Chapter 29 Lindsay
TWENTY-NINE
LINDSAY
The sky cracks again.
This time it's louder. Almost booming like thunder rolling though the courtyard. A second breach slices across the air. Veins of silver-pale light spider webs out from the purple lighting, frozen in place. And then…it shatters.
Students scream, chaos erupts, and there are people running in every direction.
My knees hit the ground, my chest clenching tight. Power surges through me, turning my vision white.
Raiden’s at my side in a second. Nolan’s not far behind. Both kneel beside me. While Kael stands over us.
“Get her up,” he demands, his attention on the bleeding sky.
Wait, no, it's not bleeding. Those are monsters, like the ones that showed up at the dueling pits.
Wraith hounds, half-formed and drooling shadow, drag their twisted bodies out first, crawling over the edge and falling from the sky like the breach is a mouth and they’re the hunger behind it. Long-limbed. Eyes too white. Teeth too many.
Then come the others.
Shadows that move wrong. Creatures that flicker in and out like they’re not fully here—like the Veil didn’t finish making them. Horned things. Winged things. Things I can’t name but recognize in my bones.
I scrabble to my feet with the help of Nolan and Raiden.
Tamsin grabs my arm as soon as I'm standing. “Lindsay—”
“I see them,” I say, pushing her toward the doors of the library. “Get inside. Lock the doors.”
She hesitates.
“Now.”
Kael is already moving toward the danger, shadows exploding around him like a living cloak. Nolan mutters something under his breath, fingers flicking in practiced patterns, and a barrier blooms around the closest group of first-years.
Raiden slides in next to me, teeth bared, fangs already growing, magic flicking over his skin as he undoes his tie and sheds his jacket, before stripping out of his slacks and kicking off his shoes.
“Well,” he says, “guess it’s a good thing I didn’t wear heels.”
I almost laugh. But then the first wraith hound lunges.
Kael intercepts it, blade slicing through its neck in one fluid motion. The body hits the stone and melts—black smoke curling where it lands. A sort of fog filling the space.
The second beast breaks off toward a student too slow to run.
“Nolan!” I shout.
He doesn’t hesitate, throwing a pulse of violet-blue magic that smashes into the creature and knocks it into a stone column.
More pour through the tear.
A snarl rips from Raiden’s throat as he hits the shadow-thing mid-leap and fully shifted. Lightning dances across his fur, his nine tails lashing like whips as he slams the creature into the ground. It screeches—high and jagged—and then dissolves into smoke.
I don’t have time to be impressed.
Another wraith hound barrels toward a second-year trying to climb a broken pillar. She’s screaming, hands slick with panic, and it’s not going to hold her weight much longer. I throw out my hand on instinct. Power rushes through me—hot, reckless—and explodes outward.
The ground splits beneath the hound.
It drops like a stone, snarling as it disappears into the sudden crater. The pillar cracks. The second-year drops to the ground, sobbing but alive.
“Lindsay!” Nolan shouts, flinging a ward over my head as something swoops from the breach.
Wings. Claws. Smoke from them dying.
It hits the barrier with a scream, slamming hard enough to send sparks flying. Nolan stumbles back from the impact, but the ward holds—barely.
Beside me, Kael’s blade is a blur. Shadows pour off of him in waves, thick and alive, snapping at the creatures as they near. One lunges for a first-year cowering near the steps. Kael’s there before it can touch her, sword cleaving through its midsection like it’s made of ash.
His shadows catch the girl and toss her gently toward the nearest professor, who pulls her inside.
“Behind you!” I call.
He pivots smoothly, slicing through a lunging shape without missing a beat. It dissolves before it hits the ground.
“Thanks,” he says without looking back.
A creature with too many limbs and not enough face skitters past me, fast as a blink. Raiden growls, bounding after it, lightning crackling through the courtyard in his wake. He leaps, teeth bared, then vanishes into the smoke after it.
More shadows follow.
And we’re not winning.
Not yet. Because for every one we take down, two more drag themselves out of the sky.
“Nolan!” I shout, breath ragged. “We need a barrier—something big. Can you do it?”
“Not alone,” he calls back. “I’d need a power source—or a tether.”
“I’m right here.” I grab his hand. “Use me.”
His eyes go wide. “That could—”
“Do it.”
Kael moves to stand over us again, shadow-wrapped and ready, his back to ours like a wall of night. Raiden reappears beside me in a flash of light and heat, chest heaving, tails scorched at the edges. Blood and smoke streak his golden fur, but his eyes lock on mine.
You alright?
The voice isn’t spoken, but I can hear it like a ripple through my mind, warm and sparking, threaded with something that feels like him.
I blink, startled, but nod. You?
Better now, comes the reply, a flicker of amusement pushing through the exhaustion. I hope we’ve got a plan.
Nolan takes my hand, focusing his power on the barrier spell he’s crafting around the whole area. The shield flickers again.
I feel it in my bones, in the tremble of Nolan’s fingers laced with mine, in the sweat beading at his temple. My magic is already feeding his. But it’s not enough. Not anymore. Another wraith hound slams against the barrier, and Nolan stumbles, almost taking me down with him.
“Nolan,” I gasp, bracing him. “Stay with me.”
“I—” he grits out, “I’m trying.”
And then Kael is there. He doesn’t ask. Just steps behind me and presses his palm flat against my spine, right at the base of my neck—bare skin meeting his shadow-coated magic like they were made for each other.
The power jumps instantly, sizzling through me like a live wire. My knees buckle, and only Kael’s hand at my back and Nolan’s grip in my palm keep me upright.
Then comes Raiden, he’s as big as any of the wraith hounds, at least five feet tall on all fours.
Still in his fox form, he doesn’t shift back, but his muzzle nudges my neck, warm breath fanning over my throat. One tail wraps around my ankle, grounding me. The other eight flare wide as static rolls off his fur. His power finds mine like a spark hitting dry leaves. Fast. Hungry.
And everything breaks open.
I gasp as the energy slams through me; three forces pulling, pushing, binding. The threads of Nolan’s spell solidify again, brighter and thicker than before. But something else is happening too.
A heat low in my core spreads, rushing out in every direction. Light flares under my skin—brilliant and too much to hold. It builds and builds, and I realize too late that I can’t contain it.
“Let go!” I scream, but it’s already too late.
The magic explodes.
A rush of color and sound tears through the courtyard. White-gold light streaked with violet and shadow erupts from where we stand, throwing the monsters back, burning the ones closest to the barrier alive. I feel it arc out—through me. And then something snaps.
Marks burn into existence. Invisible to the eye, but I feel them. One on Nolan’s wrist, echoing the hand he used to hold mine. One over Raiden’s heart, pulsing in time with mine. And one on Kael’s palm, where he still touches the base of my neck.
They collapse like puppets with strings cut. And I fall with them.
The courtyard falls silent. The monsters retreat. The breach flickers once…then all I know is darkness.
I wake with no air in my lungs.
Not because I’m choking or drowning or gasping from pain, but because there’s nothing here. No sound. No breath. No heartbeat.
Just light. And darkness.
It bleeds through mist and shadow, flickering like moonlight on water. I’m standing barefoot, in the dress still clinging to my skin, but the ground beneath me isn’t solid. It pulses under my feet like a heartbeat. The world around me is...impossible.
Endless trees stretch out in every direction. Not normal trees turn into twisted things, veined with silver and flickering in and out of focus, as if they’re not entirely real. Above me, the sky is cracked like glass, and beyond it...stars. Or maybe not stars. Maybe they are eyes.
I spin slowly, breath catching.
“Hello?” My voice doesn’t echo. It doesn’t even sound like me. It sounds smaller. Fainter, almost as if I whispered the word.
Something moves at the edge of the trees.
I turn toward it, but the moment I try to move toward it, the distance shifts. The trees are farther away. No matter how fast I walk, they never get closer.
Another movement. This time to my left. A shape. Broad shoulders. Familiar eyes in the mist.
“Nolan?” I call.
He turns, but not fully. Like he’s underwater, blurry and unreachable. His lips move—my name, maybe—but I can’t hear him. I can’t reach him.
I run.
Faster. Gasping for air as I do. But he disappears into the mist. Another shape takes his place. Gold light, the flash of tails, and fanged grin.
“Raiden!” I cry.
He’s there, just for a heartbeat. Laughing like he always does when he’s about to tease me. But then he too fades into the thickening mist, the sound of his name dying on my tongue.
“Kael,” I whisper. “If you’re here...please—”
A flicker of motion. A shadow coalescing into something tall and still. I can feel his presence like gravity. But when I reach for him—he vanishes like smoke. And I’m alone again.
I spin. The trees shift. The mist thickens even more. The stars blink out, one by one.
A pulse shudders beneath my feet. It's coming from me. I can feel it in my bones.
A voice speaks, low and layered, like a chorus of shadows:
“You are the key.
You are the lock.
You are the door left open too long.”
The sky above me splits again, and this time I scream, but there’s no sound.
No escape.
Just light and shadow.
And then—black.