The shadow realm doesn't care about normal physics.
The ley lines pulse beneath my feet, each surge stronger than the last, throwing off waves of heat and cold that make my new senses reel. One moment I'm burning, sweat breaking out across my skin. The next I'm freezing, teeth chattering. The energy feels corrupted, tainted with the same darkness that nearly consumed Jonah.
Through the trees ahead, the tear comes into view.
It's worse than when I saw Jonah come through. Wider. The ragged edges pulse with sick light, and the air around it distorts until I can't trust my eyes. Trees behind it look stretched, elongated. The ground seems to tilt at impossible angles.
Through the tear, the shadow realm spreads before us.
Endless grey that isn't quite color and isn't quite absence of color. Stone formations that seem to alter their shape when I'm not looking directly at them. Light that casts no shadows. My photographer's eye recoils—the tear itself I can capture, but what lies beyond it defies my camera's ability to record truth. This is wrong in ways that make my brain hurt trying to process it.
Around the tear, shadows gather.
Not hundreds. Thousands. They flow through the trees like smoke, their forms constantly reforming. Some are barely visible, wisps of darkness that could be mistaken for evening shadows if they didn't move against the wind. Others are more solid, their shapes almost human except for wrongness—arms too long, heads at strange angles, movements that defy physics.
They're not attacking. Not yet. They're watching. Waiting. Their hunger radiates even from here, a cold that has nothing to do with temperature. They want to consume, to spread, to turn our world into another grey wasteland.
And they're patient.
Jonah's hand tightens around mine. Through our connection, everything crashes into me—recognition of that terrible place he fought to escape, determination to keep it from consuming his home, fear that he might not make it back. But underneath, there's love. Fierce, absolute, unshakeable love for me, for his family, for this place worth protecting.
"I can feel them," I whisper. The shadows or the ley lines or the pull of the tear itself. Maybe all three. "They're stronger here."
"The convergence point amplifies everything," Jonah says quietly. His thumb strokes across my knuckles, grounding me. "The ley lines, the magic, the boundary between worlds. This is where reality is thinnest."
"Can we really seal it?"
"We have to." His voice is iron-hard. "Because the alternative is watching everything we love get consumed."
Behind us, Calder begins the ritual. His voice rises and falls in a language I don't understand—something old, primal, words that make the ley lines respond with visible light. Golden threads rise from the ground, weaving together into patterns that hurt to look at directly. The other brothers join in, their voices harmonizing in ways that suggest this ritual has been passed down through generations, practiced but never performed for real.
The ley lines surge in response, power building until the air crackles with static electricity. My hair lifts, standing on end. Ozone mixes with pine and earth and old magic, wild and uncontrolled.
The shadows notice. Their attention focuses not on the tear but on us. On the ritual. On the threat we represent.
They begin to move.
Not rushing. Not yet. But advancing with terrible purpose, flowing through the trees like flood water. They're done waiting. Whatever protection the daylight offered is fading with the setting sun.
Jonah and I stop at the edge of the tear, the shadow realm visible through the rippling barrier. His fingers tighten around mine one last time, and through our connection I feel everything he wants to say but can't—promises and apologies and desperate hope that we'll both walk away from this.
Then he steps toward the tear.
The bond between us stretches taut, a golden thread being pulled to its breaking point. My chest constricts, every instinct screaming to hold him back, to keep him here where I can touch him. But I force myself to let go of his hand.
He looks back at me once. His eyes hold mine for a heartbeat that feels like eternity.
Then he crosses the threshold, and the grey swallows him whole.
CHAPTER 12
JONAH
The shadows remember me, and I remember them and exactly how to kill them.
Cold grey nothing slams into me like diving into ice water. Shocking, disorienting, fundamentally wrong. The shadow realm recognizes me instantly and reaches for me with hungry desperation.
I shift mid-stride. Silvery mist swirls and I'm bear—massive, powerful, ready. The shift completes before my next step, and suddenly I'm running on four paws instead of two legs.
