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As we reach the guest wing, the obsidian halls curve and twist around us, polished stone rippling like black water.

I blink hard, trying to clear my vision. The distortion persists, walls breathing in and out with subtle movement while everyone else continues on without reaction. Theron walks ahead, but the corridor behind him stretches and contracts, space folding in ways that defy physics.

Is the Dark King messing with the structure of the Spire again?

A shadow flickers at the edge of my sight, wrong-shaped and too fluid, bending around a corner with impossible grace.

When I turn my head, though, nothing is there.

“Did you see that?” I ask, my question sounding distant to my own ears.

Theron turns, silver brows drawing together. “See what?”

“There is nothing here,” Thalindor says.

Before I can answer, another movement catches my attention, a ripple across the ceiling that vanishes when I look at it. The hairs on my arms rise.

This isn’t the Opal Court’s influence or the Dark King. This is familiar in a different way.

“Amalia?” The corridor beyond Theron’s shoulder distorts again, shadows puddling and flowing upward, counter to gravity.

I open my mouth to respond when someone calls my name from behind.

“Amalia, sweetheart.”

The slight accent, the rasp roughened by years of breathing smoke, is exactly as I remember it from childhood.

I freeze, every muscle locking tight.

No, I killed my mother after the hell she put me through.

It comes again, but now Elionn speaks, the crackle of breaking glass threaded beneath the accusation. “Why did you leave me there?”

Then Caelan joins the chorus, overlapping Elionn. “You promised—you swore—return to us⁠—”

The voices tangle together, echoing off walls. Cold sweat breaks across my skin as realization dawns, and my fingers close around my knife hilt. “It’s here.”

Theron turns back, his body tensing as he scans the corridor. “What’s here?”

“The glasscrawler.” My eyes dart to every shadow, every reflective surface. “The demon that followed me from the human plane.”

I back into a rough, non-reflective stone wall, needing something solid behind me. With everything that’s happened, I had forgotten about it completely.

Theron’s hand snaps to the ceremonial blade at his hip as he shifts to put himself between me and the corridor. “How does it attack?”

“It uses illusions and distortions.” My breath comes faster as the floor beneath me tilts. “It manipulates perception until you can’t trust what you see or hear.”

The air grows thick, heavy with wet stone and the musty perfume of decaying flowers. A drop of moisture hits my cheek, and when I touch it, my fingers come away red.

I stare at the blood on my fingertips in horror.

“Your Majesty,” Thalindor says. “Perhaps⁠—”

“Stand back and guard the hall from intruders,” Theron commands before he grips my arms. “There’s nothing there, Amalia Wolf. Your fingers are clean.”

He’s right. My skin is unmarked. But when I straighten, the corridor has transformed.

The obsidian walls glisten with moisture, veins of opalescent light pulsing beneath the surface, and the floor ripples like the surface of a dark lake. My reflection waits beneath it, unmistakably me except for the alien Opal burning where brown should be.