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“But I saw him bleed.” Shock brought my voice back, but the words still burned my vocal cords, and I rubbed my throat. Kost had stiffened in my hold, but he said nothing as he watched the Lost with narrowed eyes.
“More magic,” Calem grumbled. “Come on!” He summoned more blades and fired them off. Then, he grabbed my wrist and jerked Kost and me in the direction of the rip. We picked up the pace, Kost finally releasing his grip on me to hobble along with us. Still, his jaw was set tight, and he scoured the area as if searching for something none of us could see.
And then the Lost disappeared in a sudden vacuum of darkness, leaving the path to the rip dangerously free and clear. At first, we didn’t move. Ears straining, I listened for anything. It was deafeningly quiet, so much so that my heartbeat was maddeningly loud and my ratcheting breaths reminiscent of a howling wind. Without saying anything, we met each other’s gazes and instinctively knew—moving was the absolute worst idea possible.
Except a single, haunting sound, like the gentle slide of a needle stitching thread, destroyed that plan entirely.
The rip was resealing.
“Go!” Calem shouted, and we ran. We ran as if we hadn’t just been beat to a pulp by a murderous, rampaging mage. We ran like this was our only opportunity for survival, because it was. If we remained here, we knew we’d die. We couldn’t stand up to the Lost forever—he’d already proven that. My pulse roared in my ears as we shortened the space between us and safety. Ten more strides… Five…
The Lost appeared above us in a vortex of lethal tendrils. Hepinned the three of us with ease. Shadows wrapped our bodies and embedded themselves in the ground, creating unbreakable chains that eliminated all possibility of escape. Descending slowly with the help of his shadows, he finally touched down at our feet and glowered our direction.
“I think I’ll kill you here, where you can see your home but not quite reach it. You can’t imagine what that feels like.” Something dangerous flickered through his burning stare. The wings at his back stretched and shuddered, as if they hadn’t truly graced the skies in years. “I wish I could do it slowly, so you could fully comprehend the pain.”
Another stitch pulled at the seams of the realm. We weren’t going to make it.
“I’ll use all of my power to do it. You’ve earned that.” His smile turned wicked, and his biceps bulged, as if he’d somehow doubled the layers of muscles beneath his skin. That same, disastrous sheen obscured his eyes, though I doubted we needed any level of manipulation to succumb to death. Except, for some reason I couldn’t grasp, the shadows dripping out of his shoulder from Calem’s wound suddenly looked like blood again.
Had that been the case all along?I had no idea what was real anymore. And I think that was the point. He was too powerful to overcome, and he’d torture our minds and our bodies to prove it.
Pressing my cheek against the ground, I angled my gaze toward Kost. If I was going to die, I wanted him to be the last thing I saw. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was focused on the sudden display of ruby blood, and his lips were peeled back in a grimace. His fingers twitched against the ground, and I saw the beginnings of a shadow curling beneath his palm.
What are you doing?I wanted to inch toward him, but the Lost’s hold was unyielding. The thick bands across my abdomen andchest pressed tightly into my body, deepening with every passing breath and slowly cutting off circulation to my limbs. A dull tingling had already started in my fingers, but I didn’t have any magic left to try to escape. Not like Kost.
“I used to be able to do so much more.” The Lost spat at the ground. “I wasgrand.”
“And now you’re delirious,” Calem chuckled through a mouthful of blood. His own stare was still full of mercury, but his labored breathing and sweat-slicked skin was revealing enough. Like me, he had emptied his reserves.
Again, that subtle whisper of thread tugging through fabric drifted over us.
“I hope that beast in your veins defies the will of magic like it’s been trying to do since you arrived.” He raised his hand and poised his daggerlike claws directly above Calem’s sternum. “I desperately need it to.”
Cocking his elbow back, he prepared to strike. Just as he released the tension in his muscles and began driving his claws toward Calem, a thin onyx blade cut through the air and sliced off the Lost’s arm. It happened so fast I barely caught it. So wrapped up in Calem’s banter and his own bloodlust, the Lost hadn’t noticed the final shadow Kost had willed to life. The Lost stared in horror at his appendage on Calem’s chest, and then all at once shadows erupted from the severed limb and the mage’s body. They fled over the rocky expanse and darted away from their master, leaving him screaming as he tried to regain his power.
With the sudden release of his shadows, our holds dissipated.
“Run!” Kost shouted.
We leapt to our feet and tore toward the rip. The Lost screamed at our backs and the world began to tremble as an endless sea of shadows seemed to unravel from everywhere. The ground slippedout from under us, spinning away like water down a drain. Calem lunged and managed to anchor himself with one arm and leg in the shadow realm, and he reached back in time to snag Kost.
“Gaige!” Kost shouted. Our fingers met. Slipped. The darkness threatened to swallow me whole. I couldn’t decipher left from right, up from down, just the howling snarling mess of tendrils collapsing on each other and the Lost’s rage-filled scream. There was a glimmer of gray, a small slip of silver where the seam between our worlds waited. And then Kost’s hand found mine, and he clamped my wrist so tightly I swore my bone cracked. Sharp pain spiraled from his touch, but I dug my fingers into his forearm with the same force. With a yank, he dragged me into the familiar shadow realm.
Our room came into focus, grayed-out and layered in varying shades of black, but undeniably the very same room I’d slept in with Kost just the night before. My heart trembled in my chest, and slowly, we called off the shadows and prepared to find solid footing back in Hireath.
I’d never really paid attention to the intricate way the shadows receded as we left the realm. It was like watching brushstrokes paint the world in color, and my eyes ached at the sight of emerald greens, pastel blues, polished browns—all of it.
A smile pulled at my lips. “Thank the gods that’s—”
An explosion of oil and ink blacked out our world and shot into the room. The walls shattered in a spray of wood and debris, the furniture obliterated along with the foundation of the building. We were thrust out into the clearing, and my back cracked against the earth as I stared into the burning light of high noon. Terrified, confused screams crested around us. Rolling to my side, I blinked away the red afterimage left by the sun’s rays and froze. Thousands upon thousands of wretched tendrils had wrenched through the rip, forced their way through the shadow realm, and followed us out.And in the middle of the abyss was the Lost. He gripped his missing arm, but otherwise showed no signs of pain.
His crazed smile deepened as he peered at us from the dark. “I’m not done with you.”
Shadows streaked like lightning across the settlement, cracking into buildings with the same force. Raven, Kaori, Isla, and Ozias had rushed toward us the moment we appeared, and they were now frozen in horror. Face ghost-white, Isla fell to her knees and clamped her hands over her mouth. Her own magic crackled around her in response, and the Lost shifted his focus to her.
“Weak.” He flicked his wrist and a dark bolt arced through the air to strike her in the chest.
Ozias roared and charged toward the Lost with murder in his eyes. Blades sprung up around him as he ran, and he sent them flying without a second thought. Raven was right there with him, summoning her legendary feline and screaming at the top of her lungs as she charged alongside her friend. Kaori had sent a wave of her own beasts into battle with them, but her body shuddered as mercury veins covered her arms and face.
