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And splintering my soul into a hundred irreparable shards.

CHAPTER

44

RAYNA

I was going to die.

That much was clear the moment the jungle spit me out onto the main road pinched between Wasteon’s houses and shops.

It wasn’t just the pile of dead bodies crammed together in the middle, a harpy eagle sitting on the heap and emitting a wistful croak. That would have been enough to send me to my knees the moment I saw all the dark blood spilling from their slit necks, merging with the rainwater gushing down the street.

No, it was when those dead bodies twitched—heads jerking up, limbs cranking sideways, sightless eyes spinning to me—that I knew I’d landed straight into my own death’s arms.

The harpy eagle took off with a resounding mew, and the corpses lunged to their feet. I stumbled backward, terror splitting me wide open, but when I turned to flee it was to find my way blocked by two village shops that were…

Growing. Shingles elongated, sharpening into teeth-like spikes. Shutters flew open and merged with each other, forming a blockade. Windowpanes warped, liquefied, and stretched toward me like translucent hands.

It was, perhaps, the most extravagant display of Shape Shifting I’d ever witnessed. And it was trapping me in here with dead villagers whose bodies were being reanimated by another Object Summoner. Bodies still coming at me.

“COEN!” I shrieked, breaking into a full-body sprint up the street. To where, I had no idea, but I threw my invisible hands behind me, pushing the corpses back, back, back. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder to see if I’d succeeded, desperate to find a way back to the jungle. All the buildings were morphing together, but—

There.

An opening bloomed from the rain-slashed darkness ahead of me: two cottages that hadn’t been shifted yet, the space between them a clear way out.

I ran for it, but the second my feet reached the threshold, a flood of animals streamed from the gap. Pumas first, yowling at me, claws extended, followed by a hissing stream of pit vipers whose mouths snapped open.

“Stop!” I screamed at them.

And knew a moment before they closed in that they wouldn’t listen.

My invisible hands reached out and scattered them like a sweeping tree branch. The pumas hissed in pain and rage. The pit vipers spit curses at me as they spun through the air and landed with heavy thumps all around.

I flung myself around to run in the opposite direction.

Only to meet the extended arms of a villager’s corpse.

It rammed into me, knocking me to the ground with a force that evaporated all the air from my lungs. Stars danced in my vision. A drooling face loomed over mine, blood from its slit neck dripping onto my chest, my dress.

“Coen,” I rasped, my fingernails raking the cobblestone on either side of me.

With a teeth-gritting blast of power, I speared my Mind Manipulating outward—not just to try to find his mind, his presence, but to slam into all the pumas and pit vipers streaking my way once more.

STOP, I commanded them, straining to hold them in frozen positions.

But more corpses were coming. Their footsteps pounded closer, and the one above me was still pinning me down with a puppet-like smile.

My Object Summoning shoved it off me. And with the greatest effort of my life, I pushed myself to my feet and continued to run.

“Coen!” I screamed again, desperate for his dark, fathomless touch. A sign that he was alive. “Sasha! Sylvie!”

Nobody answered. It was as if nobody was here, but that couldn’t be true. Even if all the villagers had died, somebody had to be commanding the pumas and pit vipers, shifting the houses, and moving the corpses.

Hurling my blockade down, I cast a net of Mind Manipulating further than I ever had before. And—yes. Five minds lurked in the nothingness. Five elites with different primary magic. Five threats Dyonisia must have planted here to lie in wait somewhere within these shifted houses.

I was just about to try to seize the Object Summoner, the Shape Shifter, and the Wild Whisperer when the Mind Manipulator grabbed hold of me.