Chapter 10 · Hollowborn - Chapter 10: Someone Else in the Dream

The crack in the air screamed.

I stumbled back from the altar, nearly tripping over my own feet. The silver lines carved into the stone were burning now, actually burning, bright enough that I had to squint. Cole grabbed my arm—his hand felt like ice wrapped in static.

"Don't touch it," he said. His voice was barely there. Like someone talking through a bad phone connection.

The crack widened. I could see something on the other side. Not darkness. Worse. Movement. Shapes that didn't have edges.

"Layla." I said it out loud without meaning to. My mother's name tasted wrong in my mouth. "She said I have forty-eight hours."

"She lied."

I whipped around to face Cole. He looked worse than before—more see-through, like someone had turned down his opacity in Anyone could walk through him now and not even notice.

"What?"

"The gate's already opening." He nodded toward the crack. "Has been for weeks. Why do you think the soultakers have been so active? They can feel it."

My hand was burning. The mark in my palm—the one that had been there since I woke up in the hospital three years ago—pulsed in time with the altar's glow.