Chapter 86
Xavier
The Underworld breathes like a beast tonight. I feel it shifting beneath my boots, coiling in the walls, whispering through the spines of obsidian trees that should not grow, but do. The magic here is old.. It listens. It watches and tonight, it waits. I stand at the edge of the southern ridge, where the veil feels the thinnest and most dangerous. A pulse runs under my skin, not panic. Never panic. I’ve spent centuries hunting things that can’t be reasoned with. But this? This isn’t something I can kill, and that unsettles me. Behind me, Layah shifts on her feet. I don’t have to look to know her paws are glowing faintly, the shimmer of her magic laced through her like moonfire and teeth. She doesn’t speak, but I feel her thoughts brush the edge of mine. She’s focused. Good. We’ll need her wildness here. Envy had tasked us with guarding this place. Her place and gods help anything that tries to take it from her. I inhale slowly. The air tastes like burnt roses and regret. There are cracks in the sky, thin as spiderwebs. Something else is leaking through. Not just sunlight or grass or memory. Intent. And I don’t like that one fucking bit. The souls are restless. The forgotten, they press against the veil, drawn toward the cracks in the veil like moths to flame. But this flame doesn’t burn. It devours.
Layah curses low under her breath. “They’re gathering faster. Like they know something’s coming.”
“They do,” I say simply, letting the shadows roll out from my boots like a tide. “They’re listening.”
“To what?”
I nod toward the fracture near the canyon’s edge. “Whatever calls from the other side.”
We fall into motion, patrol patterns, and magical sweeps. Envy asked me to hold the line. If this place falls, the rest of the world follows. I flick my wrist, and a net of shadow spikes into the ground, sealing a fresh split that hadn’t been there an hour ago. Layah watches me with quiet curiosity, her fur shifting slightly.
“You’re not afraid,” she says.
“I am,” I answer, voice flat. “I’m just used to it.”
She smiles like she understands. I glance once more to the distant edge of the rift where the sky flickers.
“We’ve got this,” Maddox tells me.
“Fuck I hope so,” I whisper back.
Levi
The graveyard we’re standing in isn’t on any map. Not a marked one, anyway. It’s hidden deep in a forgotten stretch of land where the trees grow sideways and the wind hums in broken tones. The moss here is thick and wet, curling around the stones like fingers. Haiden and I have been tracking the pull, following the strange current of magic that Madra tuned us into. I crouch beside a crooked marker, the name long since worn away by time. My fingers brush the edge of the stone, and the air tightens. A pulse echoes beneath my palm, slow… steady… broken.
“Got something,” I murmur.
Haiden’s already at my side, silent as ever. He’s hunting, calculating, a different kind of predator than the rest of us, I can feel the shift in his energy as he reaches toward the earth, his own magic threading through the ground like roots searching for bone.
“They’re here,” he says, voice low. “Or… what’s left of them.”
We found one grave hours ago. A girl with a soul still lingering. She didn’t remember her name, Just pain and fire, but we need more. I unsling my tools. We aren’t grave robbing, we’re searching. For patterns, for sigils, for remnants of the spell Marcus and Salira used to tear the veil and build their sick ritual. The one that made Envy. The one that stole dozens of children from their futures and left only silence behind.

1:03 PM P
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