!”

  But the forest had other plans.

  A flicker of movement sliced across their path — a ripple of darkness, thin as ink spilled in water.

  An Ink?Walker.

  Not the hesitant ones from earlier.

  This one was solid. Focused. Primed.

  And fast.

  It burst from the hollow of a dead elm, its blotched silhouette splitting and rejoining in glitching motions as it lunged toward Trixie, fingers elongated into inky claws aimed at her shadow, not her body.

  “Trixie, DOWN!” Nolan yelled.

  She ducked instinctively.

  The Ink?Walker’s hand passed inches above her head and scraped through her shadow instead.

  The world flickered.

  Trixie gasped as a memory snapped out of place— her grandmother’s smile, the scent of chamomile tea, her hands guiding Trixie’s first sigil—

  blurred.

  Almost gone.

  “NO!” she cried.

  Dixie launched.

  The cat’s body became a streak of silver?tabby fury, claws out, back arched, teeth bared in a snarl so feral it barely sounded like something of this world.

  She slammed into the Ink?Walker’s torso.

  And it felt it.

  The creature reeled, glitching violently, its silhouette splitting into jagged fragments before re?converging like a corrupted file trying to correct itself.

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  Dixie didn’t give it time.

  She bit down hard on the Walker’s “arm”— not flesh, not shadow, but something that resisted like wet paper and bone dust.

  Her jaw clenched. Her claws dug deeper.

  “Trixie RUN!” Dixie shrieked around a mouthful of animated ink.

  Nolan dragged Trixie backward, but she twisted, reaching for her familiar.

  “Dixie—!”

  The Ink?Walker convulsed and swung its other arm toward Dixie, its clawed fingers stretching into a needlepoint aimed at her back.

  Dixie hissed and kicked off its torso, twisting mid?air with impossible feline grace.

  “NOT TODAY, SKETCH PAD!”

  She landed between Trixie and the creature, fur arched, tail puffed to impossible size. Her eyes glowed with raw familiar magic — green fire rimmed with Bell-blue.

  Nolan stepped beside her, crowbar raised. “Stay behind us, Trixie!”

  The Ink?Walker turned its jagged head toward them.

  Then—

  It split.

  Its form flickered into three copies, each slightly off from the other, outlines jerking like frames in a broken reel of film. All three lunged.

  Dixie leapt upward, landed on one’s “shoulder,” and raked claws downward with a screech that sounded like tearing parchment.

  The Ink?Walker’s form shattered in a burst of inky shards that evaporated into violet mist.

  Nolan swung the crowbar through the second, and though the metal passed through its body, the impact of emotion — the fear, anger, protectiveness baked into the weapon — caused the Walker to glitch hard enough to lose cohesion.

  It collapsed into a puddle of rippling black lines.

  But the third Walker—

  It went for Trixie.

  Straight for her.

  Its fingers reached, trembling, eager, inches from her shadow—

  And Dixie did something no familiar should have been able to do.

  She phased.

  Her body blurred — silver, white, streaked with blue sigillight — and she slammed into the Walker with the force of a thrown brick.

  The creature imploded silently.

  Trixie felt her knees give out.

  Nolan barely caught her.

  Dixie collapsed beside them, panting, sides heaving, whiskers trembling.

  Trixie gathered her up.

  “Dixie—Dixie, oh gods—are you okay?”

  Dixie shook her head like she was clearing static. “I will be once I claw your ear for almost dying again.”

  Her voice wavered.

  Not from snark.

  From fear.

  Nolan knelt beside them, breath ragged. “That… was incredible.”

  “Obviously,” Dixie said— but her tail brushed Trixie’s wrist, trembling.

  “I’m okay,” Trixie whispered, pulling Dixie close. “Because of you.”

  Dixie closed her eyes briefly, pressing her forehead to Trixie’s chin.

  Then she whispered, voice sharp with emotion:

  “Don’t let anything touch your shadow. Not again. Not ever. I don’t have enough claws for all of these monstrosities.”

  Nolan’s gaze swept the trees. “We need to move before more show up.”

  Trixie nodded weakly. “Yeah. I… yeah.”

  She held Dixie to her chest.

  Nolan steadied her.

  And the three of them ran deeper into the forest—

  away from the shattered Ink?Walkers, away from the Shrine collapsing behind them, and away from the Hollow King’s echoing whisper…

  <>

  But they ran anyway.

  Together.