Chapter 29 · Welcome to the Dead Zone

"Get your head out of the clouds, Julian, or it's gonna get ripped off."

Sloane didn't just warn him. She yanked him back by the collar, her knuckles digging into his neck. Julian stumbled, heels dragging through gray, ash-like dust that pulsed under his boots like a living lung.

"What the hell is this place?" Julian gasped. The air tasted like old pennies and burnt hair. "You said safe house. This is a graveyard."

"Safe is relative when you're the only human in a city of psychos," Sloane snapped. She didn't let go. She hauled him closer, her chest nearly brushing his. Her eyes scanned the horizon of jagged, floating obsidian shards. "This is the Dead Zone. The psychic landfill. Everything the Old Lords couldn't purge from their own minds ended up here. And somehow, the door just opened for you."

Julian looked at the invitation in his hand. The parchment was warm. Too warm. Like a beating heart.

"I didn't open it," he whispered. "I don't even know how."

"That's the problem." Sloane shoved him toward a narrow bridge of calcified bone spanning a void of violet fog. "You're a key you don't know how to turn.