The word slammed into me like a fist to the face.“Where are they?Are they—”
“Alive,” she confirmed, almost sympathetically.
Relief crashed over me.I sagged against the wall, closing my eyes in a silent prayer of gratitude.
Zaheera spoke again, her voice a steady current in the chaos of my mind.
“They will question you all.You must stay strong.Play this correctly and you will see your friends again.”
Then she was gone.Her warmth vanished.The silence was unbearable.
And I was all alone.
I forced myself upright on unsteady legs, weak from exhaustion.Every muscle screamed in protest, but I still hauled myself forward until my fingers curled around the iron bars.
Beyond the gate, a torchlight flickered, its glow painting the rough walls in amber.The darkness beyond was suffocating, an abyss that devoured everything within its reach.Nothing was visible past the shifting light—no hint of an escape.I pressed my forehead against the cold bars, the solid metal steadying me.
The stillness shattered.
A shape materialised from the darkness, a face appearing mere inches from mine.I recoiled with a strangled cry, stumbling backwards until my heel caught on uneven stone.I crashed into the jagged wall.Pain seared through my back as the rough surface tore my skin.
Then she stepped forward.
A Jinn.
She stood just beyond the gate, bathed in golden firelight that caressed her deep, burnished skin.Dark waves of hair framed her unnaturally beautiful face like midnight silk, but it was her eyes that transfixed me—black and bottomless, absorbing the glow without reflection.
Her full lips curling into a sneer, as if my very existence offended her.The hinges groaned as she pushed the gate open, stepping inside with slow, measured grace.Despite the ornate bangles adorning her ankles, her movements were eerily soundless.
The weight of her presence alone was unbearable.I flattened myself against the cold rock at my back, wishing I could dissolve into it.
Her voice was like smoke—smooth, yet abrasive.Beautiful, yet terrible.
“To enter the lands of Jinn does not come without consequence.”
She narrowed her obsidian gaze and advanced another step.“What brings you here,mortal?”
She spat the last word, her disgust twisting around it like poison.
My pulse pounded in my ears.My carefully rehearsed explanations unravelled, slipping through my grasp like grains of sand in the wind.
I didn’t want to meet her gaze.Those eyes promised depths of cruelty I couldn’t fathom.But I needed to.To look away would be a weakness, and weakness here would surely be fatal.
“My friends and I were travelling.We passed the Veil and… we got curious.”
“LIES!”
The walls trembled with her fury.My breath caught, but I held it together, refusing to shatter.
“I’m telling the truth,” I lied, forcing steel into my voice despite my terror.“Why would I lie when my fate hangs in the balance?”
She curled her lips upward but there was no amusement in it.Hatred poured off her in waves.She took another step.It felt as though the walls of the cell shrank inward.
“All mortals are liars!”she hissed.
I nodded.“I agree.”
She faltered, uncertainty flashing across her eyes.
