“Feel better?” Arielle smiled like she sensed what I’d done.
“Much.”
For a few breaths, it almost felt manageable, like we could walk this dead world and leave without consequence. Then the ash shifted.
Not drifting.
Listening.
The guys noticed it, too.
The flakes veered toward us in a slow, deliberate spiral, tightening like a noose, and the pressure in the air deepened, as if the realm had finally realized we didn’t belong.
My skin prickled. My breath stilled. The hair at the back of my neck rose.
Before I could take my next breath, a shape peeled itself from the gray.
We stopped cold, midstride.
At first, it was only a darker smudge against the endless nothing. Then it tightened, becoming darker. It stepped closer, its outline almost human, as if it remembered what it had been once and couldn’t bear the truth of what it was now.
It didn’t charge. It didn’t snarl.
It simply…reached.
And the shadow smiled.
Not with lips.
Withhunger.
Then it grew.
A hand—if it could be called a hand—slid through the ash toward my shadow, and the instant it brushed the edge of me, cold clamped down on my spine like a vice.
A blast rippled across the ground and surged upward, sending us flying backwards.
Arielle tore away from me as if something had yanked her by force, and I hit the cracked earth with a thud that knocked the air from my lungs and filled my vision with stars.
Then the coldness hooked into something deeper than flesh andpulled.
Gods, my soul—my soul—being dragged toward the surface like it was something the monster could peel from my body.
Air vanished. I tried to scream, but my throat locked. Nothing came out.
My limbs seized, numb and useless, as invisible fingers reached inside me and kept pulling and pulling and pulling.
“Elariya!” Arielle slammed to her knees beside me and grabbed my arm, but the cold only deepened, spreading through my veins.
“H-help…” I managed, the word scraping out of me.
Arielle yanked me closer and began to chant, her voice sharp with urgency, each syllable snapping into place. I couldn’t make sense of the words. The pain stripped thought from me, leaving only instinct and terror.
Steel flashed.
Bastian moved first, blade up, stance wide. Garrick and Alaric drew their swords in the same breath, stepping between us and the thing.
And above us, the shadow swelled, thickening as if my fear were a feast. The pressure in the air deepened. Cold tore through my veins, sharp and invasive, and strength bled from my limbs like water from split skin.
