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The street wasdevoid of human life. Not even the sound of distant engines filled the air. Now I had to reconsider my belief that humans couldn’t sense thiswrongnessin the air; no other outsiders but us entered the city.

More crows gathered along storefronts and power cables of the main street.Scavengers. Asher and I exchanged a look as we began heading into the town on foot.

Alpatlahuác was a small but pretty city, with its red tiled roofs and brightly painted buildings, and it was its beauty that made the unnatural stillness of the place all the more ominous.

We turned down a side street, and at the other end of it I heard an echoing Spanish melody coming from what looked like a small market, its door propped open.

I pointed to it and Asher nodded, his gun now in hand.

As we got closer, the music got louder, blending with the caws of crows.

My heart beat faster and faster and faster as I choked on the macabre sensation.

Magic gone wrong.

Everything grew—the cawing, the music, the pulse pounding between my ears. Once we reached the door, Asher stepped in front of me, his gun pointed inside. My boots crunched against something, and I glanced down. The glass of the door had shattered.

I was beginning to feel faint. Hadn’t I seen this a dozen times before?

“Jesus Christ.”

My head snapped up.

Asher stood just a few steps ahead of me, his hand dragging down his mouth and chin, his gaze sweeping over the store.

Several bodies littered the area.

I staggered back, my body bumping into the doorway. I choked on shock, on the bastardized magic, on the smell of meat, of rot, ofdeath. The kind of death that left a body to fester and decompose.

It surrounded me. These had been people—beings that once had vivid, beautiful existences. They’d loved, and laughed, andlived.

But no more.

One tear dripped down my cheek, then another. So much death.

That’s what I felt here. Senseless death and dark magic taken by force.

I’d seen this years ago. Entire villages massacred in an instant so that an army could cull their power. Only, I’d seen this in another world,myworld. Then it had been Infernari who were victims of such wholesale slaughter.

The practice had been outlawed.

Against my will, I began to move forward. I approached the nearest woman, her hair gray with age, her body pale and shriveled—sucked dry of every last drop of blood. She lay on her back, her glassy eyes staring up at nothing, her mouth open in a silent scream.

She had not died cleanly, that was plain from her expression.

I fell to my knees next to her, my hands hovering over her still form. Cuts lined her body, the deepest gash slashed across her neck. The skin around it was burned, as though the Infernarus that culled her blood couldn’t wait until it spilled from her body.

“It’s just like Abyssos,” I whispered, another tear dripping out.

Even though I didn’t carry the souls of humans inside of me, a phantom ache took root.

Asher stepped up behind me, his presence ominous.

“What is this, Lana?” he said, his voice low and angry.

“They came,” I said softly, half looking over my shoulder. “The primus’s soldiers. This is their work.”

Savage, cruel work.