Minutes stretched like hours.
Then finally Hyran's voice cut sharply through the fractured mindlink, controlled but urgent.
Hyran:I'm opening a portal beneath the Redmoon library. Fin—be ready. You'll need to shift the moment you're through.
Across realms, Fin didn't answer with words.
He moved.
The world snapped, folded, and tore open.
The portal bloomed into existence beneath the Redmoon library—and immediately, something screamed.
Black shapes surged from the other side, half-formed horrors stitched from shadow and bone, clawing and writhing as they lunged for the opening. Hyran reacted instantly, blasting them back with a violent surge of magic, light colliding with dark as grasping limbs scraped against the portal's edge, desperate to follow.
"Now!" Hyran shouted.
Fin didn't hesitate.
He sprinted forward and leapt through.
Mid-stride, his body broke apart and reformed—bones snapping, fur erupting over muscle as he shifted in motion. His wolf hit the stone floor running, a blur of black and gold as the portal snapped shut behind him with a thunderous crack.
Hyran's eyes flashed red.
Above him and Fin, a dragon of red magic tore itself into being—vast, incandescent, and roaring without sound. It coiled through the air, wings beating as it lashed out at the black shapes swarming around them, ripping shadows apart with claws of fire.
Then the ground betrayed them.
To Fin's horror, skeletal hands burst through the stone floor and clamped around his paws, yanking hard. More arms erupted from the walls, seizing his wolf and dragging him sideways.
He snarled and fought back viciously, teeth tearing through brittle bone. He ripped himself free, shattering hands, barreling forward through the chaos and forcing space for Hyran to move with him.
They didn't slow.
Fin shifted mid-run, bones cracking as he slammed back into human form. Gold magic detonated from his hands, a shield snapping into place around them both just as the corridor screamed.
For a few precious seconds, it worked.
Then a spear dropped out of nowhere.
It punched straight through his shield and shattered against the stone inches from his face. Arrows followed, shrieking past them in a lethal storm.
"Shit," Fin breathed.
He threw the shield back up instantly, stronger this time, gold flaring bright as Hyran's dragon continued to circle above it, tearing at anything that came too close.
They ran.
And then Fin caught it.
Nova's scent.
Sharp. Real. Close enough to hurt.
His heart slammed against his ribs as he spoke into the mindlink.
Fin:Nova. Can you hear us?
Nothing.
No answer. No flicker. They rounded a corner and nearly collided with Aeron, who skidded to a halt, eyes wide and hair half-singed.
Relief flashed across his face—brief but unmistakable.
"Thank the gods," Aeron said, breathless, just as another distant scream echoed through the stone.
At that moment, the wall split with a sound like flesh tearing apart.
Small shapes peeled free. They resembled infants and fell from the stone screaming.
Their skin wasn't skin at all, but cracked rock veined with sickly light, fissures glowing as they moved. Their mouths opened too wide, screams shrill and unbroken as they hit the floor on all fours.
Then they crawled.
Fast.
Too fast.
"What the—" Fin started, staring at them in disbelief. They weren't constructs. They weren't undead. They were real. They were… wrong. "What are those things?"
One lunged.
"Oh for fuck's sake," Aeron said, kicking it hard and sending the stone-skinned infant flying down the corridor. It shattered against the wall in a spray of rock.
Aeron grimaced. "I just ran into these. Think screaming porcelain nightmares with teeth."
More poured out.
Their movement blurred, bodies skittering impossibly fast as they swarmed, biting, clawing, crawling up legs and torsos with stone teeth snapping inches from flesh. Their screams layered over each other, drilling straight into the skull.
"Get them off!" Fin shouted.
Gold magic exploded from him in a concussive wave, blasting the infants back into the walls. Stone cracked. Bodies broke apart.
The screaming continued anyway.
Then Fin froze.
"N—Nova!" he breathed.
She stood at the far end of the corridor.
Whole. Upright. Alive.
Relief hit him so hard his knees nearly buckled. He broke into a run, kicking another stone infant aside without slowing.
"Nova!" he called again—
And stopped dead.
Something was wrong.
Her scent hit him a heartbeat late—and it wasn't hers. Close. Almost perfect. But wrong, like a familiar melody played half a note off. Her features, too. Just slightly misaligned. Eyes a fraction too wide. Smile held too long.
That wasn't Nova.
She moved toward them, blade sliding free with a soft metallic sound.
Hyran reacted instantly, red magic snapping out in a brutal strike.
The figure was hurled back—and twisted in midair. Stone and flesh rippled.
Nova's shape collapsed inward and reformed as Hyran.
Same height. Same face. Same stance.
Another appeared beside him.
Then another.
Hyran's breath hitched.
Across the corridor, Fin's blood ran cold. A figure stepped out of the wall.
Him.
Same build. Same face. Same eyes.
It walked a slow circle, stopping to look at them. At itself. Then it lifted a hand.
And waved.
Casual. Almost friendly.
Fin couldn't move.
Beside it, Aeron's double emerged, head tilted at an unnatural angle, eyes too bright. The screaming from the walls swelled.
The infants began crawling again.
__________
From across the temple, Rex spotted her.
He shifted mid-stride, bones snapping as he tore back into human form and caught Nova as she stumbled into him, arms locking around her instinctively to stop her momentum.
She was wheezing.
Rex had never heard her like that.
"Nova," he said firmly, one hand braced between her shoulder blades, the other steady at her waist. "Breathe."
She tried. It came out broken and shaky.
He held her close, voice dropping just enough to cut through the panic. "For what it's worth, I just heard Hyran and Aeron scream like startled cats."
"Aeron hit a pitch I didn't know was biologically possible." He added.
A breathy laugh tore out of her, half-wheeze, half-sob.
"There you go," Rex murmured, tightening his grip for a second. "That's the sound of not dying."
Her breathing slowed, inch by inch, until the tremor in her chest finally eased.
He held her there, solid and real. In truth, he'd been by himself now for awhile and just saw stone infants. He also saw her body double, but the scent was off. This place crawled straight out of his worst nightmares. But he did not show it.
"I would like to lodge a formal complaint with whoever built this." He said dryly.
Another laugh broke out of her. Her breathing was almost back to normal.
She clutched him tighter, forehead pressed briefly against his chest, and Rex tightened his hold without comment, anchoring her until her breathing slowed.
"Breathe. We'll mock this later."
"I'm going to need… several drinks," she said, still catching her breath.
"You and me both."
Rex: I have her.
Redmoon: Good. How is everyone else?
No answer.
Rex: Jax? Hyron? Aeron?
Silence.
Redmoon: Fin is there now as well.
Rex: I must have been cut off from the mindlink for that.
"Do you know which way?" Rex whispered.
Nova swallowed.
"This way."
The moment they moved together, the room reacted.
Creatures peeled from the walls in jerking spasms of stone and shadow, rushing them from every angle. Rex met them head-on, blade flashing, body already bruised and burning with effort. Nova didn't hesitate. Silver magic surged from her instinctively, wrapping him like a second skin.
Every time something tried to touch him, it recoiled, screeching as if burned.
This worked for a minute as they ran through the corridor.
But then the walls began to hum. Low. Wrong. Like pressure building behind bone.
More shapes lunged, too many. His voice was calm but direct through their mindlink.
Rex: Shift now Nova.
Rex shifted without breaking stride, bones snapping as his wolf tore free, massive and fast, ripping through the attackers with brutal efficiency.
In a flash of silver white light, Nova shifted right behind him. Her magic still covered his wolf, protecting him.
His massive black wolf and her glowing white wolf moved together with unnerving precision, instincts meshing as if they'd done this a hundred times before. Rex noticed it immediately—the way she anticipated his turns, the way he adjusted without thinking, how neither ever broke stride, covering blind spots and striking in tandem.
Then, the walls stopped birthing dark creatures. Runes ignited along the walls, flaring violently, and the temperature dropped in an instant.
Both wolves froze, feeling something was off.
Thin tendrils of darkness slid out of the walls. They latched onto the light shielding Rex, crawling up it like veins, drinking it in.
Nova and Seraphine felt it immediately.
A sharp, nauseating pull ripped through her chest.
Nova:What is that?
Seraphine:I don't know. It's feeding on us.
The pull intensified. The walls began to sing, low and wrong, a sound felt more than heard.
Rex tore through another enemy and turned just in time to see it happen.
Nova was mid-leap when the wall itself surged outward and slammed into her wolf with crushing force. Air exploded out of her lungs.
She hit the stone hard and shifted back into human form upon impact involuntarily. Pain detonated through her ribs. Before she could move, the wall softened beneath her like wet clay.
Hands formed and wrapped around her legs. Her silver magic flared on instinct, but the tendrils were already draining it, pulling the light out of her and into the stone. The glow smeared across the wall like paint, dimming fast.
She screamed. The sound was cut short as the stone closed over her mouth.
The silver light vanished. The room went silent.
Rex: Nova!
His wolf slammed into the wall, claws tearing stone as he skidded to a stop. There was nothing left to reach. She was already gone.
His wolf snarled, ripping at the surface that had swallowed her whole.
The stone did not react. It settled. Satisfied.
Rex:Fuck.
He hadn't meant to push it through the link. It tore out of him anyway.
A heartbeat later, Fin's voice cut in, sharp and immediate.
Fin:What happened?
Rex forced his breathing steady before answering.
Rex:The walls took her. She's alive—but I lost her.
Silence.
Then Fin pushed again, raw beneath the control.
Fin: Nova? Can you hear us?
Nothing answered.
Jax's voice cut through next, clipped and focused.
Jax:What was happening when it took her?
Rex:Black constructs were attacking us. Then they stopped. The walls changed—dark tendrils formed. I think it was draining her magic before it struck.
Fin swore under his breath.
Fin:Is that near the stone infants from hell?
Rex:Immediately after them. Same corridor.
Fin:We passed that section earlier. We're holding position—there's another mural ahead. White wolf, split spine, embedded runes along the arch. We'll wait for you.
Rex didn't hesitate.
Rex:I'm on my way.