“Come on,” I hiss—barely a breath—tugging Lenora with one hand and Solenne with the other.

  “Lizzy, love—come back to camp,” Lenora pleads behind me.

  “Just trust me.”

  My voice shakes. My bones shake. The pull inside me is wrong and right at the same time—an invisible hook buried under my ribs, dragging me forward. Tess and Rhea haven’t been gone two hours, but something in the air has shifted. A tremor underfoot. A twist in the wind. A faint metallic tang of fear.

  They’re in danger.

  I feel it—not with eyes (those are gone), but with something deeper, older, humming through the hollow grief left behind.

  A flicker ignites in the void behind my eyelids.

  [Arcbolt +1]

  [New Skill Unlocked: Electroception (Level 1)]

  [You sense variations in electric and magnetic fields, forming a tactile map of your surroundings…]

  A shiver crackles over my skin as the world stirs awake. Sound has edges now. Air pressure carries shape. Scents hold distance. Each breath sketches a blurred, shifting map.

  Lenora stumbles, then steadies. “Where are we going?”

  I tilt my head. The breeze rolls from the west, braided with lavender and wolf musk—Tess and Rhea. “This way.” I turn right, weaving between stones I can’t see—but somehow know.

  “How—” Frankie mutters. “—did you know that trail was there?”

  “Quiet,” I hiss. “You’re stomping like a platoon.”

  “I am a platoon—”

  “Then be a stealthy one.”

  Her offended grunt echoes off the canyon wall, bouncing back in fractured fragments. The returning sound paints a faint image in my mind—hazy, but real.

  The cliff edge narrows ahead. Lenora calls, “Lizzy, pet—the trail ends in a few steps. It’s a long way down.”

  But the wind shifts again—Tess and Rhea’s scent drifting into an alcove that shouldn’t exist.

  I reach out—stone, stone… Then air. A hollow space. A cave mouth hidden behind a false dead end.

  Lenora gasps. “How did you know—”

  “Didn’t you see it?”

  “Pet,” she breathes, “it looks like solid rock. A dead end—from the outside.”

  “Advantage to the blind girl,” I mutter, tugging her into the cavern. Their footsteps scrape too loudly, stabbing my sound-sense. I lift a hand. “Stop. Hole.”

  “Another hologram?” Lenora asks.

  “We need to go down,” I sigh. My hand finds metal—vibrating, humming. A ladder.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I swing onto it.

  “Are you going to ask her?” Jenny whispers.

  “No,” Frankie replies.

  “I heard your footsteps echo from below,” I say as I descend, “and the rungs sound like—what’s that instrument? Different-sized metal bars you hit with hammers?”

  Rhea’s voice floats up. “Xylophone. Lizzy—what in the name o’ Croagh Patrick are ye doin’ here?”

  “What are you doing at the bottom of a hole?”

  “Keepin’ Tess from bleedin’ out.”

  “I brought a doctor.”

  Rhea exhales hard. “Not complainin’, lass, but how’d ye know we needed Lenora? And—frackin’ hells—how’d ye even find us?”

  I hesitate. I just knew sounds ridiculous. But part of the truth isn’t.

  “I followed my nose.”

  I drop the last rungs.

  “Told you,” Tess groans. “You smell like a dog.”

  “Actually,” I snicker, “a wolf—”

  “Watch it, girl!” Rhea snaps.

  “And Lenora,” I add, grinning, “you smell like lavender—”

  “Figures,” Rhea mutters.

  “—after a battle,” I finish sweetly.

  A wash of sound floods the tunnel as Frankie clatters down the ladder like a toddler unleashed on timpani. Shapes gel in my new sense—Tess curled around her shattered arm, Rhea shielding her; the rest of us forming a rough circle.

  Relief hits so hard my knees wobble.

  “Tess,” I breathe.

  Rhea reaches for me before I finish, grounding me. “She’s hurt, but she’s with us.”

  “I’m fine,” Tess lies through clenched teeth as Lenora examines her arm.

  The crackle of a makeshift cast echoes like snapping chalk.

  “Really?” Tess protests. “A cast?”

  “Yes,” Lenora says calmly.

  “What about fae potions?”

  “Out of stock.”

  “Sorry,” I whisper. My eyes sting instinctively—even though they can’t cry.

  “Don’t be,” Tess murmurs. “You came. That’s enough.”

  Her voice trembles at the edges of pain, but hearing it—alive—lets something tight inside me unclench.

  Then—seven faint bells echo down the stone corridor.

  We all go still.

  Rhea shivers. “It’s been doin’ that since we came down. Usually it’s two bells—sometimes three. Never seven.”

  I tilt my head, mapping vibrations bouncing off the walls. The tunnel curves left—toward the volcano—and right—toward something humming with electricity.

  “There’s… something ahead,” I whisper. “A door. But something’s right before it…”

  I frown. “A field? A hazard zone?”

  “A very long tunnel,” Frankie offers.

  “Duh,” I snicker.

  Lenora smacks the back of my head. “Behave.”

  But Tess’s voice carries from behind. “I see a light. Tiny—far off.”

  We move as a group—slow and careful—and each step tells me more than sight ever could. The tunnel widens and narrows as if it’s breathing heat, and the scent of scorched ozone curls into my nose. Beneath it comes something far worse: burning flesh and charred hair. Jenny’s breath catches, then stops entirely.

  The door ahead hisses open and vomits a storm of crackling arcs. A human shape staggers backward through the burst of light, collapses into a pile of blackened corpses, and begins to smoke. There are no screams, no final breath—only the pop and sizzle of electricity finishing its work.“Holy shite,” Rhea whispers.

  A voice—too familiar from news streams and scandal vids—cuts the air: “Damn it! How do I get in?”

  I know that voice. Not personally. But infamously.

  “Constance Jones?” I murmur.

  Tess sucks in a breath. “Vice-Admiral Catalina Evard’s pet monster.”

  Jenny’s whisper is venom. “How did that murderess pup get on the Sidhe’s Seraphim?”

  “The same way I did,” Rhea growls.

  Solenne snorts. “We was conscripts o’ the Lady Penrhyn brigade—snatched straight outta the afterlife. If Catalina wants a monster, she just requisitions one.”

  A knuckle-rap—eight sharp knocks—rings against the door.

  “No novice may enter,” intones a mechanical voice. “Only one who has completed the Red may face the trial. Only those blessed on the Green and Gold paths may pass. Do you wish to face the gate?”

  “Open the bloody door!” Constance snarls.

  The door obeys with a sound like a lion purring.

  Rhea’s fur ripples. “She follows Inanna.”

  Tess bristles. “Do you have a problem with the goddess?”

  “Nah,” Solenne says. “’Tis somethin’ all us what got broke out’ve got in common.”

  The group stills. I angle an ear toward them, half-focused on the gate.

  “Solenne,” I whisper, “I remember your tattoo—but Rhea?”

  “I’m furry, remember?” Rhea says dryly.

  “Tess,” I murmur, “describe their Stars.”

  Her hesitation slices the air. “Why? That’s… very personal.”

  “It has everything to do with what’s about to happen.”

  Eight bells echo from inside the metal chamber. No lightning. No screams. Just the soft swish of a second door opening.

  “She made it through,” I whisper.

  And cold dread sinks deep into my bones.