The Demon Lands were exactly as we remembered them: ugly, silent, and twisted.
Grey sand stretched endlessly in every direction, a fine powder like crushed bone beneath our boots. A thick, dark fog clung low at the surface, crawling around our legs like itwasbreathingus in. It swallowed sound; even our footsteps were muted, as if the ground didn’t want to acknowledge we were trespassing.
“Cheery place,” Nate muttered somewhere behind me. “Great spot for a honeymoon.”
“You’d have to find a person willing to marry you first,” Jaden teased next to him.
Ashley scoffed. “If anyone ever proposes to me here, I’d set the ringandthem on fire.”
“You’d set them on fire regardless,” Jaden added dryly.
“True.”
Malakai brushed closer to me, fingers ghosting over mine like he was worried the fog might steal me if he didn’t remind it that I washis. Those scarlet eyes were fixed ahead, scanning. He wore a maddeningly calm expression as if nothing could frighten him.
“They’re here,” he murmured. “Watching.”
Of course they were.
Lionel walked a few paces ahead, rifle raised, body stiff. No one could see through the fog, not even him, but he looked ready to shoot the mist itself if it swirled incorrectly.
To our left, Eve kept her rifle steady, jaw clenched in that, ‘you idiots better not make me save you,’way. She hated this place, hated not having a clear sight, and hated not having control.
“Wind’s shifting,” Faelin said quietly from the rear, fingers flexing as though she could feel the air’s discomfort.
“Ground’s moving, too,” Jaden added, glancing down. “Like its breathing.”
“Maybe it is,” Caleb said from beside him, checking his handgun with a soft click. He didn’t talk much, but every word he said sounded like a promise.
A loud crack split through the fog.
Everyone froze.
It wasn’t thunder.
It was ice, shattering.
Then, swoosh, like a furnace roaring to life.
“They’re not hiding anymore,” Malakai growled. His eyes flashed red. “Elemental demons.”
Shapes began to form within the mist, glowing embers and jagged frost.
To our despair, the humanoid silhouettes emerged right after.
Us.
Our shapes, our strides and our voices.
One of them, a copy of me, laughed.
And it wasmylaugh. I guess they had been watching us for a while already.
“Permission to blow everything up?” Ashley asked dryly, already grabbing a bomb.
“Granted,” I hissed.
And the demons responded without hesitation.
