CHAPTER ELEVEN
Olivia was awake—hadn't slept, couldn't sleep, her nerves jangling like live wires—when the window of her apartment rattled in its frame. Then the building shook, a low rumble that started in the foundation and climbed up the walls like a living thing.
Jenna burst from her room, clutching a pillow like a shield. "Earthquake?"
"I don't think so."
Olivia went to the window. The city sprawled below, dark except for streetlights and the glow of all-night diners.
But something was wrong with the sky. The stars looked...
fractured. Like a broken mirror reflecting a dozen different skies simultaneously.
Colours bled across the horizon—purple and green and gold, swirling together in patterns that made her eyes water.
Then the screaming started.
Not human screaming. Something else. Something that carried across the city from miles away, a sound like metal tearing, like stone grinding against stone, like the death-cry of something that should never have existed.
"Olivia?" Jenna's voice trembled. "What's happening?"
"Get your shoes on," Olivia said, her voice steadier than she felt. "Pack a bag. Now."
She'd already packed hers—clothes, protein bars, her hand wraps, the pocket knife she carried everywhere, the photo of her father that lived in her wallet. She grabbed it and pulled on her training shoes, the ones with the best grip.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Lucas: ON MY WAY. STAY INSIDE. LOCK DOORS.
Another scream, closer this time. Car alarms shrieked below. Olivia saw people running in the street, silhouettes illuminated by the impossible sky. Something moved among them—something tall, wrong, limbs too long, joints bending in directions that made her stomach lurch.
"Jenna, now!"
They met in the hallway, Jenna with a backpack and her cat carrier—Mr. Whiskers yowling in protest. The building shook again, harder. Plaster dust rained from the ceiling.
"We need to get to the gym," Olivia said. "Lucas's coming."
"The gym? Olivia, we need to go to a shelter, a police station—"
"The gym. Trust me."
They made it to the stairwell as the power cut out. Emergency lights flickered on, casting everything in sickly red. They descended eight floors in darkness, Mr. Whiskers howling, Jenna crying silently, Olivia's hand wrapped around her pocket knife with white-knuckled certainty.
The lobby was chaos. People poured from elevators, from apartments, from every corner of the building. Someone was shouting about a car being crushed outside. Someone else was praying in Spanish, fast and desperate.
Olivia pushed through the crowd, Jenna clinging to her arm, and emerged onto the street.
The air smelled wrong. Like ozone and rotting flowers and something ancient, something that had been buried for millennia and was now tasting fresh air for the first time. The fractured sky pulsed with light. Three blocks away, a building burned with flames that were somehow blue.
"Olivia!"
Lucas's truck screeched to a stop at the curb. He was behind the wheel, his face grim, a wooden practice sword on the passenger seat and actual fear in his eyes.
"Get in!"
They piled into the back seat, Jenna and the cat carrier. Lucas didn't wait for doors to close before accelerating, swerving around a flipped taxi, dodging a crowd of people running the wrong direction.
"What's happening?" Olivia demanded.
"The Veil broke," Lucas said. "The barrier between our world and the other places. It's been weakening for decades. Tonight, it finally shattered."
"Other places?"
"Dimensions. Realms. Whatever you want to call them. Things are coming through. Bad things."
Another scream—human, this time, cut short. Olivia twisted in her seat and saw something with too many eyes crawl over the roof of a parked bus.
"Lucas—"
"I see it."
He floored the accelerator. The truck's engine roared as they shot down empty streets, weaving through abandoned cars, past scenes Olivia knew would haunt her forever—a woman crouched over something she wouldn't look at, a man swinging a baseball bat at shadows that laughed, a child standing alone on a corner, staring at the sky with eyes that glowed faintly gold.
"The child's awakened," Lucas said, seeing where Olivia looked. "Early activation. The Veil breaking is forcing latent abilities to surface."
"Is that good?"
"It's chaos."
They reached Ironhaven in ten minutes that felt like ten hours. The gym's windows were dark, but Lucas had keys. He pulled around back, into the loading dock, and killed the engine.
"Inside. Now. Weapons room."
"There's a weapons room?" Jenna asked faintly.
"There's a lot you don't know about this gym."
They followed him through dark hallways—past the combat area, past the weight room, to a door marked STORAGE that Lucas unlocked with a key from his neck. Inside was not storage. Inside was an armoury.
Swords lined one wall—real swords, not practice blades. Spears, axes, bows. A rack of firearms. Boxes of ammunition. And other things: crystals that pulsed with inner light, vials of liquid that seemed to move on their own, a shield that hummed when Olivia passed it.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
"A sanctuary. My grandfather built it fifty years ago, when he first felt the Veil weakening.
There are places like this all over the world.
Safe houses for when the impossible became inevitable.
" Lucas grabbed a sword—straight, double-edged, with a worn leather grip—and tossed her a pair of fighting knives.
"Take these. They're balanced for your hand size. "
Olivia caught them. The weight felt natural, extensions of her arms. "You've been preparing for this."
"My whole life." He looked at her, and for the first time since she'd met him, Lucas Mercer looked young and scared and desperately human. "I thought I'd have more time. I thought I'd have months to get you ready."
"How ready am I?"
"More ready than you think. Less ready than I want." He pulled her close, one hand on her shoulder, his forehead touching hers for just a second. "Stay close to me. Whatever happens tonight, stay close."
Jenna cleared her throat. "Not to interrupt this moment, but something's banging on the loading dock door."
The banging became a crash. Metal groaned. Something roared—a sound like grinding boulders.
Lucas stepped in front of them both, sword raised. "Olivia. Knives up. Remember your training."
"My training was for boxing matches, not—"
"Your training was for fighting. This is just a different opponent."
The door exploded inward.