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Taly plummeted through air, through space, through the infinite black where the dreamworld ended and the nothingness began.

The rest of the dream shattered like a glass dome struck by a hammer. Splinters of the illusion spun outward, gleaming with images of masks and glinting jewels and ancient eyes filled with menace.

Still, Taly fell.

And as she did, she worked on her next problem.

The first rule of lucid dreaming: always use a tether.

But she hadn’t brought herself here. Which meant she didn’t have one.

No tether. No way to find her way back.

So, she fell, and kept falling—deeper into the dark. Into the void.

Until there was nothing left of her but smoke, unmoored and drifting.

And in that stillness, she let go.

Chapter 9

Skye slashed at the last spider, burying his sword deep with a satisfying crunch of exoskeleton. Flames licked up from the wound as the creature, large as a barghest hound, twitched in its final death throes.

Around him, the forest floor was littered with carcasses of fallen spiders. Their twisted forms lay scattered across the nest like boulders. The air was thick with the acrid scent of venom and the metallic tang of blood.

He wrenched his blade free, breath rasping in his lungs, sweat stinging his eyes.

Across the clearing, on the other side of the shimmering Veil tear, Kato was doubled over, covered in gore, chest heaving. “What is this nightmarish hellhole, and why—”

The tear gave another flicker that remade the world.

Suddenly, the spider that had been cleaved cleanly in half shuddered. Impossibly, it rose.

Kato screamed—half curse, half war cry. He swung his blades. “Why—won’t—you—die—you—freak—of—nature?!”

He punctuated each word with a frantic stab.

The spider gave a rattling hiss, its mandibles clicking together like bones clattering in an endless echo, the sound twisted by the presence of the tear.

Then it dropped.

“And stay down,” Kato panted.

Skye stepped forward—except he hadn’t, not really. His body was already two steps ahead as if the ground between had vanished. He could feel the sticky tension of webs underfoot, then nothing, then the crunch of leaves as his next step appeared out of nowhere.

It took longer than it should have, but slowly, they were able to move away from the tear. The air settled around them, the trees no longer shifting in and out of existence.

“Where are we?” Kato asked, breathing a sigh of relief when his voice didn’t skip.

“I don’t know.” Skye looked around. Clouds smothered the horizon. There was no sun, no way to tell the time of day or direction.

But he recognized the cliff they’d dropped from—the one jutting from the treetops in the distance. The Shelf. Its peak had been blown off when the Gate on top of it exploded, leaving it flat like a plateau.

That put them miles away from where they should’ve been. Miles away from Taly, left defenseless in wyvern, grendel, and shade-infested woods.

Panic struck like a hammer. “We have to get back to camp.”

Kato scoffed. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that? Where’s East? Where’s West? I’m not even sure about up and down right now.” He looked around. “If we wait for nightfall, and if the clouds clear, maybe we can use the Northern Cross?”