Expectant.
I drift to the back, watching Stellan ahead of me. He’s not whispering anymore, but his fingers trace the inside of his wrist—checking for something that should be there but isn’t.
The horseshoe doesn’t spin in my mind anymore. It’s settled. Waiting.
Everything in this place waits for something.
I speed up until I’m walking beside him.
“The things in my vision,” I say. “The ones with the silver eyes. What are they?”
Stellan’s jaw tightens. He’s still processing—I can see it in the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his hands flex and unflex at his sides. Anger. Irritation. Resignation, maybe, that he has to explain at all.
He doesn’t look at me when he finally answers.
“Nightmares,” he says quietly. “They’re called Nightmares.”
Chapter 3
Gray
I can’t shift back.
I won’t.
I’m not sure I even remember how anymore.
The wolf doesn’t speak, doesn’t think in words the way the man does. It justis—instinct and sensation, hunger and purpose stripped down to their most basic form. There’s clarity in that. Safety.
Because if I shift back, I’ll have to face what we’ve done.
What I’ve done.
How long we’ve left her here.
The world feels different in this form. Sounds sharper—every footstep echoes like thunder, every breath a windstorm. Smells thick with rot and magic, everything tasting like failure on my tongue. The silver veins that pulse through the Void carry a scent like lightning and blood. They started appearing shortly after we fell into this place. Thin threads at first. Now they’re everywhere—brighter, thicker, pulsing like exposed nerves. We don’t know what they mean. Just that they keep growing.
The others talk around me sometimes. Voices echoing like ghosts, words I don’t bother trying to parse. They’ve stopped expecting responses. Stopped reaching out to touch my fur or check if I’m still in there.
Good.
I don’t deserve their concern.
I tried to shift back once, weeks ago. Maybe months. I don’t know or care anymore. But I tried, and instead of bones breaking andreforming, I heard her scream. Not a memory—something worse. Like the Ether itself was reminding me what I’d failed to prevent.
I haven’t tried since.
Sometimes I see flashes—not visions like Theo’s, but sensory echoes that hit me in ways I don’t think I can ever come back from. Her scent in phantom bursts: vanilla and ozone and whatever it is that makes her,her. The ghost of her touch on my fur. The sound of her breathing when she slept, steady and safe andalive.
I’m convinced they’re guilt hallucinations.
The Void playing with what’s left of my sanity.
Because she can’t be here. We would have found her by now. We would have—
I shake my head, a very human gesture in a very inhuman body.
Keep moving. That’s all there is. One paw in front of the other, tracking fading hope through endless black, pretending the cold doesn’t reach all the way to bone.
