The cave walls pulsed like a living throat around them. Catriona pressed her palm flat against the damp stone and felt it throb beneath her fingers. Each heartbeat sent another trickle of thick, milky fluid oozing from cracks in the rock. The air tasted metallic, coating her tongue with the flavor of old blood and lightning. Mandalee sagged against her, the assassin's breathing coming in wet, ragged gasps. Her broken arm hung at a sickening angle, the makeshift splint doing little to help. Every step made her hiss through clenched teeth. "Don't stop," Mandalee whispered. "It's tasting our fear." Catriona didn't ask how she knew. The blue mushrooms lighting their path pulsed faster as they passed, their glow revealing long scratches in the stone - not from claws, but from something with too many joints in its fingers. A sound like cracking bone echoed through the tunnel. The wall behind them bulged inward, stone stretching like rotting flesh. Five elongated fingers pressed ag

White fire burned behind Catriona's eyes. She stumbled after Daelen, her boots slipping on the tower's liquefying floors. The explosion had shattered her hearing—the world came in muffled bursts, like listening through wool. Daelen's grip on her wrist was fire and frost combined. His black eyes leaked tendrils of smoke that curled away like living things. When he spoke, three voices wrestled in his throat: "Run—don't look—keep moving—" The cavern outside was collapsing. Great chunks of ceiling plummeted around them, shattering into clouds of crystalline dust that stung Catriona's lungs. Through the haze, she glimpsed the remains of the silver web—threads snapping one by one as the freed lights winked out of existence. Something moved in the dust. A child's silhouette, missing an arm, its head lolling at an impossible angle. "Mother..." The voice came from everywhere at once, vibrating in Catriona's molars. "You forgot your gift..." The beating heart came flying out of

The screaming wouldn't stop. Catriona pressed her hands against her ears, but the sound wasn't coming from outside. It vibrated inside her skull, rattling her teeth and bones. The prison walls shuddered, raining down black dust that stung her eyes. The water around the platform churned violently. Something huge moved beneath the surface, making the stones tremble under Catriona's feet. Elara's chains clanked as she struggled. **"TOO LATE,"** her voice boomed. **"HE'S WOKEN UP."** Daelen's sword lay cold and dark on the stones. Catriona grabbed it anyway, the metal freezing her fingers. Before she could think, part of the bone wall crumbled, revealing a narrow tunnel. She ran. The tunnel sloped upward, its walls oozing black liquid that smelled like rotting meat. Catriona gasped for air as she climbed, the darkness pressing in around her. Far above, a faint green glow pulsed like a heartbeat. Her fingers slipped on the wet stone. She fell forward, scraping her knees, but

The world dissolved into screaming whiteness. Catriona's bones vibrated with the force of the explosion, her skin prickling as if a thousand needles pierced her all at once. The knife and staff fused together in her hands, the wood swallowing the blade like a hungry mouth. Green and silver light pulsed through the chamber in nauseating waves. The not-boy's shrieks rose above the chaos, his form stretching and warping as the silver threads wrapped tighter around him. "NO! NOT LIKE THIS!" His voice shifted through dozens of tones—child, woman, monster—before settling into something ancient and terrible. "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE!" The ground heaved. Cracks raced up the walls as the cradles shattered one by one, their tiny skeletal occupants crumbling to dust mid-air. The altar split down the center, revealing a yawning void beneath. Elara staggered forward, her skeletal hands grasping at Catriona's arm. "The threads...they need an anchor!" Her hollow eyes darted to the fu

The world returned in pieces. First came the ache—a deep, throbbing pain that started in Catriona's bones and radiated outward. Then the smells—woodsmoke and damp earth and something sweet like dried herbs. Finally, the light—golden and flickering against her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes to a rough wooden ceiling. The fire crackled nearby in a stone hearth, its warmth reaching across the small hut to where she lay on a straw-stuffed pallet. The white staff rested against the wall, its glow dimmed to a faint pulse like a sleeping heartbeat. And in her arms— The child. Not the monstrous not-boy. Not the screaming shadow. Just a boy, perhaps five years old, with dark hair sticking to his damp forehead and long lashes brushing round cheeks. His chest rose and fell steadily, one small hand clutching Catriona's tunic even in sleep. Catriona's breath caught. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen something so... peaceful. The silver thread was gone. She felt its