The dark pipe swallowed us whole.​Behind us, the sounds of Buster and the others fighting the hounds faded into nothing. ​It was completely pitch black for the first few minutes. Then, a green light started to glow from the bottom of the pipe.​This was the Refinement Drain. The sludge leaking down the curved walls wasn't water. It was like warm syrup, and it smelled absolutely horrible. It smelled like dried blood, and something else I couldn't quite name. It smelled like sadness. Like a thousand broken promises all melted down into liquid.​"This stuff is terrible," Midnight gagged, shaking a glob of the green slime off his front paw. "It's burning my nose."​"Just keep moving up," I told him, clinging tighter to the fur between his shoulder blades. "Buster said this goes straight to the bottom floor of the Spire. We just have to climb."​But climbing was getting harder. The pipe was steep, and the green sludge made everything slippery. Every time Midnight took a step forward, he

​"They smell like an open grave," Midnight swallowed hard. "I only smell death."​I looked back toward the shadows. The group had stopped walking. They were just standing there in the dark, facing away from us.​"Are you coming?" the old man's voice called out. But it didn't sound raspy and weak anymore. ​Suddenly, I noticed something I should have seen right away.​They weren't making any footprints in the thick dust on the floor.​"They aren't people," I said, my stomach twisting into a hard knot. "They're souls!"​Buster had told me stories about the Spire's mistakes. When the Spire stole the essence from an innocent person, it glowed bright and pure. But sometimes, they grabbed the wrong people from the slums. Sometimes they grabbed murderers. They grabbed thieves who killed for fun. People whose souls were completely rotten.​When the Spire tried to drain a rotten soul, the essence was toxic. It couldn't be used. So, the Spire just dumped them. They locked these twisted, evil g

I sat there on the bleached human skull. ​"Zilu? Seriously, man, you’re scaring me," Midnight said. He was looking at me like I was about to drop dead. "How do we get out?"​"I don't know," I whispered. "My friends...they are gone, Midnight. The magic must have cut them off. It’s just us, you and I."​Midnight stared at me for a long beat. Then, he let out a laugh that sounded more like a bark. "Just us? A cat with burned paws and a mosquito with a broken brain? Oh, fantastic. We're just dead."​He started pacing in circles, his tail twitching irritably. "There has to be a clue. Something!"​We spent the next hour or what felt like an hour scouring the dunes. It was miserable work. I flew until I couldn’t, searching for any inconsistency in the sand. Midnight limped along behind me, grumbling about how he was going to turn into a feline-kabob.​The dehydration was starting to win. I was seeing spots. My thoughts were tangling into knots.​"Look!" Midnight suddenly shrieked. He was st

The ribs snapped shut behind me with a loud thud.​Total darkness swallowed me, broken only by the heart pulsing glow of the black stone hovering in the center of the Goliath’s chest cavity. The air in here was unimaginably foul. ​"Zilu!" Midnight’s voice breached the thick cage of bone, muffled but vibrating with panic. "Zilu, where are you?! Did it crush you? Are you dead?!"​"I’m inside!" I screamed back. "I’m in the chest right now! Stay back, Midnight! Keep your distance!"​"It’s going crazy!" Midnight shrieked. "It dropped the sword! It’s clawing at its own chest! You need to hurry! It’s going to rip itself apart to get to you! Crazy, right?"​He wasn't exaggerating. The entire cavern of bone suddenly pitched violently to the left. I was thrown off balance in the air, barely correcting my flight path before I slammed into a piece of sternum. The Goliath was thrashing. The massive, ten-foot sword had been abandoned, and now the beast was using its own bare hands to tear at its

The corridor seemed to stretch on an endless tunnel...​"Keep to his blind spot," I whispered, keeping my grip tight on Midnight’s fur. "Watch his steps carefully. He’s favoring a side, probably an old war injury. We can use that."​"I am watching," Midnight grumbled back, his paws making absolutely no sound. "But this guy walks like he’s got all the time in the world. This fucker is strolling. We are trespassing in a fortress of murderers."​Commander Vance, the bearded official we had tailed from the dining hall took a sharp left turn. Midnight darted behind a decorative pillar just as a pair of automated security drones floated past. Their scanning lasers sweeping the floor very cleanly.​"That was close," I breathed.​But my relief lasted exactly one second.​A sharp cramp suddenly twisted my abdomen. My vision flashed followed by a wall of blue text right in front of my eyes.​[CRITICAL WARNING: BLOOD TAX DEADLINE IN 00:14:00]​My heart dropped into my stomach. I had completely