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Darien cocked his head. “You went to see Tamika?”
“She was doing research on the Veil,” Jewels said. “Her late dad was fascinated with the history of Spirit Terra, and she felt she owed it to him to pick up the research he never finished. She seemed particularly interested in the Void overlapping with Yveswich.” She shared a glance with Travis.
“Overlapping?” Kylar asked. “Chew with your mouth shut,” he hissed to Eugene before continuing, “The dimensions are on top of each other or something?”
Arthur spoke from the armchair in the living room. “Picture a color wheel.” Heads turned to look at him. “Now picture the world of Terra being divided into different sections on that color wheel. There is a region in Spirit Terra called the Void, where dark magic reigns supreme. If you were to take that section and place it overtop a map of Terra, the coordinates would put the Void right on top of Yveswich.”
“So basically, if the Veil falls, Yveswich is screwed,” Jack said, “since the worst monsters are probably in there. Lucky us.”
“Roark and Taega were pretty concerned about this, too,” Lace added, “with, you know, the Well replica supposedly being here.” She shuddered.
Jack chuckled. “A literal bomb? I’m concerned too.”
“Yeah, but why?” Malakai cut in, lifting the tattooed arm that was slung across the back of Aspen’s chair in question. The female Reaper was finishing off the last of her pancakes. “Bring it here to blow up Yveswich instead of Angelthene?” He scoffed. “Not very smart.”
Something picked at Loren’s brain. A memory.
She fidgeted.
Where he sat at the head of the table, arms crossed over his chest, Darien’s mouth shifted into a thoughtful frown. “The Well only turns into a bomb if Loren’s magic triggers it. If they don’t have Loren, they can’t turn it into a bomb. It’s just a useless replica. So I highly doubt we need to worry about that right now.”
Malakai persisted, “Okay, so they’re doing all this shit for nothing? They can’t use a replica to heal themselves or make a mortal immortal, and they can’t force Loren to use it without turning it into a bomb. Why build it at all, then?”
“You’re right,” Jewels said, nibbling on her lip. “It doesn’t add up.”
“And,” Tanner added as he clicked away on his laptop, “if they know what we know—that Yveswich and the Void overlap—they wouldn’t want to risk blowing a hole in it, no?”
Tanner’s comment was enough to slide the last puzzle piece in Loren’s mind into place.
“I know what they’re doing,” she cut in.
Everyone fell quiet.
When Loren shut her eyes, the faces around her disappeared, and she saw the memory in her mind, clear as daylight…
With a deep breath, she faced ahead. Her feet slowed to dragging at the sight of the structure materializing out of the mist.
A massive tower—a pillar—pierced the sky. It looked just like the two framing the entrance into Spirit Terra, except bigger, larger than the Control Tower. It was made of the same black, glasslike material as the pillars under Angelthene, only this one was shot through with veins of oozing black instead of rainbow. There was no color here. No color at all.
Beyond that pillar was another Veil. An endless black wall that looked like undulating ink. The temperature here was so cold the ground was covered in frost, the plants glazed with ice that made them look like glass.
One of the men faced the imperator. “The Void, sir.”
Loren wasn’t sure why, but the statement made her blood run cold, her heart crackling, as if the same ice that coated the plants was spreading into her body. Her hand drifted toward the sensation in her chest—toward the amulet whose heat she could no longer feel.
“What’s the Void?” she asked, that strange metallic tone of her voice carrying far. The desolate land whispered her words back to her with a series of echoes.
Quinton stepped up to the pillar. Tilted his head back, peering all the way up to the top. The peak of the pillar was lost in a brewing storm. Teal light glowed within that storm, the color outlining the short silver hairs on the imperator’s head.
“What is the Void?” she said again.
There was movement beyond the Divide. A rippling of shadow.
Something was pacing on the other side of that wall.
Loren’s boot scraped as she stepped closer, squinting her eyes to see, a frozen tree branch snapping under her foot. The closer she got to the pillar, the more hollowed out she felt. A wind carried her hair back, and her teeth buzzed in her mouth, eyes watering. If she felt this terrible when she was still several feet away from it, she feared getting closer.
The men surrounding her readied their guns, pointing them at the misty wall, eyes peering through crosshairs.
