Jade
The Obsidian Caves materialize around me for the third time.
Music pulses through the air, floating flames cast flickering shadows across the stone, and people laugh and drink with no idea what’s coming.
“Sixteen minutes that time.” Logan’s hand squeezes mine.
Sweat’s dripping down his face, his skin so gray he looks like a walking corpse, and the flames flickering at his fingertips are sputtering, uneven lights.
“There are too many of them and not enough of us. This time, we’re organizing smaller groups and sending them through different tunnels.
We’ll divide the hellhounds’ attention, bottleneck them, and take them out one by one. ”
“Okay.” My voice sounds as dead as the people I keep failing at saving, and when I glance down at my hand, my fingers are trembling. “I’ll take Sam, Elizabeth, and Francis.”
“Lead them through the leftmost eastern tunnel.” He points at it to show me which one it is. “It’s narrower, which will make it harder for the hellhounds to swarm. I’ll organize the other groups and make sure everyone knows where to go.”
“What about Nina and Vera?”
“I’ll put them in Deidre’s group, in one of the western tunnels.” His lips press into a hard line. “We can’t save everyone ourselves. We have to trust that the other groups can fight.”
Right. Because that worked so well in the previous two timelines.
But I don’t have the energy to argue, so I just nod and scan the cave for Sam’s familiar face.
There.
He’s alive. They’re all alive.
But Logan and I aren’t miracle workers. There’s no way everyone will get out of this unharmed. We just have to save as many lives as possible without me having to expose myself by pulling lightning from the sky.
Does a timeline exist where my magic won’t be the only thing that can save us all? Or are we repeating this loop so Logan will understand and accept why I have to do it, just like I had to understand and accept that we couldn’t save Oliver?
“Hellhounds!” Logan screams across the cave, and then he’s calling out orders for everyone to get into groups, assigning leaders, and telling them which tunnels to take.
They listen to him. Of course they listen to him. He’s Logan Ashford, and everyone listens to Logan Ashford.
Red eyes glow in the darkness, hungry growls echo off the stone, and the hellhounds pour out of the tunnels like a tide of matted fur and teeth.
The chaos begins. But this time, people are moving in multiple directions and splitting into clusters, like Logan instructed.
“Sam!” I shove through the crowd and grab his arm. “Elizabeth! Francis! Come with me!”
The leftmost eastern tunnel branches off from the main cave, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The hellhounds will have trouble swarming us here.
One at a time, we can handle. One at a time, we might survive.
“Keep moving!” I push Sam ahead of me, keeping Elizabeth and Francis between us. “Don’t stop, and don’t look back!”
The screaming starts behind us.
I try not to think about who’s screaming, who’s dying, and who’s being torn apart while I run in the opposite direction. But the howls, the shrieks, and the wet tearing follows us into the tunnel, and I swear they’re going to haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.
A hellhound appears ahead of us, its red eyes glowing in the darkness.
I throw a bolt of electricity before it can lunge. Sam adds a fireball that catches its flank as it falls, making sure it stays down.
We keep running.
“Behind us!” Francis screams, already throwing fire over my shoulder as I spin.
Two hellhounds are charging down the tunnel, their massive bodies barely fitting in the narrow space.
Francis’s flames slow the first one enough for me to hit it with a bolt that sends it crashing into the wall.
The second one keeps coming, but Sam pelts it with fireballs while I hit it again, and again, until it finally falls.
“Move!” I shove Elizabeth forward.
The tunnel twists and turns, and I lose track of how far we’ve gone. All I know is that we’re still alive, still moving, and still fighting.
Eventually, the tunnel opens into a junction where multiple passages meet. Moonlight spills down from above, which means we’re close to the surface.
Then I smell so much blood that it coats the back of my throat and makes my stomach heave.
“Stay here.” I hold up a hand to stop the others.
“No way.” Sam steps up beside me, his jaw set. “You might have developed electric superpowers—which I fully expect you to tell me about once we’re out here—but you’re not going in there alone.”
“Sam—”
“He’s right.” Francis moves to my other side, flames flickering at his fingertips. “We’re coming with you.”
Elizabeth steps forward, her too-big sweater splattered with black hellhound blood, her tiny flames dancing between her fingers. Her hands are shaking, but she meets my eyes with a look that says she’ll fight anyway.
I don’t have time to argue. And maybe… well, maybe I don’t want to see what’s ahead by myself.
“Fine. Stay close.”
We move forward together, and the smell gets worse with each step. It coats the back of my throat, slick and copper-sweet, and my heart drops before my brain processes what I’m looking at.
Coppery-blonde hair dark with blood.
Callie.
Her throat’s gone. It’s like a claw reached in and scooped it out, and I remember how she screamed Alessandra’s name in the last timeline, and now she’ll never scream again because she doesn’t have a throat to scream with.
Elizabeth makes a small, wounded sound behind me.
“Don’t look.” I step in front of her, and then my eyes are drifting to where Alessandra’s curled next to Callie. Her body’s twisted at an angle that bodies aren’t supposed to twist, and her hands are still raised, burn marks scorching the ground around her in a perfect circle.
“That’s... oh gods.” Francis stumbles backward, and I follow his gaze, and I wish I hadn’t.
Deacon Park isn’t a person anymore. He’s just pieces scattered across the stone like someone took him apart and forgot to put him back together.
I force the bile down and keep looking.
Tyler’s slumped against the wall next to Deacon’s remains, his arms wrapped around the intestines spilling out of his slashed stomach. His eyes are open in death, frozen in terror.
Tyler and Deacon were emberlinked partners, just like Callie and Alessandra. Hopefully wherever the four of them are now, they’re together.
A scream echoes through the tunnels, distant and desperate. Then it cuts off mid-cry, like someone pressed a mute button, and I’m running before I realize my legs are moving.
The passage twists and curves. Sam, Elizabeth, and Francis’s footsteps echo off the stone behind me, their fire hot and ready.
Staying as quiet as possible, I peer around the corner, and my lungs stop working.
Nina’s on the ground, her dark eyes staring at nothing, her notebook at her feet. Blood soaks the pages.
Vera’s beside her with her dagger in her fist and a hole in her chest where her heart should be. Her face is frozen in a snarl, because Vera never stops fighting, not even at the end.
Garrett’s a few feet away, his blade broken, his body torn open. I dragged him out of the caves in the last loop, told him to move even though his ankle was twisted, and thought about how I didn’t even like him but wasn’t going to let him die on my watch.
Deidre’s in the center of everything, her dark hair spread around her head like a halo, her hands shaped like she was holding that damn defensive formation again.
Six hellhounds circle the bodies, sniffing at the blood, growling low in their throats.
“Get back,” I tell the others, and my voice is cold and dead, not sounding like mine in the slightest.
They scramble backward.
I raise my hand, rage pouring through me like molten silver, and electricity explodes from my palm in a massive bolt that splits into six perfect streams. One for each hellhound. One for each monster that killed my friends.
Electrical currents spread across their bodies, and they convulse and die where they stand. All that remains is crumpled monsters and the smell of charred fur.
“Jade.” Sam holds out a hand, careful and slow, like he’s approaching a wild animal. “What are you?”
“Not now.” I turn away from Nina’s bloodied notebook, Vera’s defiant snarl, and Deidre’s useless barrier. “We have to get out.”
“But that lightning… you just…”
“Later.” I grab his arm, electricity crackling under my skin, containing it enough that I don’t hurt him. “We need to get outside.”
Questions burn behind his eyes, but he simply nods in agreement.
Elizabeth and Francis nod too. They’re pale and bloody, trusting me even though they just watched me do the impossible. Not like it matters, because I’m not letting this timeline stick. My only goal is to get to Logan so we can reset.
The tunnel to the surface stretches on forever. Every shadow is a hellhound. Every sound is claws on stone. There are the occasional groups of mangled bodies, but we keep moving and fighting until we reach the place where moonlight floods the opening and we burst onto the hillside.
There are a dozen survivors, maybe fifteen, huddled in the darkness while hellhounds circle the perimeter.
All that’s holding them back is a fiery wall with black curling along the edges.
But the wall is flickering, thinning in places, gaps opening and closing like the fire can’t decide whether to stay lit.
Logan appears beside me in a burst of flame that sputters at the edges.
Blood drips from his temple, and his skin has gone past gray into a color closer to ash.
But his eyes are eerily calm—that terrifying stillness he gets when everything is falling apart and he refuses to let it show.
“They swarmed the western tunnels. Half of Deidre’s group—”
“Deidre’s dead,” I tell him. “They’re all dead. The hellhounds hunted us systematically, group by group, and they killed them all.”
He doesn’t even flinch, and somehow, that’s worse.
“Reset it.” I grab his hands. “Take us back. Now.”
He pulls me to his chest, electricity still crackling across my skin, and exhales like he’s been holding his breath for the entire loop.
Black flames build around us, but they stutter and flicker. For one horrible second, nothing happens, and I think he’s burned through whatever power makes this possible.
Then the fire catches, the world tilts and spins, and we’re pulled back into the vortex.