Chapter 18 · The Shadow Beast Talks

***Kane's POV***

The archive door wouldn't open.

I stood in front of the reinforced steel, one hand braced against the frame, trying to breathe through the pressure building in my chest. The beast was waking up. I could feel it coiling under my ribs, stretching like something that had been asleep too long.

Not now. Not here.

I punched in the code Greaves had given me before he disappeared into the upper levels with Evelyn. My fingers shook. The panel blinked red.

"Come on," I muttered. Tried again. Red.

The hallway behind me was empty, but I could hear footsteps echoing somewhere above. Council guards, probably. Greaves had bought me ten minutes, maybe fifteen. The archive was supposed to be my shortcut out, the back exit that led straight to the old freight tunnels under the building.

The panel blinked red a third time, and the lock went into security mode. A thin blue line of spell-script lit up along the doorframe.

I stepped back. My vision blurred at the edges.

The beast moved.

It wasn't like before, when it had taken over during the ambush or when it had pulled Evelyn out of the wreckage.