Chapter 1
Thane
There’s nothing here.
No sky. No ground. No horizon where one should end and the other begin.
Just black.
And we’ve been walking through it for what feels like a year.
The others move ahead of me in the darkness, barely visible even with my vampire sight. Rhett’s dim blue flame flickers at the center of our formation—the only light we have, burning on nothing but his stubborn refusal to let it die.
Rhett insists it’s fire. Personally, I think it’s just his temper.
It’s not enough to see by. Barely enough to convince me we still exist.
I stopped counting days somewhere around three hundred scratches on the obsidian shard I carry in my pocket. Time doesn’t work here anyway—days stretch into weeks, hours collapse into seconds. But my body knows. The way my hands shake when I try to summon power I no longer have. The fact that I can’t remember what her voice sounds like anymore.
That’s the worst part.
Not the hunger, not the cold, not even the certainty that we might never escape.
It’s that I’m forgetting her.
The exact cadence of her breath when she slept. The way her Ether curled when she was afraid but trying to hide it. The softness in her eyes right before she let herself trust me—really trust me.
It’s slipping away, piece by piece, and I can’t stop it.
We’ve tried everything.
Spells drawn in blood that Theo picked up somewhere. Rift-tears forced open with raw power we couldn’t afford to spend. Bargains whispered to things that live in the spaces between breaths. Every door we make, the Void eats. Every escape route closes before we can follow it through.
Even Stellan’s calm has cracked—which I didn’t think was possible. Apparently the Void has stronger opinions than I do.
I caught him three turns of Rhett’s fire ago — what passes for night here — whispering to something in the dark. Bartering bits of his soul like spare change in exchange for a way out.
“Please tell him I need him,” he’d said, voice raw in a way I’ve never heard from him before.
I didn’t interrupt. Desperation makes equals of us all.
And I don’t know who the fuck he was talking to. Maybe he’s as lost as I am.
Gray crouches ahead in his dire wolf form, motionless except for the subtle shift of his shoulders. Hunting. He insisted before his shift that he could find her this way—track her through instinct where logic failed us. That was months ago. Now he either can’t shift back or won’t. I’m not sure which possibility is worse.
Wes sits behind Gray, thinner than he should be. We all are, but it shows on him worst—hunger etched into every line of his face. He feeds on memory now, on ghost-impressions of emotion that cling to the things we carry. If you catch him staring too long at someone, check your nostalgia—he might be sipping it.
It’s not enough. It’s never enough.
Jace talks to the echoes because silence is worse. His voice drifts over from the far edge of our makeshift camp, one-sided conversation with things that sometimes answer and sometimes don’t. I don’t stop him. Madness is just another tool for survival here. Sometimes the echoes answer. Honestly, they’re better company than most of us.
Theo sleeps.
He always sleeps too much or not at all. When he’s awake, his eyes are unfocused, seeing things the rest of us can’t. When he’s asleep, he dreams the same thing every time.
Bree’s face, turning away.
Stellan sits beside Rhett’s fire, statue-still. He conserves everything now—words, movement, even breath. The only time he stirs is when Wes starts to fade too far, and then Stellan moves with eerie precision, offering just enough of himself to keep Wes from unraveling completely.
