Page 319 of House Ignis

"Ten minutes of them trying to survive us. Stay close, my flame. I want to see you burn in the dark."

The maze groaned as the walls began to shift...

The maze didn't just accept Asher and Zya; it inhaled them.

But the maze was never silent for long.

Asher moved through the oppressive gloom with a fluid, terrifying grace I’d never seen before.

His shadows didn't just follow him—they acted like extra limbs, brushing against the stone walls as if whispering secrets to the maze. Beside him,

Zya was a phantom, her sleek black fur merging so perfectly with the darkness that only her glowing silver eyes remained, tracking threats I couldn't even see yet.

They looked like they belonged here. They looked beautiful, like ancient royalty returning to a forgotten kingdom.

In this world of endless darkness, my fire felt different. It didn't just burn; it bled.

The deep oranges and flickering reds of my flames cut through the suffocating black like a wound, casting long, dancing shadows of us against the obsidian walls.

Every time I looked at Asher, I saw him watching the way the light played across my face with an expression that made my breath hitch.

He leaned in, his voice was a low vibration against my ear.

"See, darling?" he murmured, gesturing to the way my fire pushed back the encroaching void. "This is what you do to my heart. You’re the only light that matters in the dark."

He gave me a slow, devastating grin, and gods, I melted.

After the betrayal in the Earth Realm, after the blood and the bile, his words were the only balm I needed.

I felt so fucking lucky to have him—to be the flame to his shadow.

But the Shadow Realm was never silent for long.

A sudden, cold pressure clamped around my ankle. It wasn't a hand; it felt like a coil of living smoke, freezing and impossibly strong.

"Asher!"

Before I could even ignite my palms, I was yanked off my feet. I hit the stone floor with a bone-jarring thud, the wind knocked out of me. Whatever had me didn't hesitate. With a violent, predatory tug, I was dragged backward at a blurring speed, my fingers scraping uselessly against the smooth obsidian floor.

"Ava!" Asher’s roar echoed through the corridor, his silver eyes flashing with a sudden, panicked ferocity.

I saw him lunge for me, his hand outstretched, but the shadows between us seemed to stitch themselves shut.

I was pulled through a narrow fissure in the wall that shouldn't have been there, my orange flames sputtering against the suffocating thickness of the abyss.

The cold wasn't just in the air; it was inside me, a living, biting frost that tried to extinguish the dying embers of my fire. I kicked out into the void, my orange flames sputtering against the oily thickness of the abyss.

"Get off me!" I screamed, my voice flat and hollow in the airless dark.

From the shifting walls, they emerged—Umbral Reapers.

They weren't solid, but their claws were.

They were made of the very essence of the Labyrinth, jagged and hungry.

One lunged, a blur of smoke and teeth, and I felt it before I saw it. A searing agony ripped across my thigh as its claws tore through my leather trousers and deep into the muscle.

I let out a strangled cry, my palms erupting in a frantic, desperate burst of crimson fire.