Page 31 of Autumn L.A.W

Ezra’s chanting shifted, syllables flattening as he tried to match the living glyphs on the page. The text fought him, jittering between shapes. He bobbled the salt before he reached Lioness.

The fissure exhaled.

Lioness inhaled. Her pencil dropped.

“Now!” Rayna’s voice landed like a gavel. The witches’ magic surged outward in a single, synchronized push.

Sound peeled away in layers: first the distant barking dogs and bike bells, then the rustle of leaves, then the city hum, until all that remained was the thunder of her own heartbeat and the low, bone-deep growl of the earth.

The fissure flared with pale, dusty light.

Lioness found herself drawing, no conscious thought between nerve and graphite. Her hand slashed long strokes and sudden angles, lines too straight, curves too precise. An obelisk took shape on the page, but not the half-buried chunk from before. This one was whole, towering, its tip stabbing a sky.

At its base stood a figure. Tall. Cloaked. Head bowed. The face was obscured.

“Lioness?” Magda’s voice bobbed up as if from underwater. “Status?”

“Fine,” Lioness said through a throat that felt full of sand. “Totally chill. Ten out of ten.”

Spirit Lion snarled, low and dangerous.

The fissure convulsed. Cracks spidered out from its edges, skittering across the neatly cordoned-off earth. The barricades rattled. Magda’s vials chimed together in a high, anxious chord, then fell over, spilling their protective potions.

Crystal staggered, clutching her head. “The water’s backing up. It doesn’t like this. It wants out.”

“Containment first, feelings later,” Rayna snapped, though her breath was coming sharper now. “Ezra?”

“Almost there,” Ezra said through gritted teeth. “Just need to stabilize the— oh, that’s bad.” Salt was blowing out of the circle. “That’s very bad.”

“What kind of bad?” Victoria demanded.

“The circle is open, and the glyphs changed verb tenses,” he said. “Present conditional to present absolute.”

“In words that aren’t going to make Rayna throw a marker at you?” Lioness managed.

He swallowed. “It doesn’t say ‘may open’ anymore. It says ‘opens.’ As in, right now, whether we like it or not.”

The fissure erupted with light. Not a blast outward. A surge upward, straight and contained, like a column of lightning, ironed out. For a split second, Lioness saw a ghost of the obelisk as it must have stood thousands of years ago: unbroken, perfect, rising from a desert that smelled like hot stone and sweat and incense.

Then the stone in front of them split with a sound like a hard crack of thunder.

A vertical seam tore itself from ground level to the tip. The edges glowed dull red, then cooled to black in an instant, leaving a narrow gap. Inside the obelisk was not solid rock. It was hollow and filled with darkness that moved.

Every instinct in Lioness screamed no. Her powers, her bones, the tiny, sensible corner of her brain that had managed to survive this long despite her smart mouth: all of it yanked backward.

Her hand did not listen. Her pencil scrawled something that was not a line. It was an eye. Drawn in one motion, perfect and inhuman, sharp as a chisel mark.

It blinked.

The sketchbook should not have been able to do that. Lioness’s stomach dropped. “Oh, that’s unfair.”

Spirit Lion threw his head back and roared, soundless to mundanes, but deafening in her mind. His mane flared like spectral fire as he leapt between her and the gaping fissure of stone.

The darkness reached out anyway. It didn’t move like smoke. Smoke spread and thinned. This poured, thick and patient, like a snake slithering through Spirit Lion’s glowing ribs without resistance. His form flickered, outlines fraying as the shadow slid through him.

Lioness tried to step aside, but the ground rose around her ankles. Her foot sank into soil that had been solid a heartbeat ago. Her muscles locked, every tendon pulled taut. The shadow lifted its nonexistent head, as if scenting the air, and then darted straight for her chest.

“Rayna—” she gasped.