We step through.
The world flips its coins and forgets which side is which. The Pantheon eats sound first, then colour, then the bit of you that insists gravity is a fact. I bind our breaths together in a thin slip of shadow, so the realm doesn’t try to file us under miscellany. Dastian flickers to my right, red-gold static gagged by the dark. Voren is a steady knife of cold at my flank, marching a ribbon of wraith-light ahead one heartbeat before we’d fall into a hole that didn’t exist until we thought about it.
Nyssa moves like she’s memorised the rules and decided to ignore them anyway. The light inside her comes when called and not a blink before, which is the only reason the Devourer isn’t wearing us like a coat.
“This is different,” Nyssa murmurs.
“This is a reflection of the new queen,” I say, looking around at the gloom. She doesn’t need to know just yet that the shadows are winning, mainly because that is precisely what we need from her to keep the Devourer at bay until we are ready to strike.
Then, and only then, will she need to let loose the light to conquer the darkness.
Chapter 16
Nyssa
“Great,” I mutter, kicking a loose stone that dissolves into mist before it skitters anywhere. “So, my inner psyche is basically a wet day in November. Good to know.”
The realm we navigated before is gone, replaced by rolling banks of grey fog and architecture that looks like it was built from solidified gloom. It’s not hostile, exactly, but it’s depressing as hell.
“It’s not just the weather, slayer,” Dastian says, popping up on my left with a grin that’s too bright for the décor. “It’s the vibe.”
“I’m folding the light,” I remind him through gritted teeth. “Remember? The thing keeping us from being eaten?”
“And doing a marvellous job,” Voren says, stepping out of the mist. “But the realm responds to the dominant frequency. Right now, that is Shadow.”
The snake braided into my soul gives a satisfied hiss, vibrating against my vertebrae. It likes the dark. It feels stronger here, the heavy weight of it less like a burden and more like armour. My palm throbs, the scar itching, but I keep the goldenfire banked deep in my chest, a nuclear reactor running on standby.
“Where are we going?” I ask, trying to peer through the murk. “Because unless the Devourer is hiding in a fog bank, I can’t see anything.”
“Forward,” Dreven says, which is very helpful when forward looks like the inside of a cloud.
Voren tilts his head like he’s listening to static only he likes. “The dead tug left.”
“I vote right,” Dastian says cheerfully. “It smells like trouble.”
“It all smells like trouble,” I mutter, but I stop anyway. The fog presses in, waiting for someone to choose the wrong chapter.
The snake hums along my spine, smug. Between.
“Fine.” I plant my feet and raise my blade. “If shadow is in charge, then the hinge gets a say.” I point the tip into the murk and think the lie I want the world to be. Not safe. Not bright. Just visible.
Nothing happens for a heartbeat. Then the fog parts down the centre like someone drew a blade through silk. Two corridors open, twins that aren’t. One has ribbed vaulting and bone-pale floor. The other is a low, black tunnel that draws the eye.
“Pick,” Dreven says.
“Which one is the Devourer, and which is ‘oops, eternal labyrinth’?” I ask.
“Yes,” Dastian replies.
Voren steps to the bone-bright path and exhales. Frost blooms, clean and sharp. “Wraith-built,” he says. “Remembers law.”
I step to the black slit and feel the pull low in my ribs. Hunger hums back, patient and obscene. “That’s our boy,” I say.
“Left it is, then,” Dastian says, already moving toward the black. “When has ‘no’ ever been fun?”
We take the dark. The fog knits behind us with a quiet, satisfied sound that I hate.
The walls ripple between stone and not-stone, and the air is thin, like we’re walking through a room that forgot how to breathe and is pretending.
