CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The university district had become a jungle.
Not a metaphorical jungle. An actual, biological impossibility of a jungle.
Trees thirty feet thick rose from collapsed lecture halls, their bark silver and luminescent, their leaves broad enough to serve as dinner plates.
Vines hung like curtains between buildings, pulsing with soft bioluminescence in shades of violet and teal.
The air was thick, humid, filled with the clicks and chirps of insects that had no business existing in a temperate climate.
"The Veil's collapse caused reality to... bleed," Sable explained as they moved through the overgrown campus. "Places are changing. Becoming more like wherever the creatures came from."
"So this is an alien ecosystem?" Olivia asked.
"An overlapping one. Two realities occupying the same space. The longer the Veil stays open, the more our world becomes... other."
They moved in tactical formation, weapons ready, senses hyper-alert. Marcus had woken up—concussion, possible cracked ribs, but mobile. The other wounded had been left with the vehicles, guarded by one able-bodied soldier.
Nine people now. Down from twelve.
The library was their target—a brutalist concrete building half-swallowed by the alien forest. According to Vanguard intelligence, the artifact was somewhere in the special collections vault, buried beneath rubble and possibly guarded.
"Guarded by what?" Olivia asked.
"We don't know. The Covens weren't specific."
"Great. Love a surprise."
They entered through a shattered loading dock, moving through darkness lit only by tactical flashlights. The interior smelled of mold and ozone and something sweet, like overripe fruit. Books lay everywhere—soaked, scattered, some glowing faintly where the alien ecosystem had touched them.
"Downstairs," Sable whispered. "Vault level."
The stairwell was partially collapsed. They climbed over rubble, squeezed through gaps, descended into the earth. Olivia's ribs screamed with every movement, but she bit her lip and kept going. Lucas stayed close, his hand occasionally brushing her back in silent support.
The vault door stood at the bottom of the stairs. It was steel, reinforced, covered in symbols that hurt to look at directly. And it was open.
"Someone got here first," Lucas said.
"Or something." Sable raised her hand, blue energy crackling. "Spread out. Eyes open."
They entered the vault.
It was circular, roughly the size of Ironhaven's combat area. Shelves lined the walls, holding artifacts that ranged from mundane to impossible—a rusted helmet, a crystal skull, a book that whispered when you passed it. In the centre, on a stone pedestal, sat a box.
A simple wooden box, roughly shoe-sized, bound in iron.
"That's it?" Cass scoffed. "We lost two people for a jewellery box?"
"Don't touch it," Sable ordered. "The Covens said it would be warded."
She approached carefully, her glowing hands extended. As she neared the pedestal, the air shimmered. Symbols flared to life on the floor—concentric circles of light that spiralled outward like a triggered alarm.
"Trap!" Lucas shouted.
Too late.
The vault door slammed shut. The symbols blazed brighter. And from the shadows in the corners of the room, things emerged.
They weren't golems. They were worse.
Humanoid, roughly, but stretched—limbs too long, joints bending backward, skin pale and translucent. Their eyes were empty black pits. Their mouths opened sideways, revealing rows of needle teeth. They moved like spiders, scuttling across walls and ceiling with equal ease.
"Hollowed," Sable breathed. "Veil-touched humans. Lost their souls to the other side."
"Can they be saved?" Olivia asked.
"No."
The hollowed attacked.
Olivia had faced a golem. She'd sparred with Cass. She'd trained until her muscles wept. But nothing prepared her for the hollowed.
They were fast. Not awakened fast—something else, something that ignored physics. One moment, a hollowed was on the ceiling. The next, it was inches from her face, claws extended, sideways mouth screaming.
She reacted on instinct, dropping into a split that saved her throat by millimeters. Her spear—broken, but still sharp—drove upward into the creature's chest. It shrieked and dissolved into ash.
"They die like anything else!" she called. "Just hit them!"
The vault became a battlefield. Sable's blue energy lit the darkness, each blast dissolving a hollowed where it stood.
Lucas moved like a dervish, his sword a blur of silver death.
The soldiers fought with desperate courage, but the hollowed were everywhere—dropping from above, scuttling from shadows, reforming faster than they could be killed.
Olivia found her rhythm. Her flexibility was an advantage here—she could duck under attacks that would have caught taller fighters, weave between scuttling limbs, strike from angles the hollowed didn't expect.
She moved like Valeria Vance in the warehouse scene, spinning, kicking, using her environment.
A hollowed lunged at Cass. Olivia intercepted, her broken spear catching the creature's jaw, redirecting its momentum into a wall. Cass stared at her, surprised.
"Don't get killed," Olivia said. "I want to beat you fair someday."
Cass actually laughed—a short, shocked sound—and then they were fighting back-to-back, covering each other in a rhythm that shouldn't have worked but did.
"The box!" Sable shouted. "Someone grab the box!"
Lucas broke through the melee, dodging claws and teeth, and reached the pedestal. He seized the wooden box—and the room went white.
A sound like tearing reality. A pressure that made Olivia's ears pop. And then silence, absolute and suffocating.
When her vision cleared, the hollowed were gone. The symbols had faded. And Lucas stood by the pedestal, the box in his hands, his eyes glowing faintly gold.
"Lucas?" Olivia called.
He turned. His expression was distant, strange, like he was seeing something she couldn't.
"I can hear it," he whispered. "The box. It's... singing."
"Put it down."
"I can't. It wants me to open it."
"Lucas, listen to me." Olivia approached slowly, hands raised. "Put the box down. Step away."
"Olivia..." His voice was dreamy, lost. "It shows me things. The Veil. What's beyond it. There's so much more than we knew. So much—"
"Lucas!"
She slapped him.
Not hard—just enough to break the spell. His eyes cleared, the gold fading. He blinked at her, confused, then looked down at the box in his hands like he'd never seen it before.
"What... what happened?"
"You went somewhere. Come back to me."
He set the box down with trembling hands. "It almost had me."
"But it didn't." Olivia took his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You're here. With me. Focus."
Sable retrieved the box, wrapping it in cloth that seemed to dampen its influence. "We need to move. That lightshow probably attracted everything in a mile radius."
They ran. Up the stairs, through the library, out into the alien jungle. The return journey was a blur of terror and exhaustion—creatures pursuing them through the trees, the soldiers fighting rearguard actions, Lucas moving like a man possessed to keep them safe.
They reached the vehicles with three more wounded, no additional deaths, and a box that sang to anyone who touched it.
Olivia collapsed into her seat, her ribs on fire, her body covered in cuts and bruises, her mind spinning.
She'd done it. She'd fought in a real battle. She'd killed things that shouldn't exist. She'd saved Cass, slapped Lucas back to sanity, and survived.
But as the vehicles roared back toward Compound Seven, she couldn't shake the image of Lucas's golden eyes.
Something was happening to him. Something connected to the box, the Veil, the powers he barely understood.
And Olivia had a terrible feeling that whatever it was, it was only the beginning.