Chapter 6 · Don't Trust Her Face

Cole stepped through.

The door didn't slam behind him. It just stopped being there. One second Ivy was reaching for his shoulder, yelling something he couldn't quite hear anymore, and the next there was only stone wall and the smell of wet earth and something else. Something like the air after lightning, sharp and wrong.

The hallway stretched ahead. Too long. The figure in Kael's coat stood at the far end, backlit by a light source Cole couldn't see. Didn't move. Just waited.

Cole's hand throbbed where he'd cut it. Blood dripped from his fingers onto the floor and the stone drank it. Actually drank it. He watched the red disappear into the cracks between the tiles like water into sand.

"Kael."

His voice came out flat. Dead. The hallway swallowed the sound before it could reach the other end.

He started walking.

The first few steps felt normal. Stone under his boots. Cold air on his face. Then the temperature dropped and kept dropping and his breath came out in white clouds. The walls pressed in. Not physically. He could still reach out and touch them at arm's length. But they felt closer. Like the space itself was shrinking.