"Grab the line before the wall crushed your fingers!" Marcus roared as he dropped into the pitch black gap in the ice.The rope burned through his leather gloves. Cold air rushed up to slap his face, smelling like old copper and frozen mud. All around him, the massive blue ice walls groaned under the weight of the moving glacier above. Small showers of loose ice rattled down his shoulders like iron nails."Is everyone down?" Marcus yelled, tapping his feet against a slippery shelf of ice."I am down!" Val replied, his boot spikes digging into the frozen floor. He unhooked his thick rope and grabbed his heavy lantern. "The air down here is foul, Marcus. It feels like breathing needles.""Keep your lights low," Marcus said, wiping his foggy goggles. "We do not know what is waiting in the dark.""Look at those marks on the wall," Val said, pointing his gloved finger at deep, jagged gouges in the blue ice. "That is not from the airship crash.""What else could make those?" a young guard n

"Open your eyes, small boy, before the dark takes your soul for good!" a cold, sharp voice echoed inside Marcus's head.The air was completely gone. Heavy, freezing sludge pressed against his chest like an iron anvil, squeezing the last pocket of oxygen right out of his lungs. Marcus could not move his hands. He could not kick his legs. His face armor was frozen fast to the solid wall of ice around him, trapping a tiny bubble of stale, burning air over his mouth."I cannot move," Marcus thought, his mind racing as his vision began to blur around the edges."You do not need to move your muscles to listen," the voice rasped again. It was dry, ancient, and filled with old malice. It sounded like dried leaves scraping across a stone floor. "You are dying under ten feet of filth, Marcus Vance. But your mind is still mine to command.""Grandfather?" Marcus gasped, the word barely forming in his constricted throat. His heart thumped weakly in his chest. "You are dead. My father killed you."

"Step back before they drive those iron spears right through your chest!" Briggs barked, his voice echoing across the silent black floor.Figures glided out from behind the heavy metal pillars surrounding the central hall. They wore long, ragged robes of icy gray cloth, their faces hidden deep beneath high canvas hoods. Each one carried a long spear made of polished dark metal, the tips glistening with a wet, crimson liquid that did not run or drip."Who are these people?" Silas asked, raising his heavy steel bar as he stepped in front of Lyra. "They do not look like airship guards!""They are not guards!" Briggs said, leaning heavily on a cracked wooden beam to keep his shattered leg off the stone. He winced in pain, his jaw tight as he wiped sweat from his chin. "Look at the crest stamped onto their chest plates! That is the iron hammer of the Northern Keeper Order! They were supposed to be extinct three hundred years ago!""Keepers?" Marcus asked, staring at the hooded figures circ

"Shoot the Abbot before he cuts Marcus down!" Lyra screamed, pointing her trembling finger toward the top of the iron altar.Silas did not hesitate. He raised his heavy repeating rifle, racked the frost coated bolt with a harsh metallic clatter, and pulled the trigger. A loud bang echoed through the vast hall, but the lead bullet never reached the priest. A spinning wall of frozen blades, formed by six pale monks whirling their ice spears in a fast circle, caught the shot mid-air and smashed it into lead dust."I cannot hit him through that wall!" Silas yelled, racking another shell. "The blades are spinning too fast! The metal just bounces right off!""We have to break through!" Toby cried, holding a rusty iron shield he had grabbed off a dead guard. "Marcus is pinned! Look at his shoulder!"Marcus groaned against the cold surface of the central altar. The razor sharp spike of solid shadow was still driven deep through his right shoulder, locking him firmly against the rusted iron wa

"Pour the shadow into the pit before the mountain splits in two!" Marcus screamed, his left eye blazing with midnight light as the floor crumbled beneath his boots.The white vortex in the center of the hall roared like a thousand starving beasts. Cold air whipped through the chamber with such violence that iron beams snapped off the walls and flew upward into the dark ceiling."Marcus, your eye is bleeding!" Lyra shouted, holding fast to an iron pillar as her feet floated inches above the stone. "You cannot hold that much magic alone!""I have to!" Marcus yelled back, driving both hands into the edge of the pit.A thick stream of dark, liquid shadow poured from his palms, spreading around the rim of the spinning white storm. The dark goo hissed and bubbled as it touched the pure frost, trying desperately to knit the spatial tear shut. But the vortex fought back, throwing heavy bursts of ice shrapnel high into the air."It is pushing the liquid away!" Silas shouted from the stairs, hi